What *should* be the counter to horse archers?

[Iapetus303]

There are a number of aspects of the unit abilities and stone/paper/scissors balance that I find counter-intuative and/or unrealistic, and which I've played around with modding to attempt to "correct".

One of the biggest anomalies, in my view, is that horse archers are treated as just another type of cavalry, which in turn means the best way to attack them is with spearmen. This, IMO, is very unrealistic, as horse-archers (even more than normal cavalry) should be able to escape from spearmen (and shoot them as they do so).

My intention is to make "ranged cavalry" as separate unit class from normal cavalry, and not give spear units any bonus against them.

But that leaves the problem: what should be the anti-horse-archer unit?

The Total War games usually makes it light cavalry (because they are fast enough to catch them, and better at horse archers in melee). But that would mean that a civ without access to horses will have no decent defence against them (with isn't necessarily unrealistic, but is probably bad for game balance).

So what do you think should be the horse-archer counter? Normal archers? (On the grounds that they have longer bows and larger unit sizes, so can out-shoot them?) Or something else?

 

[ls612]

Bad terrain should be their counter. On open plains and flat terrain they beat pretty much anything else before gunpowder.

 

[plasmacannon]

Yea. Some sort of specialized archer unit.
Not a single archer, as the HA does move fast, but a massed group of archers raining 1000 arrows down on a target tile couldn't be avoided, unless using shields over one's head (turtle formation).
Also, early arrows could be blocked by later armor, until armor piercing arrows were developed later. Such as Genghis Khan's arrows vs. Knights in full plate. The technology is separated by hundreds of years, so the more modern unit has had time to find a defense to counter the older one.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Yea. Some sort of specialized archer unit.
Not a single archer, as the HA does move fast, but a massed group of archers raining 1000 arrows down on a target tile couldn't be avoided, unless using shields over one's head (turtle formation).
Also, early arrows could be blocked by later armor, until armor piercing arrows were developed later. Such as Genghis Khan's arrows vs. Knights in full plate. The technology is separated by hundreds of years, so the more modern unit has had time to find a defense to counter the older one.

I've often thought there should be some sort of intermediate archer between the str 2 archer and the str 6 longbow. To reflect the step from 'bunch of guys armed with bows picking targets and firing at will' to the far more dangerous 'volley fire rain of arrows' attributed to the Persians, among others. Their equipment wasn't any better, but as a tactical unit archers became much more effective.

 

[Iapetus303]

Does this seem reasonable:

1) Horse archers get a penalty when attacking/defending "bad terrain" (forests, jungles, possibly hills).

2) An "anti-horse-archer" promotion for archery units (and possibly cavalry as well).

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Does this seem reasonable:

1) Horse archers get a penalty when attacking/defending "bad terrain" (forests, jungles, possibly hills).

2) An "anti-horse-archer" promotion for archery units (and possibly cavalry as well).

They already get the 'no terrain defense bonus', so I'd think just an attacking penalty on the terrain question.

As to the archer promotion I'm probably not a reasonable source because I just think archers should be generally stronger in the field. The garrison promotions are fine, but a company of disciplined archers using 'withdraw turn and fire' tactics would stay ahead of charging melee units long enough to shred them pretty badly unless the melee unit adopted some form of shield wall/cover tactic...and when they did they would never catch the archers.

Make the first strike promotion line stronger and remove the first strike immunity from HAs...that should settle them down, plus make archer units in the field more of an option.

 

[plasmacannon]

Oh btw, I have seen in many mods, that they give the HAs a penalty to City Attack. Usually -50%.
This shows how great they are in the field and how much they should suck when slamming into a city wall.

FFH2 also did this to scouts (-20%) and their Ranger upgrade. This gives them the option to attack a lion, instead of just waiting for it to run into them.

 

[ChaosSlayer]

realistically/historically: horse archers were mobile, but they had 2 penalties: since they shoot from horseback they suffered accuracy penalty, and their bows were relatively small, hence shorter ranger and smaller penetration power. Foot archers with longbows on other hand can have triple the range and massive penetration power.
So realistically, horse archers should not be classified as cavalry, and regular archers should be good defense vs them.

 

[The Capo]

In my mod the Horse-archer was changed to simply "Horseman" to avoid this issue. So I think if you wanted to have a Horsearcher I would simply make them a new unitclass.

 

[cinattra]

realistically/historically: horse archers were mobile, but they had 2 penalties: since they shoot from horseback they suffered accuracy penalty, and their bows were relatively small, hence shorter ranger and smaller penetration power. Foot archers with longbows on other hand can have triple the range and massive penetration power.
So realistically, horse archers should not be classified as cavalry, and regular archers should be good defense vs them.

So what you are saying is that horse archers should do less damage? Cool... I like it.

 

[euskingc]

I'm planning to do some rebalancing to cavalry in general for my mod...
Cavalry will get a huge hit in rough terrain and even vs cities... in total war they don't charge in and make the streets run with blood until the infantry have done the dirty work (e.g. assaulting the walls). I'm intending that if the terrain is rough (forested, rocky, etc), don't bother.
As far as HA counter... in total war barbarian invasion, my tactics vs horse archers were always the same: find a good defensible position (river, city wall, fort, hilltop), sit heavily armoured troops in front that can slough off arrows like rain drops, set your bowmen to loose formation in behind, and shoot them with better quality archers. Light cavalry works, but then that's less medium to heavy cavalry (granted they can 'trap' HA on occasion if theyre coming from different directions) you can use, like sarmatian auxilia... the real killers of the late roman army.

Medium horse archers also make a decent counter to light horse archers, but foot archers do the job faster.

In addition to penalizing cavalry in rough terrain, longterm I'm even towing with the notion of 'formations' options (in this case, +40% vs archers and horsearchers, and -40% vs cavalry and -20% vs melee, or something like that... of course if I had medium HA and I saw some unprotected archers in loose formation... I'd charge right in and slaughter them... need to put more thought into this...), kind of like in ffh2 ships can 'cast' different abilities depending on what you intend to use them for. I'm even thinking about cavalry being made able to dismount for dirty jobs, (of course the enemy could then scare their horses off.
Lots and lots and lots of work.

 

[euskingc]

The other thing you could do is give archers an actual ranged attack, a better one than HA get...
depending on your mod-scale you could do 2 range for archers and 1 for HA...

The whole combat system needs a lot of work.

 

[GoodGame]

There are a number of aspects of the unit abilities and stone/paper/scissors balance that I find counter-intuative and/or unrealistic, and which I've played around with modding to attempt to "correct".

One of the biggest anomalies, in my view, is that horse archers are treated as just another type of cavalry, which in turn means the best way to attack them is with spearmen. This, IMO, is very unrealistic, as horse-archers (even more than normal cavalry) should be able to escape from spearmen (and shoot them as they do so).

My intention is to make "ranged cavalry" as separate unit class from normal cavalry, and not give spear units any bonus against them.

But that leaves the problem: what should be the anti-horse-archer unit?

The Total War games usually makes it light cavalry (because they are fast enough to catch them, and better at horse archers in melee). But that would mean that a civ without access to horses will have no decent defence against them (with isn't necessarily unrealistic, but is probably bad for game balance).

So what do you think should be the horse-archer counter? Normal archers? (On the grounds that they have longer bows and larger unit sizes, so can out-shoot them?) Or something else?

You could just add a promotion that makes it very hard for melee to attack mounted units (e.g. add a +50% defense vs. melee attacks), but doesn't affect the chance of mounted vs. mounted. Then tie that promotion to that unit type only. And perhaps make it a unit that absolutely requires a stable present to build it,as a kind of a balancing.

I would make the natural counter to non-melee horse combat, to be any horse combat.
In horse vs. horse combat, it's hard to really say mounted archers deserve absolute immunity from attack for 'Parthian tactics'. Horses will tire (not all horses are equal), riders can get knocked off of their horse. Riders can be caught by surprise dismounted. Play some 'Mount and Blade' for an illustration (probably modded for weight and fatigue).

 

[Midnight-Blue766]

Spearmen. Apparently horses dislike sharp, pointy things.