Improved Bowman, make it a choice and not just unit that needs to be upgraded to be useful

i have never seen anyone use Improved Bowman. It stats are low considering it’s a gold unit.

Civilizations like roman can only get Improved Bowman and not Composite Bowman. I would like to see Improved Bowman as an option to go for, but the low damage it has isn’t good enough for your gold. Just by increasing the damage from 4 to 5 would make it viable unit whilst still keeping clear disadvantages.

At least they have Improved Bowman, last game i played i tried to make some with Greek. And at my surprise they don’t even have that !

Hmpf i forgot pretty much of the tree of every civ xD

PS : I agree it feels weak when you compare 1 to 1, but let’s not forget that we use almost everytime more than one of the same unit. And the power increase seems ok, though maybe not cost efficient ? but it’s still something you should consider doing, maybe not as primary unit but it can back up other unit.

I very much agree. I generally advocate for keeping the gameplay as close to vanilla as possible, but I’m very much in favor of balance changes, not only to make civs balanced, but to improve unit diversity in games. For Improved Bowman I think the game would be more interesting if it was strong enough to become the de facto bronze age archer and that Composite upgrade was pushed to Iron Age.

I agree. Historically, the composite bow was the most powerful weapon a foot soldier could wield. Both the Assyrians and the Babylonians were famous for their powerful sharpshooters, but Assyria can’t even have improved archer in AOE1 currently.

Besides this, though, I feel the improved archer needs a buff to justify the cost. I would suggest making them more like snipers with longer range to contrast the horse archers which have higher damage. Most ranged kills go to the siege engines in the larger battles which seems unbalanced to me.

I’d say 7 range for improved archer and 8 range for composite, other stats the same

Composite bowmen are already one of the most powerful units in bronze age and don’t need to be buffed. And improved bowmen can be very useful when used together with other units. Improved bowmen are not supposed to be a powerful unit that can singlehandedly destroy the enemy army. They are a support unit that should be used together with infantry to make the infantry less vulnerable to archers.

But if you really want to make improved bowmen useful, the best option would be to move the composite bowman to the iron age. That is unlikely to happen though, as that would be quite a big change to game balance.

@qweytr24 said:
Composite bowmen are already one of the most powerful units in bronze age and don’t need to be buffed. And improved bowmen can be very useful when used together with other units. Improved bowmen are not supposed to be a powerful unit that can singlehandedly destroy the enemy army. They are a support unit that should be used together with infantry to make the infantry less vulnerable to archers.

But if you really want to make improved bowmen useful, the best option would be to move the composite bowman to the iron age. That is unlikely to happen though, as that would be quite a big change to game balance.

Agreed. If we want to see more Improved bowman use then Composite upgrade should be pushed to Iron. People are gonna upgrade to Compies anyway when it is available, so no matter how good you make the Improved bowman it will not be used much if Composite upgrade is available from the same age.

@qweytr24 said:
Composite bowmen are already one of the most powerful units in bronze age and don’t need to be buffed.

Chariot archers have almost twice the hit points, way faster with better range than improved bowmen and the same attack. They only cost a little bit more and require wood and food rather than food and gold. Pushing the upgrade to composite until Iron would be a good start, but we should think about making improved archers a better buy.

@kinzo said:
At least they have Improved Bowman, last game i played i tried to make some with Greek. And at my surprise they don’t even have that !

Hmpf i forgot pretty much of the tree of every civ xD

PS : I agree it feels weak when you compare 1 to 1, but let’s not forget that we use almost everytime more than one of the same unit. And the power increase seems ok, though maybe not cost efficient ? but it’s still something you should consider doing, maybe not as primary unit but it can back up other unit.

All civs that can get only improved bowman won’t get alchemy (iron age tech. +1 damage to all ranged units). Makes the Greek bowman better than Roman improved bowman in iron age.

i tried to use them as back up unit, but the low range and low mobility means that as soon as i’m able to hit someone i’m almost sure dedicated to fight against them. The 4 damage just isn’t enough damage to any bronze age unit. I might as well use the bowman because of how much earlier i can get it. Even slinger is a good alternative if you really need a ranged unit.
4 damage is not enough to be the main damage dealer of a fight, if you need the ranged unit to pick out enemies like priest you can use units that scale better to late game. Catapults and slingers are much better option.

@qweytr24 said:
Composite bowmen are already one of the most powerful units in bronze age and don’t need to be buffed. And improved bowmen can be very useful when used together with other units. Improved bowmen are not supposed to be a powerful unit that can singlehandedly destroy the enemy army. They are a support unit that should be used together with infantry to make the infantry less vulnerable to archers.

But if you really want to make improved bowmen useful, the best option would be to move the composite bowman to the iron age. That is unlikely to happen though, as that would be quite a big change to game balance.

The low mobility, and health ensures that they can be easily flanked and destroyed if there is no one to protect them.

Moving the Composite bowman to iron age wouldn’t work because in iron age you have multiple ways to counter composite bowmen’s. They are strong on bronze age only because stone throwers have only 10 range. (catapults with engineering have 14) and melee units can only get one pierce armor. In iron age melees get 3 pierce armor making them extremely durable against low damage archers.

@Lithen777 said:

@qweytr24 said:
Composite bowmen are already one of the most powerful units in bronze age and don’t need to be buffed.

Chariot archers have almost twice the hit points, way faster with better range than improved bowmen and the same attack. They only cost a little bit more and require wood and food rather than food and gold. Pushing the upgrade to composite until Iron would be a good start, but we should think about making improved archers a better buy.

Actually chariot archers are almost twice as expensive as improved bowmen and two improved bowmen win against one CA making them about equivalent in cost effectiveness. Of course CAs have the speed advantage making them better, but it’s not like improved bowmen are completely useless against them.

If composite bowmen were to be moved to iron, I think improved bowmen should get +1 attack and +5 HP and composite bowmen should get +2 attack and +10 HP

@GepardenKalle said:
I very much agree. I generally advocate for keeping the gameplay as close to vanilla as possible, but I’m very much in favor of balance changes, not only to make civs balanced, but to improve unit diversity in games. For Improved Bowman I think the game would be more interesting if it was strong enough to become the de facto bronze age archer and that Composite upgrade was pushed to Iron Age.

Composite Bowman at late in iron age even with some buff would still be weak to both catapults and Ballistas.
Sure with units already created you could fight before post iron age game stage. Making them maybe stronger than they already are? Considering that it is late bronze age when you get them in use on current AOE.
For sure the change would mean that the composite bowman and improved bowman would be top tier units much longer than they currently are.

@qweytr24 said:
Composite bowmen are already one of the most powerful units in bronze age and don’t need to be buffed. And improved bowmen can be very useful when used together with other units. Improved bowmen are not supposed to be a powerful unit that can singlehandedly destroy the enemy army. They are a support unit that should be used together with infantry to make the infantry less vulnerable to archers.

leaving the range to 6 would make them vulnerable against stone throwers. Having max 8 range rather than 9 makes it very hard to shot and escape from stone throwers. This is the hugest difference between Improved bowman and composite bowman.
If the overall fighting power is too high then health could be reduced to 35.

@pate623 said:
leaving the range to 6 would make them vulnerable against stone throwers. Having max 8 range rather than 9 makes it very hard to shot and escape from stone throwers. This is the hugest difference between Improved bowman and composite bowman.
If the overall fighting power is too high then health could be reduced to 35.

Stone throwers are supposed to be the hard counter to foot archers. If your opponent makes catapults, you should not make archers, you should be making cavalry instead.

@qweytr24 said:

@pate623 said:
leaving the range to 6 would make them vulnerable against stone throwers. Having max 8 range rather than 9 makes it very hard to shot and escape from stone throwers. This is the hugest difference between Improved bowman and composite bowman.
If the overall fighting power is too high then health could be reduced to 35.

Stone throwers are supposed to be the hard counter to foot archers. If your opponent makes catapults, you should not make archers, you should be making cavalry instead.

with composite bowmen you can easily shoot the stone thrower whilst dodging it projectiles, but against catapult/heavy catapults it’s much harder/impossible due to much longer range and increased splash damage.
I wouldn’t count Stone thrower as composite bowman’s counter (catapult is their counter), but it does excel against shorter range foot units.
If you have huge amount of stone throwers yeah then they would be good against Composite bowmen, but most likely you do not have enough of them at bronze age.

@pate623 said:

@qweytr24 said:

@pate623 said:
leaving the range to 6 would make them vulnerable against stone throwers. Having max 8 range rather than 9 makes it very hard to shot and escape from stone throwers. This is the hugest difference between Improved bowman and composite bowman.
If the overall fighting power is too high then health could be reduced to 35.

Stone throwers are supposed to be the hard counter to foot archers. If your opponent makes catapults, you should not make archers, you should be making cavalry instead.

with composite bowmen you can easily shoot the stone thrower whilst dodging it projectiles, but against catapult/heavy catapults it’s much harder/impossible due to much longer range and increased splash damage.
I wouldn’t count Stone thrower as composite bowman’s counter (catapult is their counter), but it does excel against shorter range foot units.
If you have huge amount of stone throwers yeah then they would be good against Composite bowmen, but most likely you do not have enough of them at bronze age.

It’s true that stone throwers are not very effective in small numbers, but even with a couple STs dodging all the stones would require so much micro you’d have to neglect all you eco for doing it. With any more it becomes simply unfeasible. But either way, making archers stronger against STs is not the correct answer to that. If anything, they should be weaker at dealing with siege.

I think the best solution is to make imroved bowmen directly available in the bronze age. Just like the short swordsman now in the Upatch. This way, it can be used as a rush unit in early bronze as you can make them before you can make Chariot archers. Then to compensate, the upgrade to Composite bowmen should be the cost of the current improved bow upgrade+compsite upgrade, and also the research time should be increased considerably.

@BlazingGaming13 said:
I think the best solution is to make imroved bowmen directly available in the bronze age. Just like the short swordsman now in the Upatch. This way, it can be used as a rush unit in early bronze as you can make them before you can make Chariot archers. Then to compensate, the upgrade to Composite bowmen should be the cost of the current improved bow upgrade+compsite upgrade, and also the research time should be increased considerably.

In total this would make the Composite rush much faster. I don’t think it is a good thing.
And it wouldn’t solve the problem of Improved bowmen never being used. if you don’t have Composite bowman upgrade then you don’t create any improved bowmen. if you have the upgrade then you wait for it because of how much better it is.

@pate623 said:

@BlazingGaming13 said:
I think the best solution is to make imroved bowmen directly available in the bronze age. Just like the short swordsman now in the Upatch. This way, it can be used as a rush unit in early bronze as you can make them before you can make Chariot archers. Then to compensate, the upgrade to Composite bowmen should be the cost of the current improved bow upgrade+compsite upgrade, and also the research time should be increased considerably.

In total this would make the Composite rush much faster. I don’t think it is a good thing.
And it wouldn’t solve the problem of Improved bowmen never being used. if you don’t have Composite bowman upgrade then you don’t create any improved bowmen. if you have the upgrade then you wait for it because of how much better it is.

No, because you simply increase the upgrade time of the composite bowmen and increase the upgrade cost as well, so it does not make a Composite rush any faster. But making improved bow available right from the start makes it useful as an early bow rush in the bronze age, or for instance useful for civs that don’t get compies such as Roman, they can then use improved bowmen to support their swordsmen/cavalry. Otherwise I don’t see any way that the improved bowman could be useful.

@BlazingGaming13 said:

@pate623 said:

@BlazingGaming13 said:
I think the best solution is to make imroved bowmen directly available in the bronze age. Just like the short swordsman now in the Upatch. This way, it can be used as a rush unit in early bronze as you can make them before you can make Chariot archers. Then to compensate, the upgrade to Composite bowmen should be the cost of the current improved bow upgrade+compsite upgrade, and also the research time should be increased considerably.

In total this would make the Composite rush much faster. I don’t think it is a good thing.
And it wouldn’t solve the problem of Improved bowmen never being used. if you don’t have Composite bowman upgrade then you don’t create any improved bowmen. if you have the upgrade then you wait for it because of how much better it is.

No, because you simply increase the upgrade time of the composite bowmen and increase the upgrade cost as well, so it does not make a Composite rush any faster. But making improved bow available right from the start makes it useful as an early bow rush in the bronze age, or for instance useful for civs that don’t get compies such as Roman, they can then use improved bowmen to support their swordsmen/cavalry. Otherwise I don’t see any way that the improved bowman could be useful.

Does not mater even if the upgrade time is 4 min.
It only takes on archery range to make the upgrade and in the meanwhile all other archery ranges will create improved bowmen to get enough units. As soon as the upgrade is finished you have an small army of composite bowmen.

Right now you need to wait the improved bowman upgrade to get any troops out.

@pate623 said:

@BlazingGaming13 said:

@pate623 said:

@BlazingGaming13 said:
I think the best solution is to make imroved bowmen directly available in the bronze age. Just like the short swordsman now in the Upatch. This way, it can be used as a rush unit in early bronze as you can make them before you can make Chariot archers. Then to compensate, the upgrade to Composite bowmen should be the cost of the current improved bow upgrade+compsite upgrade, and also the research time should be increased considerably.

In total this would make the Composite rush much faster. I don’t think it is a good thing.
And it wouldn’t solve the problem of Improved bowmen never being used. if you don’t have Composite bowman upgrade then you don’t create any improved bowmen. if you have the upgrade then you wait for it because of how much better it is.

No, because you simply increase the upgrade time of the composite bowmen and increase the upgrade cost as well, so it does not make a Composite rush any faster. But making improved bow available right from the start makes it useful as an early bow rush in the bronze age, or for instance useful for civs that don’t get compies such as Roman, they can then use improved bowmen to support their swordsmen/cavalry. Otherwise I don’t see any way that the improved bowman could be useful.

Does not mater even if the upgrade time is 4 min.
It only takes on archery range to make the upgrade and in the meanwhile all other archery ranges will create improved bowmen to get enough units. As soon as the upgrade is finished you have an small army of composite bowmen.

Right now you need to wait the improved bowman upgrade to get any troops out.

That is true, but other than this, I don’t see any way to make composite bowmen useful, without breaking the game. So I guess we may conclude that it is best if improved bowman remain unused :P.

@BlazingGaming13 said:
That is true, but other than this, I don’t see any way to make composite bowmen useful, without breaking the game. So I guess we may conclude that it is best if improved bowman remain unused :P.

Well, there are two alternatives here:

  • Make the Improved Bowman strong enough to be the main Bronze Age archer, and push the Composite upgrade to Iron Age. The argument being; why have all upgrades for a unit line in the same age?

  • Make the Improved Bowman stronger and make the Composite upgrade significantly more expensive - but keep it in Bronze. Essentialy making the choice of producing more archers or upgrading them an interesting one (because currently it isn’t).