Archery units slaughtering firearms units

This is very bad. My minutemen are being butchered by enemy crossbowman! They need to patch this immediately I think. Archery units can ranged attack firearms units and nearly kill them in one round, at least crossbow/longbow versus musketmen/riflemen. I can understand their ranged attack against units from the same era, but having it be this devastating against gunpowder units that can't shoot back is silly.

They to make ranged attacks from archery units almost completely ineffective against these units.

 

Actually it can happen IRL, there also reporting that knights can kill tanks while jousting lol. They need define soft/hard targets and how much armour it has. This game still need more work to be done. Also need maintence for some units that required Oils, supplies, etcs to keep it operational.

 

Well, think about it this way, in the middle ages, archers' arrows were hitting shields and chainmail, which mitigated their damage.

What can your minutemen do to stop the arrows? Take them in the chest, thats what.

 

Actually, in real life well trained archers were able to match and even beat 18th century line infantry given even numbers and tactics.

Against infantry (aka in this game WW1 to modern day infantry) however, archers would get slaughtered.

 

God, just stop with the excuses people. An archery unit is not going to survive combat with a regimented rifle unit. That's ludicrous and you're making yourselves sound like apologists.

 

^ this.

 

Yes, so silly in fact that the Zulus were able to slaughter the British in Africa in real life in spite of being armed with only swords spears and bows while the British had 19th century era guns.

I would also like to remind you that it wasn't until just recently that soldiers were able to wear any kind of body armor. A 18th century musketeer doesn't have any kind of protective clothing that can prevent a large arrow from skewering him. In addition to that, the range of early firearms were pathetic with many projectiles loosing their speed and falling towards the ground after less then a 100 or so meters.

The difference between early gun powder troops that the traditional long bow archers isn't anywhere near as big as most people assume.

 

Yes, the proud Zulu archer.

Wait.

 

Minutemen aren't riflemen. Muskets aren't rifles.

 

Against early infntry archers had longer range. This is the reason for the slaughter. You have to also keep in mind that the infantry hardly had any armour on them to protect from archers.

So with that range and strength leverage, your early infantry lost to an archer/crossbowman .

What you should do is ensure your infantry is more than 2 tiles away to avoid range attacks. And when you are attacking go for archers first to avoid them slaughtering you.

 

The Zulu did not get their holds on guns until way after their first battle with the British. The first time they fought them, they had no firearms whatsoever and won simply through better tactics. There was even a documentary about it on the history channel a few weeks ago.

 

I purposely don't upgrade my Crossbowmen to Riflemen because they lose their ranged attack. If you keep Crossbowmen on hills, they slaughter incoming Riflemen, especially if you have bonus to attack in your territory, a Great General, and bonus to attack when beside allied units.

 

Because clearly a unit of musketmen charging into an entrenched position of crossbowmen while wearing nicely coloured cloth jackets is going to be a decisive victory in real life...

 

Yes, ranged attack is amazing. I keep my crossbows/chu ko nus as they are and upgrade my knights to cavalry for melee.

As for the real life side, the reason archers and crossbowmen can attack at range while rifles can't is because it's more of an indirect attack rather than a ranged one. If your friend is between you and your target when you're firing a bow, you arc it over him. If you have a rifle in that situation, you either don't fire or you friend is getting shot in the back.

Muskets vs bows is a slaughter if the archer is trained. A trained archer can keep 2 arrows in the air at any given moment (as in he can loose the second shot while the first is still in the air), is more accurate, has longer range, hits just as hard against guys wearing a glorified jacket, and the archers themselves will in all likelihood not be standing shoulder to shoulder so a missed shot hits the guy next to him. Compare to a musket which even the best professional soldiers using comparatively advanced methods from the 1700s (as opposed to when muskets were introduced in the 1400s) could only fire 4 times a minute, couldn't hit anything beyond 100 meters, and would be standing in a formation that honestly is pretty hard to miss. The reason muskets were adopted over bows was that they were easier to use and scared the out of peasants who didn't know better.

 

Archer vs Infantry is just as silly, if not more so then spearmen vs tanks.

At close range at least spearmen could clog the tanks tracks with there corpses, Archers are totally outclassed at long and close range by assault rifles.

The only solution for gameplay though ? Drastically increase the strenght of all units in the Industrial age on onwards.

Also give infantry a long range attack as well as its melee attack

Mortars would be fine, perhaps unlocked with a promotion ?

 

Couldn't they just give gunpowder units a ranged attack? That would solve the Archery units being better than them problem.

 

I think the real fix for the game is not to make industrial units more powerful but rather incrase the per turn maintenace costs of archery units so that while an archer my have a tactical advantage over gunpowder ones the economic advantage of being able to field several gunpowder units for a single archer will tip the scales in favour of the later, as it did historically.

 

@ Hamtard
No, as it would obsolete artillery.

 

They gotta release a ranged gunpowder unit in a patch.

 

Boy then they were really effing stupid to put down their bows and use guns instead if the bows are so much better.

And the British for abandoning their bows and going with guns. Oh and the Japanese who got pwned by guns. And the Native Americans.

The fact is, yeah if a troop is ultra experienced, they may win with clearly inferior technology. That doesn't mean that bows are better than guns does it???

I think it's time you took a step back and looked at exactly what you're defending and asked yourself if it looks rational from an objective viewpoint.