8 reasons why the Archer-line is flat out BROKEN

8 REASONS WHY THE ARCHERS LINE IS NOT FLAT OUT BROKEN

Being able to micro is a skill. Being good at the game should be rewarded and since when having zero lag should be a problem

This is a problem ofc, but since the last patch things seems to go better and IT’S NOT AN ARCHER LIJE RELATED PROBLEM

That’s because some of them lacks good cavalry and they need a good power spike. Many of them switch after using that power spike (eg: celts switch to mango defense/pike defense and try to boom)

UU requires a castle, which is a huge investment in early castle age because you cripple your eco. Also, you also seem to always miss the point about UU: THEY ARE NOT ALWAYS SUPPOSED TO BE THE MAIN CORE OF YOUR ARMY

That is just a bullshit plain and simple. While you can try to outmicro one or two mangonels, an average player cannot do that reliably. Even at pro level most of them will retreat against 2 or 3 mangos: learn how to uso attack ground and counter the split instead of complaining. Micro should always be rewarded, and furthermore against mangos one single mistake can cost you the game.
The only time when you could try to outmicro skirms with archer is when they are missing fletching and/or armor in feudal. You can try to outmicro skirms with upgrades, but even players like Lieerey would do it without a specific reason or with a huge numbers advantage. Skirmisher do wonders against the archers line, who stand a chance against them with micro AND tech advantage, as it should be

Once again, stacking is a form of micro that can backfire in a devastating way if you don’t know how and when to use it. If you don’t scout an inconing mangonel you could lose all your army to a single shot. If you are playing against someone stacking retreat and try to outmanouver them, it’s how a rts game works.

IT’S NOT THEIR F’IN ROLE PARTHNAN. They are supposed to be a good opener (drus/m@a opening), a counter to eagles and a late game low intensive gold unit that can destroy trash. They are not designed to be as strong and as mobile as kts and they don’t have the range advantage like xbow, castle age is simply not the moment where they shine. Learn how the game works instead of complaining that something is unused just for the sake of it

They do not cover the same role. HC are supposed to be something you get if you don’t have arbs or if you have to counter infantry. No, if you defend them properly and you micro them the arbs don’t do better against infantry, that is once again something you imagined in your mind. See the thread where a pro player explained why that’s not the case.

THE RESULT:
The archer line is not broken, you are yelling nonsense as usual

Notice any pattern?
I don’t even want to write every time you missed an opening or a unit actually used by those civs, I’ll just say you skip any drush, m@a, scout and tower opening ignoring any possible monk, pike + siege, ca and cavalry push made by those civs.

Seriously, I’m starting to think that either:

  1. You don’t even play the game
  2. You are a really low elo player that thinks he is a missed pro or something

Just a personal note to end this: stop trying to push your mostly wrong opinions as the truth. You are not doing yourself any favour. And finally, learn how to behave: you would not receive so many bad answers if not for your attitude.

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I’m sorry but What misbehavior did I do here? Please enlighten me?
All I have done is opened a topic, made a statement and presented arguments that support it

My arguments may be right , they may be wrong
And I have been totally honest with all of you and I really do believe that Crossbows are borderline OP

But what have I even done to you here, and others some of who have criticized my person before and routinely go as far to do outright personal attacks?

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Dude, read how you write and you answer

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Ya, and what?

I have yet to see you admitting that one of your arguments was wrong. So far all you did was sticking to your guns, keep pushing the same speech over and over again, and downplaying every counter argument that was said against what you said.

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i’m still waiting for his evidence that pathfinding isn’t improved.

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do you even play the game? If you did you would know that pathing has not improved at all. I am sorry but this issue is the most consistent issue in the game that has gone unresolved, and anyone asking for a source on this probably doesnt play the game!

Try melee units vs ranged units and see how they are unable to find a path to engage. Try trading and look at how 1 or 2 trade carts will always get stuck stationary at a market. Try hunting deer and see how 2 out of the 4 hunters get stuck in their tracks while on their way to deposit the food. Try mining, foraging, cutting wood and see how villagers often engage in a dance while bumping into each other.

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thats not what I’ve been seeing and not what people have been reporting since the recent patch.

Is it perfectly fixed? No.
Is it much improved? Absolutely it is

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archers are okay in small numbers. arbalests are okay in a high-resource game.

the big problem is crossbowmen

they dumbed down the map pool so aggression isn’t effective enough to prevent people from getting a huge mass of them
there’s nothing you have enough resources for that can really counter that strategy, especially in team games
every single “open” land map involves wings forcing crossbow civs and having allies provide cavalry as backup

it reduces variety of the game by a lot

a map pool full of arabia clones, non-RM maps (arena/BF), and team positions is not a good configuration for playing the game as it was meant to be played

we either need a crossbow nerf or we need to get rid of position-picking/civ-picking so that crossbow spam isn’t what every game is about.
maybe it’s unavoidable that certain civs go for crossbows, but we certainly don’t need to create the conditions to let that happen 100% of the time like it is atm

position-picking seems like something that’s better for tournaments where they can also do complicated things to ban civs and play on better maps and artificially force variety in other ways. for normal matchmaking, there should be a risk of not getting a wing position when you pick a civ that has tons of its power in crossbows (and conversely having camels in middle with india).

what we suffer from isn’t just crossbows being OP (which they are). it’s crossbows being OP combined with forcing civs that make them extra-OP always getting picked and always creating the conditions to mass them

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Again, look at the issues I mentioned, are you saying you are not encountering them anymore? If you are not, then please tell me what magic you did so that I can apply it to my game too. If you are, then how is it much improved?

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Pathing is still garbage.

D- instead of F tier.

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its noticeably improved for me.

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Again you keep stating subjective things like “noticeably improved”, and that “players have been reporting it has improved” without stating what aspect has improved. I stated objectively observable things that happen in every game (deer hunters stuck, trade carts stuck etc.) which only points out that it has not been improved.

Not to keep arguing about this since its pointless, but I would appreciate that people not downplay issues that remain as we need them to be fixed.

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it isn’t happening nearly as often to me in game. does it still happen from time to time? yes. but i’d say i’m seeing it about 30% less.

am i saying that pathing is fixed? not even close. but it is MUCH better then it was, and for a guy who claims he doesn’t want issues to be downplayed, you seem to have NO ISSUE with parthnan blowing them way out proportion like he claims they are.

if archers are as a big of a problem as parthnan claims they are, why don’t winrates reflect that?

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Except for Rams, Melee units do seem to handle terrain much better now, after thye recent patch.

Rams just entangle themselves because they want to move in formation, and go back and forth a lot.

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The collison boxes really are the main issue here…it shouldnt be possible to protect archers like that… having a death ball of xbows is strong enough

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The easiest fix, I think, is to lengthen their training speed by 20%. The biggest problem is their ability to mass in Feudal without any real hamper getting to Castle. This is because you aren’t spending food, of which you need 800 to get there. Any other Feudal rush strat requires food.

Next issue is they chew right through Palisade walls. Not sure what their base damage is now, but it should only be 1 attack vs walls until they get chemistry.

I think those two things would be enough to see some changes in playstyles. Btw, Celts don’t get Arbs :grin:

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Totally agree with you, 9 of 10 games, all of your opponents go for archers then xbows rush, this game became “age of archers”.
I had a post about the problems of the cavalry archers that they are rarely used, even in cavalry archers civs the players go with xbows, so i wrote many posts to fix the cavalry archers problems so at least we can see them able to use once you hit the castle age!!!
This game became totally archers game, all the players keep doing the same thing mostly in every game, you really can’t see the characteristics or the feature of every civ, because they all do the same just go for knights/ xbows…it became so boring

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If you look at the ongoing kotd3, players seem to favor cav over archers civ by quite a large margin. So maybe the most important part about the archer meta is the closed structure of the standard arabia map. Since the upcoming patch will make ara more open the balance between cav and archer civs might be good once again.

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statistics to back up Davymans claim.
most banned civs are Aztecs (18), Mayans (9), Chinese (7), Goths (5), and Vikings/Celts (4)
Most drafted civs are Vikings (25), Franks (24), Khmer (22), Lithuanians (21), Chinese (19), Mayans (18) and Celts (17).
most played civs are Lithuanians (15), Franks (14), Chinese (13), and Vikings (12).
Highest winrate of civs with > 5 games played are Franks (71.43%), Huns (60%), Vikings (58.33%), Chinese (54%, Khmer (53.85%), and Lithuanians (53.33%)

Civs not played - Bulgarians, Portuguese, Malay, Burmese, Persians, Saracens, Turks, Koreans, Magyars, and Tatars