Longbows crush rifles

[hewhoknowsall]

A huge amount of suspension of disbelief is needed for Civilization 5. The idea of archers shooting across mountains and longbowmen outranging modern artillery is unrealistic and the latter is bad for gameplay.

An archer shooting that far is understanding gameplay-wise due to the 1UPT rule (which is also unrealistic, but understandable).

Things get a little rusty when archers can outrange modern infantry and modern armor. FYI a modern tank cannon has an effective range of about a mile. A longbow has an effective range of about 200 yards. 1 mile = 1760 yards. A tank cannon's effective combat range = about 1760 yards. Yet an archer outranges it in Civilization 5.

How is this bad for gameplay, you may ask? In addition to requiring a huge amount of suspension of disbelief, an archer unit can, if protected by a mountain, eventually take out an infantry unit.

Longbowmen having a range of 3 tiles is bad for both realism and gameplay. Realistically the idea of a longbowman outranging modern artillery is beyond ridiculous. For gameplay, longbowmen can outrange siege units, fire at artillery from a distance, take out riflemen, take out naval units and other unbalanced acts.

 

[slowjames]

Oooo, imagine if we could spread DISEASE to conquer our enemies! That's just twisted enough to make for a REALLY interesting game...

http://www.addictinggames.com/pandemic2.html

Don't say I never did anything for you.

 

[anti_strunt]

There is a perfectly good way to make Longbows a powerful unique unit without giving them range equivalent to a Battleship; give them a huge defensive bonus against mounted units to represent their stakes (+100%, like Pikemen only they can't initiate close combat). That'd make them immune to mounted flank attacks, which is what usually kills archers in my games.

 

[ashmizen]

Totally agree with above - longbows were famous historically for destroying French knights, they should get something like +100% defense against calvery and melee units.

The net effect is that a bunch of longbowmen will still destroy an army of knights and swordsmen, but be far less effective against enemy archers or high tech units like riflemen (which are neither calvary or melee).

 

[Popish Frenzy]

Now obviously people have different tastes. Unfortunately, having a too high demand for immersion can lead to disappointment: some of the current criticism of ciV seems to stem directly from this, as some of the streamlining efforts (no religions etc.) appear to strike people as a reduction of immersive detail for the sake of "gameplay".

Leaving potential strawmen aside (I hope I didn't come across as too arrogant before) is it really wrong to ask people in such a position to accept the game as it is, for what it is, rather than what they might want it to be? (Which is the point of mods, after all. If it's really bothersome Longbowmen can be nerfed in a few seconds...)

Not to worry, I didnt think you were being arrogant. I agree fans which place high demands on realism should probably not expect a mainstream game like civ to cater to them out of the box. Moding and slightly nicher games like EU are their best hope. But even so I dont think they shouldn't be vocal about what game they want civ to be. I mean Firaxis use forums like this to know in which direction their 'core' fans want them to take future expansions and titles and you can never know how many people agree with you until you make a rant thread and get shouted down

http://www.addictinggames.com/pandemic2.html

Don't say I never did anything for you.

Damn your eyes! How do i make a virus with low visibility, low lethality and high infectivity! Those bloody aussies are always closing their border on me

There is a perfectly good way to make Longbows a powerful unique unit without giving them range equivalent to a Battleship; give them a huge defensive bonus against mounted units to represent their stakes (+100%, like Pikemen only they can't initiate close combat). That'd make them immune to mounted flank attacks, which is what usually kills archers in my games.

Not a bad idea at all..though i would suggest that the bonus should only apply against knights and lower cav..you know for realism..

 

[ashmizen]

Why. Why would longbowmen not shoot up Lancers (basically knights without armor) or even Calvary?

I mean, Calvary units are wearing buttoned shirts, is that going to offer more protection against arrows?

If there was a battle between longbowmen and a bunch of American Calvary with their blue shirts and rifles, my money would be on the longbowmen. Arrows are super effective against big, fat, naked horses. Sure, those rifles would do lots of damage as well.

With +100% against Calvary, longbowmen would still lose to Calvary's 25 combat strength. They would just be able to actually inflict some damage, which I think is very realistic. Just saying...

 

[Quetz]

Longbows being of similar power to early guns I understand. Any bows having longer range than modern riflemen, however, I do not.

 

[digitalcraft]

The issue here is they're trying to combine a tactical combat game with a civilization game. Having archers have ranged attacks and melee units not makes for great tactical battles. But then half way through the tech tree they decide to ignore that and make ranged units melee units instead. There's a reason that basically all modern combat units are ranged units today, they're just at such an advantage.

They should have either stuck with having all ranged units being ranged, and just ignored that a 'battlefield' is a continent wide, or made all units that aren't flying have a range of 1.

 

[Popish Frenzy]

Why. Why would longbowmen not shoot up Lancers (basically knights without armor) or even Calvary?

I mean, Calvary units are wearing buttoned shirts, is that going to offer more protection against arrows?

If there was a battle between longbowmen and a bunch of American Calvary with their blue shirts and rifles, my money would be on the longbowmen. Arrows are super effective against big, fat, naked horses. Sure, those rifles would do lots of damage as well.

With +100% against Calvary, longbowmen would still lose to Calvary's 25 combat strength. They would just be able to actually inflict some damage, which I think is very realistic. Just saying...

Actually hadnt looked at the lancer's picture properly, had assumed they represented renaissance cavalry like the Gendarme whose armour was pretty much immune to longbow fire. But in any case wasnt thinking clearly since anti_strunt was actually talking about the stakes longbowmen planted in the ground which would mess up any kind of cavalry no matter how well armored. You have a good point about cavalry being pretty vulnerable to arrow fire, though i'm guessing the extra speed they had over armored knights would compensate for that a little. Even so, cluster-fail on my part

 

[Venger]

Gentlemen, I introduce to you the problem... of one unit per hex.

Ideally, a combined arms force should have a ranged component that can engage and damage a unit without risk of melee injury. Having a simply stack policy, say 4 max, allows a single hex ranged arched unit to support infantry without getting the results of longbowmen shooting from the town square to the edge of town. Frankly, all ranged units ought to be one hex range only until the invention of artillery and modern ship gunnery. The units seem to have RTS capabilities in a TBS game.

 

[dorn]

They probably should of had the hexes get bigger as the game went on to combat this I think.

To be fair though English longbowmen were a bit of a different breed. They started getting trained young to the point that their bodies deformed for the specific task of pulling longbows that even the strongest archer today can barely bend.

I don't see how the OP lost though. Sounds like user error more than unit imbalance.

 

[Maniacal]

How the heck do you shoot OVER A MOUNTAIN? or sink a DESTROYER with a non-artillery unit?

 

[digitalcraft]

They have really big arms. I mean have you seen their arms? They're really big!

 

[Panzeh]

The 3-tile range is a huge bonus for any unit, especially with no setup requirement. I think it might improve the game if cannons could move and fire and archers upgraded to cannons, as archers have pretty much taken the role of artillery, not infantry.

 

[The Rev]

One range archers is a good idea, but only if they can move after firing and have 3 moves (being light infantry unencumbered by armor, this would make sense, but you might want to bump up cavalry speeds a bit). So on the offense, you would have the archers in front, with infantry behind. Move the archer adjacent to the enemy with the first move, fire with the second, and withdraw with the third, then use the infantry's moves to get between the enemy and the archers. Or have the archers in the rear, swap places with the infantry, fire, then switch back again. Then you're in a defensive posture with archers in the rear. The enemy might be able to break through the infantry, but would subsequently be mowed down by archer ranged attacks on the next turn. This way archers are skirmishers that actually have to put their neck on the line to be effective, instead of being machine guns that just stand in place and mow down enemies trying to attack. (Of course, this strategy would probably go completely over the head of the AI.) Gunpowder then should have both ranged and melee capabilities, but still only one hex range. And of course, keep longbows at 1 range, but give them some anti cavalry ability so they can stay out front more safely.

 

[Ogrelord]

Maybe those longbows are the Na'vi

 

[CrimsonEdge]

Yes. Yes it is.

So you're saying that smooth bore musket fire, with a long reload time (compared to that of an arrow) will, without fail, beat longbows?

Are you familiar with the balistics of a round ball going through a barrel that does not add spin to said ball?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musket

I mean, yeah, it's wiki, but the information is accurate. Those suckers are not that accurate.

 

[12agnar0k]

The longbowman range of 3 is great just position it on a hill and it will kill anything.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Charge them and abuse honor bonuses to somewhat mitigate the damage. This isn't the only disgustingly strong UU in its era - hell, who here has just rushed simple horsemen? Slap a GG on those suckers from honor and you have "safe attack" on virtually every city for 100+ turns (youcan take a 17 str city state with 2 unpromoted horsemen and a GG)...and the side-by-side nonsense combined with GG will tend to TORCH even spears. Quite silly given the mobility.

Longbows don't last them forever. You don't HAVE to hit them in that era, you can easily cut England down before or after. If they go on the offensive, this story changes a LOT, too.

 

[GreyIago]

For all the talk of the horsehockey AI there are a lot of people who can't seem to beat a longbow unit.