Viking conquest best ranged unit.

[Michcos]

Viking conquest is mostly about infantry. In native you could spam rhodok sharpshooters to destroy any Nord armies in the field (who have no cavalry units at all). So my question is are Pictish Elite Skirmisher any good? I had only one so far and he seemed to be shooting with twigs so I don't know how a group of them would do.

If not crossbowman, then what unit with throwable spears has best armor and melee capabilities?

What about archers? I think they are useless as they have no piercing so they won't destroy shields. Am I wrong is it good to have some?

[Hooded Horse]

Pictish crossbowmen are the kings of pure ranged combat.

Crossbows have 55p in VC, + up to 5 from bolts. And bolts have more ammo than arrows. Pictish elites having a shield means they uselessly lose an extra quiver though (changed in Balance Mod, they lose the shield)

Archers in VC get around 25-30c from bows and arrows. They have up to 3-4 powerdraw, reduced with equipment penalties, so they go up to around 32c-45c. The best units within them, norse warrior archers, have reduced powerdraw from helmets and only 1 quiver.

So 56p-60p vs 32c-45c. Not even close.

WP makes it worse. Pictish elites have 200 crossbow proficincy, the best archers end up 120-160 or so in bows.

I've been considering bring them more in line with each other in Balance Mod. The high damage output of crossbows probably already fairly represents their armor piercing abilities, maybe they should be cutting. Or maybe bows should be piercing, but I'm more inclined to think bringing the picts into balance with the other ranged units makes more sense. I'm probably going to make their short swords usable for blocking which should help them somewhat in return. 56-60c damage is pretty great, doesn't need to be piercing to make them powerful.

For throwing units, Irish have great skirmishers, with high ammo ammounts (8 and 12). Briton and Picts have as well, on a couple of units (for the britons, their skirmisher horsemen, the only true star of the brton troop tree).

[Michcos]

Thank you very much for detailed explanation. I can't switch to Balance Mod sadly, I don't want to create new character. So is there a chance to create crossbow man army only to be immortal?

[Hooded Horse]

VC Balance Mod is 100% save game compatible with vanilla saves actually. I am careful to only change things that work with saved games. It is mostly bug fixes for vanila VC bugs (like how surrenders were bugged, feasts didn't work right, pagan martial lords had incorrect relationship changes, etc), and obvious balance improvements (like how vanilla VC gave Angle tier V bodyguards the worst swords in the game, making them a terrible unit, I corrected them to recieving the same good kinds of swords other tier V units get).

I don't create new units or change stats, or anything else that breaks saved game compatibility.

Here's the complete changelogs: https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,373658.0.html

All testing and playing is done with my current campaign, which was started on vanilla, so save compatibility is guranteed. ;)

As for crossbowmen only armies...I wouldn't. They won't have their shields out while wielding their crossbows, and AI lords are going to tear you up at a distance with their large skirmisher line of peasants with slings, while their shieldwall advances and then crushes you at close range.

But pictish crossbowmen make great suplementary ranged units, siege defenders, etc.

[Windrider]

Since there is no need for more answers I'd like to go a bit on the side about what TYTY135 was saying.

If you want to improve the archers, aside from increasing skills and proficiencies, make their arrows do piercing damage. Also give more raw damage, but that's obvious. It simply makes sense that arrows pierce and don't cut.

I have no idea if crossbowmen are stronger than they should be but that is maybe compensated by their general lack of armor. You know, they have good ranged units but in melee they are (maybe, I don't know) less effective than other factions. And if they could actually use a nerf, just reduce their damage a little.

It's like wanting to nerf a particular spear for some reason and, instead of reducing its damage, you make it do cutting damage. You might obtain the same result but, you know, it's... weird.

Right now not many players use archers so I don't think you should use them as an "example" on how to balance the other ranged units. If you were to improve the archers while nerfing the crossbowmen a little (if really needed), you'd make the archers more viable. If you just nerf the crossbowmen, nothing changes.

[Hooded Horse]

Originally posted by Windrider:

I have no idea if crossbowmen are stronger than they should be but that is maybe compensated by their general lack of armor.

Not really, only the Norse Warrior Archers have actual armor. Everyone else has nothing, at least the picts get the ritual bonus on their top units.

Originally posted by Windrider:

If you just nerf the crossbowmen, nothing changes.

Which is exactly why that is what I am likely to do.

VC Balance Mod aims to only bugfix and improve the existing balance, not create a new balance. Basically, hammer out the inconsistencies in how Viking Conquest tries to achieve its balance.

The VC devs made a choice--arrows as cutting damage, to reduce use of archers in warfare. That was the design choice, and its not within the role of my mod to question it really. If I did, I'd have to come up with some alternate way of limiting access to archers to keep them a minor supplement, so the original design goal is preserved. Barring that, the most I might do is give archers a slight bonus to damage, not enough to change how they are used really. Someone would have to make a convincing argument it is needed for immersion purposes though.

And it isn't so crazy, realy--piercing vs cutting is about armor piercing and breaking shields. The second can get silly, because shooting several arrows at a shield shouldn't break it. The first is debated endlessly regarding arrows effectiveness vs armor with different bow technologies and such. Probably they should be good at piercing armor, and bad at breaking shields, in all honesty.

Anyway, for VC Balance Mod purposes then the implementation flaw is the VC devs created a Pict crossbowmen unit that is amazing, and the player is just encouraged to recruit himself picts and ignore the archers. The crossbow being a dominant and prevalent weapon in dark ages Britain is probably even more ahistorical than the bow being used as such--sure, the picts used their light little crossbows, but they should be just as much on the periphary of warfare as the bows.

Now, would I disagree with a mod that aimed to make archers a significant part of warfare? Not at all. Totally reasonable. But that would be a mod that introduces a new balance rather than fixing what is already there.

VC Balance Mod is 100% committed to maintaining the existing balance (ie, being 100% save compatible with existing vanilla saved games, both in technical compatibility and also in spirit and atmosphere).

[Windrider]

I understand your points but giving the archers slightly more raw damage and changing it to piercing isn't going to create a new balance. It's also probably not going to make them clearly more viable than before: it's just a way to make them a bit more effective.

I'm not trying to... start an argument or whatever. It's just that I saw in the mod's changelogs that some weapons had their damage increased and some units had some equipment removed or added in order to make them "better" than before and it feels to me it's basically the same situation.

I know that back in that period in that specific geographical area archers weren't good for various reasons and I don't want to change that but here in VC a normal tunic is a good protection against arrows and, you know...

I just wanted to bring forward some points because you said you are thinking of doing some changes. I don't want to be annoying or anything so I'll just disappear from this thread :D

[Hooded Horse]

Originally posted by Windrider:

It's just that I saw in the mod's changelogs that some weapons had their damage increased

Swords that were far too low in damage compared to other swords and axes were increased slightly, to bring them into sensible relationship with other melee weapons.

Originally posted by Windrider:

and some units had some equipment removed or added in order to make them "better" than before

Angle Tier 5 bodyguards were given the same swords that Saxon and Norse tier 5 bodyguards get, replacing their uniquelly terrible sword selection that made them a joke of a tier 5 unit.

Originally posted by Windrider:

and it feels to me it's basically the same situation.

No, there is an important difference.

The above changes bring the minority of units and items into the same balance as the majority of units. That is the same as nerfing the pictish crossbowmen to cutting damage.

Upgrading the many many archer units to piercing damage would be changing the majority of units to conform to the minority.

The first is fixing the existing balance, the second constitutes creating a new balance, which isn't what VC Balance Mod aims at.

Originally posted by Windrider:

here in VC a normal tunic is a good protection against arrows and, you know...

I think this overstates it.

I just did the following test:

My character, wearing +46 mail shirt (a very good armor for VC), stood in front of a group of Tier 2 basic bowmen (norse, but NOT warrior archers, the basic tier 2 norse archers)

They did 5-15 damage per hit through my mail shirt, and I was down shortly after my shield broke. They also broke my shield pretty rapidly actually.

This was at fairly close range, and the damage would be less if farther away, but it shows that even with a good mail shirt they can do damage.

Originally posted by Windrider:

I just wanted to bring forward some points because you said you are thinking of doing some changes. I don't want to be annoying or anything so I'll just disappear from this thread :D

Your discussion is appreciated. Even if I don't always agree with every exact suggestion, it often leads to other changes.

For example, the test you had me do above convinced me of a need for bows to be a bit more accurate.

And with your help I am convinced a slight boost to damage (+2 or +3), while remaining cutting to keep reduced effectivness against armored units is warranted. This is partially because the many sling using units are too good compared to archers with their blunt damage, so archers can be brought up a bit to be balanced with slingers.

Ok, so here is where I stand now in terms of anticipated changes for VC Balance Mod 5.0:

Changes already made in my test version:

1) Bow accuracy slightly increased

2) Penalty to powerdraw skill removed from helmets (this was punishing the damage of the high level archers for little reason, and making helmets a bad thing)

3) Pictish crossbowmen nerfed to cutting damage. 56-60c is plenty of damage for them, especially since their high WP (200) gives them a 15% bonus to damage on top of that, bringing it to around 70c with the strength bonus that crossbows get but shouldn't get.

Changes I am likely to implement soon:

1) Slight increase to bow cutting damage, maybe +2 or +3

2) Slight increase to bow reload speed

[Hooded Horse]

Ok, when I got into comparing archers with slingers...it became clear Windrider is right that archers need a substantial increase to be balanced with the other ranged units.

So:

Bow accuracy increased 95 to 99. Bow reload speed increased (they were basically as slow as crossbows before). Bow damage increased +6 across board (but remains cutting), to better balance with slinger units and their armor piercing high blunt damage. Now a bow unit will actually do more damage to an unarmored peasant by impaling him with an arrow, than a sling does with a stone, as it should be. No units in VC have high powerdraw, so we are still looking at a very reasonable range of damage here. Basically, slingers and bowmen now both are reasonable supplementary choices, but archers remain largely ineffective against heavy armored opponents with shields, as they should be.

Ammo amounts for normal sling rocks tripled. They are rocks--not too hard to find I think. ;) This should make it impossible to really wait out slingers running out of ammo in most circumstances, and let them baically harrass a shieldwall with little fear of ammo loss. Sling lead amounts doubled (high level slingers could use the boost, given they don't have a skill to differentiate damage). Military slings given a damage boost (+2). They need to be susbtantially stronger because a major source of damage difference present among low and high tier archers (powerdraw) does not apply to slings. Accuracy also boosted for all one handed slings (+3). Staff sling accuracy nerfed (-5). So normal slings 95 accuracy, staff slings 85. Military and normal sling accuracy and speed differences brought into good consistent order (speed reduction for military versions resulted). military one hand sling shot speed slightly increased. General reload speed reduction (-20 one handed, -30 staff). Bows are now faster to shoot, as makes realistic sense. Military versions get +10 speed (often will be using lead not rocks). Military versions get +2 accuracy.

Pictish crossbowmen reduced to cutting from piercing.

That should get the various missle units into a cosistent balance, somewhere close to the level of slingers in Vanilla, while slingers become slower at shooting but larger ammo.

However, crossbowmen are still the best, even with the nerf, as befitts the special role they have in the pictish troop tree.

[Tuidjy]

Historically, Pict crossbows were sнiт, and slings were a very effective weapon, but also one that required substantial amounts of training, and would have not been commonly found among barely trained peasants. On sparsely populated islands where many of the adults were shepherds, like the Balearic Islands, yes. On the British Isles, during the Viking invasion, no.

As for your changes to sling ammo, you should consider that 20 lead bullets weight about one kilogram, and that in post-Roman times, lead was much less easy to come by. And, by the way,
slings fire quite quickly. The multiple spins are a Hollywood invention.

Your changes balance the game, in the sense they make it gamey, in the way of popular trends like "women make great archers", "archer beats infantry beats cavalry", "handgun are slow firing but super accurate and super damaging", etc.

As it is, archers are somewhat underpowered, slingers are much too common and skilled, and crossbows are nuts from a physics and history perspective. With your changes, the game loses a lot of realism... and I am not sure gains anything, or at least, anything I can appreciate.

[Hooded Horse]

Originally posted by Tuidjy:

slings were a very effective weapon,

With my changes, slingers remain better than archers against armored opponents, and a bit worse against unarmored opponents.

I don't think slingers need to be strictly better than archers against all types of units--that doesn't appear accurate.

Originally posted by Tuidjy:

s for your changes to sling ammo, you should consider that 20 lead bullets weight about one kilogram, and that in post-Roman times, lead was much less easy to come by.

The units with sling lead are the irish, pict, and briton dedicated skirmisher units.

They are meant to be the relative strengths of those units lines, and their focus is on their slings, so they can afford to invest in additional lead. Compared to their tier, this is consistent with equipment quality.

Having these top slinger units run out of bullets very fast with only 20 ammo and charge in waving their hatchets was not quite right.

Originally posted by Tuidjy:

slings fire quite quickly. The multiple spins are a Hollywood invention.

Slings don't reload more quickly than an archer can notch his next arrow, according to every source I could quickly find. Vanilla VC had slings much faster than bows.

They remain plenty fast with the reduction, almost as fast as bows, especially since it was the speed reduction was most substantial on the non-military slings wielded by the untrained peasants, who should be slower.

As for the multiple spins, that is a vanilla issue--I am not modding animations.

Originally posted by Tuidjy:

Your changes balance the game, in the sense they make it gamey, in the way of popular trends like "women make great archers", "archer beats infantry beats cavalry", "handgun are slow firing but super accurate and super damaging", etc.

Literally nothing of your description is accurate.

Seriously, nothing on your list has anything close to do with Balance Mod changes. You might as well just say "Your mod is the worst thing in the world, as bad as the flu virus, paying taxes, and spilled milk."

Originally posted by Tuidjy:

As it is, archers are somewhat underpowered, slingers are much too common and skilled, and crossbows are nuts from a physics and history perspective

If that is your critique of VC, then the odd part is my changes work to fix exactly what you are complaining about.

- Archers get a slight boost, but remain mostly ineffective against armored opponents.

- On balance, the untrained slingers lost a bit of power, while their trained counterparts gained a bit

- Crossbows lose a bit of their super weapon status

All 3 complaints you have voiced about vanilla are improved by the changes.

Originally posted by Tuidjy:

With your changes, the game loses a lot of realism

I'd be interested if you can find any specific changes that make it less realistic. I don't think there are any--at least, you haven't pointed out any above.

Every complaint you have voiced above is in vague generalities and falls apart when the full context of the issue is considered.

For example, you saying "slings are fast" does not mean I was wrong to reduce their reload speed, because the question is not about some vague catagory of "fast" but rather is about how their original speed compared to bows before and after the changes.

Vanilla VC reload speeds
military sling: 87
longbow: 65

Balance Mod new reload speeds
military sling: 75
longbow: 85

So we moved from Vanilla VC having the slings faster than bows, to Balance Mod having the bows slightly faster than slings.

Which I am fairly certain is historically accurate, an arrow being slightly faster to notch than it is to take a stone from the pouch and insert it into the sling. I looked up commentary by modern day slinger hobbeyists, and everyone seems to agree that a decent archer can achieve a slightly faster rate of fire than a slinger.

[Tuidjy]

Originally posted by TYTY135:

Originally posted by Tuidjy:

slings fire quite quickly. The multiple spins are a Hollywood invention.

Slings don't reload more quickly than an archer can notch his next arrow, according to every source I could quickly find. Vanilla VC had slings much faster than bows.

I have trained with bows for years, and can fire eight arrows per minute with a 55 pound bow. With my 80 pound one, my fire rate drops to half that, if I want to aim.

I suck with a sling, having spend probably one hundredth of the time I've spent with a bow, and all I can do is send the bullet in the right direction, at about 7 per minute, but someone who is much more accurate will not take any more time. Being accurate with a sling is a matter of skill, but nowhere as much as strength and time as a bow.

The best archers I know can fire 12 shots per minute with a real bow. (People who shoot 20 shots per minute with a rubber band strung on a 10 pounder don't count.) Those are unaimed shots. Aiming with a powerful bow takes time, unless you are very very good AND you can draw a much more powerful bow. The archers in Viking Conquest can barely draw their bows.

So yes, bows can be fired faster than slings, because nocking is faster than seating, but for aimed fire, slings are faster. In skilled hands. Which is Viking Conquest should be rare, but are not.

Originally posted by Tuidjy:

Your changes balance the game, in the sense they make it gamey, in the way of popular trends like "women make great archers", "archer beats infantry beats cavalry", "handgun are slow firing but super accurate and super damaging", etc.

Literally nothing of your description is accurate.

Seriously, nothing on your list has anything close to do with Balance Mod changes. You might as well just say "Your mod is the worst thing in the world, as bad as the flu virus, paying taxes, and spilled milk."

I like paying taxes. They buy me civilization.

As for your mod, it is better than Original Viking Conquest in many ways, but if you want to rebalance ranged weapon for historical accuracy, you will not end up with crossbows and slings on top of bows. Crossbows should be an uneffective weapon for unskilled users, and slings should be only effective at the highest tiers.

Also running dry is absolutely historical. It was a huge limiting factor, and only the most organized armies really had a handle on it. Mongols has troops that did nothing but convey arrows, the Tower of London once contained more than half a million arrows by law, and at Carrhae, the Persians had brought thousands of camels to just supply the horse archers. Running around with 50+ crossbow bolts or 60+ lead bullets? Unlikely.

Originally posted by Tuidjy:

With your changes, the game loses a lot of realism

I'd be interested if you can find any specific changes that make it less realistic. I don't think there are any--at least, you haven't pointed out any above.

For example, you saying "slings are fast" does not mean I was wrong to reduce their reload speed, because the question is not about some vague catagory of "fast" but rather is about how their original speed compared to bows before and after the changes.

So we moved from Vanilla VC having the slings faster than bows, to Balance Mod having the bows slightly faster than slings.

Which I am fairly certain is historically accurate, an arrow being slightly faster to notch than it is to take a stone from the pouch and insert it into the sling. I looked up commentary by modern day slinger hobbeyists, and everyone seems to agree that a decent archer can achieve a slightly faster rate of fire than a slinger.

You said it yourself - you do not change animation and spinning time. The net result of your change is that aimed shots with high draw longbows are significantly faster than aimed shots with slings. Assuming highly skilled users, that's absolutely incorrect. Nocking is faster than seating, drawing and aiming at high draw is WAY slower than slinging a bullet after one spin.

So here is your one specific a historical change. If you want to make it more realistic, you should balance the (incorrectly) increased spin time with (incorrectly) reduced reload time.

[Windrider]

@TYTY135 - Slingers and similar ranged units are pretty deadly right now so be careful with them. Maybe I was just a noob back then but I have really bad memories of battles in which I lost many high level units because the enemy slingers kept kiting me back. I can't remember if I was heavily outnumbered or if I wasn't always moving in formation but, still, those guys are deadly. Considering this time period and area, it's fine if slingers are overall better than archers in VC.

About your test against some archers, if I got it right, you were the only target. If you put the same 20 archers against 40 warriors with shields, at a distance that replicates what could happen in a battle, you'll see that the damage dealt is minimal. I'm not saying that the archers should win that fight, mind me ;)


@Tuidjy - So are you ok with bowmen being improved a little and slingers and crossbowmen stay more or less as they are now? It isn't historically correct but it maintains more or less the same balance of VC.

I mean, we could push it a little further and say that slings should be removed from farmers and such but... I don't know.

[Hooded Horse]

Originally posted by Tuidjy:

f you want to rebalance ranged weapon for historical accuracy, you will not end up with crossbows and slings on top of bows. Crossbows should be an uneffective weapon for unskilled users,

I basically agree, but as a practical matter I prefer to go in smaller steps, collect feedback and playtest, and then take the next step if warranted.

Crossbows changed from piercing to cutting in 5.0 is a fairly big step, meant to reflect that these pictish crossbows aren't the armor piercing wonders people think of. A damage reduction is indeed possible as the next step.

The reason I am taking this conservatively, is that unit balance is a concern as well. Pictish crossbow using units are high tier, expensive, and have opportunity cost vs not training the other branches of the tree.

Basically, piercing to cutting helped realism and unit balance, but while heavily nerfing damage would help realism it might throw off balance, so I want to collect some feedback on the first step and think about how those balance issues could be handled.

If you want to ballpark what you think a sensible base damage for crossbows might be, I'll give your suggestion some testing when I prepare for 6.0. For context, the high level pictish units have 200 crossbow skill, so +15% damage, and crossbows are 56-60 base damage with ammo.

Originally posted by Tuidjy:

slings should be only effective at the highest tiers.

We moved a bit towards that--the military slings used by experienced slingers were overall buffed, the normal slings took some slight reductions in effectivness.

One thing is--the mod is committed to 100% save compatibility with vanila. So I can't change unit stats, sadly, just equipment stats and the equipment units get.

Originally posted by Tuidjy:

Also running dry is absolutely historical. It was a huge limiting factor, and only the most organized armies really had a handle on it.

I would love a mod that made ammo usage persistent between battles, to reflect those logistical issues. But warband ammo is much more simplistic. Sort of like how players can hurl their cavalry at enemy lines, content that expensive horses will be resurrected for free after every battle. ;)

With sling lead, we are talking about the mid tier veteran skirmishers of three factions that have their strength in skirmishing lines-- Irish, Picts, and Britons.

All 3 units have javilins in their unit selection, and they will very often have- sling, 1 pouch of bullets, javilins, hatchet.

The problem is how unit AI works in warband--once they run out of sling bullets, they are going to charge, be slightly delayed by throwing a few javilins, and then crash into the enemy infantry lines.

20 ammo for the slings meant this was happening in about half the time any other ranged unit ran out, often meaning it was substantially too early and during the thick of engagement.

So the difference in 20 vs 40 sling lead ammo is basically the difference between them playing the skirmisher for most battles, or a veteran unit crashing itself suicidially into a shieldwall.

If they draw 2 pouches of sling lead, then the difference between 40 and 80 ammo is basically nothing, most battles won't find that a limiting factor (unless player is engaging in tactics like the circling horse before the mounted player solo slaughters everyone, which the increase in plain sling rock ammo might help a bit against without hurting realism since rocks are easy to find). In a sense it is weird they had so much lead in their pockets, but it generally won't show this to the player anyway, so it is a weirdness that matters less.

So in the specific context of warband AI and mechanics, doubling the sling lead ammo made sense.

Ultimately, those considerations are just as much a part of realism as the question of how expensive lead was, because the issue isn't realism in the abstract, but realism in the context of the warband engine, and the kinds of crazy unrealistic things the AI is going to do if you don't carefully herd it.

Originally posted by Tuidjy:

You said it yourself - you do not change animation and spinning time. The net result of your change is that aimed shots with high draw longbows are significantly faster than aimed shots with slings.

No, it doesn't work that way, though I see how you got that idea.

The spinning animation is actually the targeting cross narrowing time. Essentially, as silly as that is, that is the aiming time.

Meanwhile, archer units have such low powerdraw skills in VC that they take MUCH longer for their targeting cross to narrow. It is only by slings taking forever to load in animation that they keep up.

Originally posted by Tuidjy:

If you want to make it more realistic, you should balance the (incorrectly) increased spin time with (incorrectly) reduced reload time.

I think some tests might help us discuss this. I tested these changes initially, and I did some new tests just 10 minutes ago to confirm this for you.

With the new Balance Mod 5.0 item stats, and a test character with 110 WP in both slings and bows (hilariously, typical of most archer units in VC), and powerdraw 4 (where units max out in VC):

Time to run through full reload, narrow the targeting cross to min, and fire:

Military Sling: about 3 seconds

Longbow: just short of 3 seconds (probably around 2.8 seconds)

Featured Longbow (the most elite bow, which is lower speed): about 3 seconds

Interestingly, this breaks down like this--bows take about a second to notch an arrow, and 2 seconds to aim, slings take about 2 seconds to load, and only a second to aim (the aiming time animation wise is a silly spinning thing, but it is aiming)

Also note the sling is lightning fast if loaded (it is like a crossbow, always stores a bulet)

I'm open to considering making all of this somewhat slower if you think it advised. What I did was basically take the average of Vanilla VC speeds between bows and slings, and sped up bows and slowed down slings to get them closer to this. I can slow them both down to the vanilla VC bow levels instead of bringing them to an average.

Hmm, if it matters I think the times should be based on firing into formation times, rather than trying to bullseye a target, since that is mostly what they will be doing.

The downside of a possible change to instead slowing everything down to vanilla VC bow speeds is that slinger units will get a major nerf. Maybe that is ok in the end, but it will require some thinking and playtesting--basically I want to make sure both realism and balance are both improving, not one at the expense of the other.

[Hooded Horse]

Originally posted by Windrider:

@TYTY135 - Slingers and similar ranged units are pretty deadly right now so be careful with them.

So far basic peasant slingers have recieved a slight overall nerf, and veteran slingers have recieved a slight overall buff. Not much of a change in their overall power really. :)

Originally posted by Windrider:

About your test against some archers, if I got it right, you were the only target. If you put the same 20 archers against 40 warriors with shields, at a distance that replicates what could happen in a battle, you'll see that the damage dealt is minimal.

Oh sure, but they should be entirely ineffective against that. 2 to 1 odds and their enemies are warriors with shields? Not just not win--they should be slaughtered without doing much of anything.

At any rate, with the +6 damage, instead of them doing an average of 10 damage to my mail shirt +46 armor guy, they will do around an average of 15, kiling him a couple of hits quicker. Should be a good improvement while not changing the essential dynamic.


Thanks Tuidjy and Windrider for this discussion--I need to log off for the day, but will check back late tonight or tomorrow. I appreciate all the ideas and feedback!

[Tuidjy]

TYTY135, I think that what really got me going is that I tested your mod with an existing character, who was already a powerful archer, and the featured longbow felt like an SKS in his hands - quick firing and pinpoint accurate.

Have you considered improving the Power Draw of elite archers, to give yourself more room for fine tuning ranged unit balance? This way you will be able to keep bows relevant for troops without turning overpowered for players and possibly companions.