Archers needing nerf or reg horseman needing buff

After watching the Genesis tournament, I think archers are too much of a mainstay. Most aggressive play was made with amassing archers in Feudal Age while waiting to support them with Men of Arms, Knights, and Siege in Castle Age. Meanwhile the horseman, the supposed counter to archers, were rarely on the battlefield, and I think the issue is the archer is the fastest, cheapest, and safest unit to produce while the horseman cost is too high. This is also probably due to the fact springalds also being very strong themselves and covers the archer counters. I think a small balancing of light horseman being 20 food less to be more producible as well as springalds having 20 less base damage and 20 more siege damage would be sufficient (keep siege damage the same but decrease damage against units).

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Hey there, welcome to the forum.

Watched Genesis now, I agree. Horsemen are close to useless both at raiding and also as archer counter.

You only see heavily armored Knights raiding vils, rarely Horseman raiding, which is very bizarre and ahistorical.

In actual gameplay, archers mostly clean horsemen, the opposite of official Counter Guide (a sign sth is wrong… :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:).

My conclusion: They need +1 pierce armor (perhaps even+2), and a shorter (faster) attack animation to chase+attack better.

Springalds could use a minor rebalancing too.

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It did seem like good archer micro was devastating to horses. Since they have 100% accuracy now and horses can’t dodge need some buffs for sure.

horses should keep up with retreating units. its silly a horse has to stop for the rider to take a swing, and then catch up again and is not that much faster itself. A charging horse is a fearsome force.

Or maybe units in retreat with their backs to the enemy should take extra damage.

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I have been saying this since the beta. Horseman need a buff and archers a massive nerf.

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Yea I didn’t take into account the fact horseman have to stop every single attack causing them to suffer damage numbers against simple infantry retreating. Maybe they could change it so light horseman can attack while moving similar to the Mongol Mangudai?

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I think they should nerf archer accuracy to 50%, but every upgrade buffs this as well, so early archers suffer against horsemen but elite archery don’t lose against elite spearmen

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Archers don’t need a nerf. Otherwise noone will use them. They are very weak in close combat.

Horseman may need a buff.

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I think by degree its the problem of range in general (see Springalds). Ranged units can always do damage to something - melee units can often find themselves milling around doing nothing except being shot. Every attack has to sort of be all in.

Once you get about 16ish archers, you kill a horseman every 2 volleys (before taking account any upgrades). If you were to attack move 16 archers into 10 horsemen (about the same resources) they’d probably die fairly quickly - but with micro those horsemen are really quite inefficient. Even if you win it can be pyrrhic - you get a handful of horsemen left which aren’t much use for anything further.

Worse still, all you need is a thin crust of spearmen to mess up the horsemen pathing (and generally hurt them badly) which is far easier to do then say taking out those spearmen with say your own archers while said archer deathball is shooting away. In terms of counters I feel 10 horsemen+6 archers should really expect to beat say 5 spearmen and 16 archers - but by and large it doesn’t unless you can somehow sneak the horsemen on top of the archers without the other player noticing.

It starts stepping on the Knight’s toes - but I feel horsemen should do more damage to ranged infantry, artillery and villagers. Or just be a lot faster - rather than 1.88 they are movement 2.2 or something, so they can really get a round the map, exploit isolated units and gaps - and jump on archers. Its difficult to say really - because you don’t want the situation where say 5 horsemen=you can’t make archers. But I don’t think its working at the moment.

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I agree that riders need BUFF, just like spearmen. These two units are hardly used in the middle and late game. I agree that the golden unit should be the backbone of the army, but I also hope that there will be expensive upgrades, so that the rider and spearmen will have a certain demand in the later stage; it may be good to increase the damage of the rider to the remote unit and the siege unit. Otherwise, the current siege unit is too powerful, because the heavy ballista is too powerful and can accurately hit any unit. Hope that developers can find the right balance. (For example: Siege units are only effective against slow heavy armored units, but have lower damage to sensitive light armored units?)

This. Precisely.

No, what they need is more defenses vs archers, be it armor or the ability to dodge arrows. the damage is ok. the problem is they can’t survive long enough to reach the archers.

+1 ranged armour for horsemen sounds like a good place to start.

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I would love it if horsemen could attack while moving. It would be like they were Mangudai with 0 range. This would help them against archers and siege, make them good at raiding eco, and make them capable of chasing down fleeing enemies. Maybe their attack would have to be reduced a little in this case.

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