UPDATED BEST ARCHER TESTING VIDEO - th-cam.com/video/6Xw3iI0bEPY/w-d-xo.html Bannerlord has immensely changed, I will be making updates to this video and all my other testing videos after Bannerlord's Full-release! Subscribe to stay tuned! OLD EDIT: There have been many changes to the game, the biggest change for archers is that the Imperial Palatine Guard now have two quivers, so they are much better. Ahoy! Don't forget, I did two rounds for each archer,, so the max ranged kills each could achieve is 500, thus max losses 200. Please like & sub as the next video will be purely testing their melee skill!
I tested two rounds of this for every archer, to get a result that's a little more reliable. Thus the ranged kills, losses, melee kills etc, are all from both rounds. I pointed this out in the video, but wasn't clear enough.
Assumed as much as the title says 250 vs 100 and it didn't look like 500. Great choice. Did any show a very different outcome between battles? The Aserai really underperformed, I thought they'd beat or be close to the Vlandian sharpshooters.
If you take a look at the Google sheet and for each cell, you'll see the results (like 130 ranged kills + 137). The results were similar, where usually they were less than 5% higher/lower than the other. The aserai has the highest bow skill (aside from fians), but as they are equipped with a bow with only 62 damage, they don't fare as well as xbows or the palatine guard who has a bow with 66 damage while the speed is the same.
@@Mr.Chicken Hmm, so Aserai archers could still perform reasonably in tests against other archers, as the skill might do more at long range. But that shouldn't really count. In actual battles they could get slightly more headshots and hits against shielded units. But otherwise they will underperform. And I thought they'd be worth it to take a detour for! The second quiver is still nice, but so is the armor on the imperials or the Vlandian shield, the Aserai are pretty squishy. (Khuzait and Sturgians were never supposed to be good, so I never had many of those). Iirc fians are already better at tier 5, right?
I cannot be the only one in this game who sits on their horse making machine gun noises in their head while their Battanian Archers mow down everything before them, can I?
Someone out there is the only one that doesn't sit on their horse making machine gun noises in their head while their archers mow down their enemies. But that person is neither of us
Making all your companions into skilled archers makes it even more fun. If you like playing around with mods you can install the ballista bow mod and give it to your companions. It's like having modern artillery in medieval times.
My take-away, X-bows are Much more impressive than I'm often led to believe. Not only are they comparative to most archers they compete against at range, but unlike the archers they actually win the melee engagement after.
yea, a vlandian army of just crossbows works very well, I tend to divide them into two groups, so no matter which one the enemy engages with, the other can continue shooting. Limited ammo does suck for extended battles though.
Surprised because I thought aserai would rank higher....but on another note, I love xbows because how versatile they are and can be used as infantry in dire situations.
Yep, they have highest bow skill, but because their bow is trash, they are also trash. After my infantry testing, amount of skill barely matters, it's mostly what weapon they have.
@@Mr.Chicken bow-/xbowskill is important for accuracy In this frontal clash it doesn't matter this much for dmgoutput but that changes for mounted archers for each side (shooting or/and target)
A comparison video with the same setups, but giving the archers high ground this time to see the effects of positioning ( if any) would be pretty awesome
Best archers are forest bandits who will gladly join your party if you're powerful and then upgrade to fians. No need to spend money for recruitment, and also makes the place safer!
@@eonnephilim852 I mean, by the time you have the perk that lets you upgrade them it's fair to assume you'll also have the perk that removes the morale penalty for recruiting them in the first place.
Damn... that showed really good how much my boys the Palantine Guard was nerfed since the beginning. when the game started the PG was on par with the Fian and could even just barely win in a shootout thanks to their better armor. but that armor was taken away from them and even their bows are one tier weaker then than. at least they are still the best commoner archers in the game.
I was thinking of doing that but them moving, firing, and generally not staying in a formation could vary the results too much. Maybe doing a 100vs 100 archer fight but both units are holding their ground, while being 100 meters from one another. Maybe that could work but it's not a perfect scenario.
Not to be particular, but what about mercenaries, such as the Arboreal or the Boar Champion, or foresters? Not to discount your content, very interesting results!
They are all lvl 21 so they are T4 troops. (But hired xbow is T5 & should compare to the vlandian sharpshooter). The mods I was using to test troops before are crashing so I'm using the native custom battle, where there are many limitations, such as I can't use any troops beyond the main factions. But from all the testing I did, it's evident that the most important thing about every unit is what weapon they have, which is more true for archers as they get damaged less than other troops. The veteran Forester and the arboreal have great bows, but worse bow skill, however I would think they would perform better than the worst 3 archers the video showed. Lastly, these mercenaries have a lot less armor and a worse one handed weapon, so they would get slaughtered in melee.
@@Mr.Chicken Don't the minor factions have tiers 2, 3 and 5? I think I upgraded some Saplings to Arboreals and I had the impression they were nice. But in between my fians, so didn't test em separately...
@@teambellavsteamalice no they only have up to T4 units, that's why I didn't bother with them, only mercenary troops with the name "mercenary" can be T5, like the hired xbowman
@@teambellavsteamalice Arboreals were very effective a year ago before they were nerfed. I don't know why devs decided to nerf all mercenary troops...it was not a very smart decision.
Vlandians have made me proud, favorite faction but I’ve always loved their crossbow men, they pack a punch make it easier for lesser units to one hit stronger enemies
No great surprises here. Thought the Khuzait would have done better. Imperials performance was pretty solid, but sharpshooters are the better regular infantry.
Thank you for the wonderful video, I'm glad to see that fians are not as OP as they used to be in past, I just like crossbows more than bows and I'm glad they're a decent choice compared to the other ranged troops.
It's good that this guy is a youtuber and not a scientist. The practical methods of his are quite controversial. by the way, it would be good to test horsemen archers, but dismounted. Mainly the Khan guards who are also technically archers t6
I love making a 50/50 split army between vlandian banner knights and vlandian sharpshooters. Sharpshooter mow down pretty much everything in their path, banner knights hold off enemy cav and crushes charging infantry. If you outnumber the enemy they'll not advance on you so you can line up the sharpshooters and send in banner knights from behind enemy lines. I rarely take more than 3 casualties before I obliterate a 150-250 strong enemy force
Also keep in mind, in a realistic battle scenario, where its a shieldwall backed by archers versus a shieldwall backed by archers, imperials and crossbowmen will perform much worse, due to their severely limited ammo compared to aserai, battanian, khuzait and even sturgian archers. Still hilarious to see just how OP archers are in this game in ideal circumstances though, they really need to make armor more effective.
They really don’t. People looove to ignore that archers were every bit as effective as even musketmen and stayed in use well into the 16th century even after plate mail came into use. Shields are and have been throughout human history the best defense there is against archery, hence why just about every army in history has on average had large shields. Armor in bannerlord is if anything too effective against archery lmao
@@nekogaming5300 I don't mind archers being represented in this game as powerhouses (as they should), but rather that you don't need to use any other troop types in order to win. Archers in Bannerlord are like the Swadian Knights in Warband, once you get an army of them going there really isn't anything that can stand up to them. Every army in history used some form of archery and/or projectile units, but most of them also saw value in combined arms. Hell, even the Achaemenid Persians and Medieval English knew that they needed some form of infantry and cavalry presence to make their archers effective, they couldn't stand on their own in prolonged battles and you couldn't rely on them in each and every situation. It took years to train effective archers, while it took only several weeks to train an infantryman to march and drill into basic formations. They could represent this by splitting archers as a separate troop tree, with slower replenishment pools. This way, they can keep archers as strong as they are now, but they will also be much more valuable to recruit and you will have to use other troop types to support them.
@@ГенадийСамобранцев Yeah, from what I've read, they're primarily based on Slavs and varangians, with some norse influence. They definitely still feel more like a Nordic faction though.
great vid, can you please expand to unmounted Horse Archers, other bow troops like the hired and the regular battanian Fian? (not champion) as they are rank 5 it would be a fair and interesting comparison to the other rank 5 archers.
Hey! I'll probably end up doing a separate video outside this mini series. For mercenary troops, I cannot test them currently, due to problems with mods.
Oh, this setup is very nice. Do note that the Aserai have two quivers. The crossbows have greater accuracy to compensate their slowness but usually don't run out as fast. The rest do run out in huge battles. If you fight an elite force against hordes of noobs, the extra headshots have a nice morale effect too. I wonder, how do dismounted or stationery horse archers compare to actual archers? Curious about the melee performance too. Finally, I saw a tip of spreading infantry into a bunch of small squares. These don't block LOS as much and armies can wrap around or be drawn to the sides for even more killy archers! I'm planning to replace a lot of infantry with not upgraded Aserai Skirmishers (tier 3 shield/javelin infantry that become the archers. And fill all garrisons with these cheap troops. Not using tier 5 as shield infantry means more damage infantry while tier 3 is more easily replaceable. Would that be a good idea?
The bucerallii acts like a regular Palatine Guard. But with 2 quivers, you can used them as regular archers because of that (and most players does that) The mameluke acts like a palatine, but with less armor. But they have a shield The khuzaits has 2 quivers, and most of them swords. Do not use them as archers, just use them as horse archers
Yep I was trying that, but the mods i was using before would crash no matter how many times i would roll back updates. Currently i can only do native custom battle, which limits one side with only 300 troops. However, i was planning on making a video with 100 archers vs 250 recruits (can't get looters from native custom battle), and i actually recorded every battle. And the results were very similar with the ranking being exactly the same, but the aserai archer being a rank higher (this is shown in my Google sheet). It appears that crossbow's huge damage compensates their low rate of fire against low armoured targets.
I didn't make a video about the recruits as barely any of them reached most of the archers (like 5-15). Do you think I should use like 50 archers vs 200 recruits, so it would be 4v1?
@@Mr.Chicken Thanks for the info, that's good to know. Sucks that my favorite faction has the worst archers and by such a big margin too :( I don't think it's worth another video vs recruits instead of line breakers, but I'd love to see more comparison videos with different units in the future
Great video! Those Fians are incredible. I almost always go with heavy cav, but I'm currently level 45 on a playthrough with almost 400 Khuzait kahn's guards... It's absolutely INSANE. I literally just shower the enemy for a while then delegate command and they just ride circles around everyone while using FREAKING gatling-gun arrows. To be honest it's kind of taken the fun out of it lol. Oh what's that? The Northern empire is here with 1500 men? I'm just gonna sit on my horse sipping my beer while my boys have their fun.
I knew my Vlandian crossbow wouldn’t disappoint! I love them in game cause it seems when I’m leading an army I’m alway outnumbered by the enemy so I’ll play Defense find a good high spot to put them with my infantry in front and when the enemy gets close I have them hold fire and charge in with infantry and it works every single time
I do the same since they double as good infantry I can put more of them on the field and do even more ranged damage before they get close whatever reaches my line just broken up by my cavalry then swarmed by heavy infantry
Also if the enemy is on a hill I can fire on them while staying out of range of their archers then group them with the infantry then push as one big shield wall
Khan guards are the best for me. My favorite troop. They decimate the enemy via range before switching to a glauive yo decimate them with cavalry. They take after my own heart. Cavalry woth spears and bows exactly how I play. Brings a tear to my eye
@Mr. Chiecken - now put a Bonus with Imperial Legionnaires. That what I was talking about , when it was a talk about best melee unit - no shield = certain death.
The Fian Champion is the only troop that I immediately recognize on the battlefield and make a point to kill. I had something like 4 archers in a battle, one being a Champion and he ended up having something like 23 kills.
2nd place would be Khan's guard if basing it solely on ranged kills. 260 bow skill. Debatable on how melee would go. Khan's have better armor, and 220 polearm skill, Mameluke's only have 130 one handed, but a shield.
@@Th1sUsernameIsNotTaken yeah they would properly do great in melee with the long glaive as well.. but my thoughts were only for the listed ones in the vid.
@@NosyNorseman Mameluke's weren't listed in the video, so what do you mean your thoughts were only for the listed ones in the vid? I'm simply saying if you're going to include horse archers then you have to include Khans, who would definitely outperform Mamelukes.
I would like to point out that Vlandian Crossbowman were about to fire another volley just before the meele. If they got that off i believe they would've been very close to fian champions
Remember that the Xbow is better in defense and siege attack. Since the Y-Axis counts towards bow damage, while altering nothing on Xbow. Only the Fian are better at siege defense than the Xbow. Of course, archers are still good at defending, but attacking... each arrow can do an average of 20 damage. - I ran some personal tests on the simulator. - Bucelarii are ~good at offense and defense, but they are hard to accumulate as they use WarHorse to upgrade. Cheers from Brazil \õ
Although Palatine Guard passed the test with flying colors as they should have, don't forget that they're the only foot archer unit that gets just one stack of arrows at all tiers, while even infamously terrible Sturgian archers get two. They seem to severely underperform in longer engagements, and I hope the devs will adress it by giving them at least a small round shield so they can be used to tie down enemy flanking cavalry or block incoming fire once they exhaust their ammo.
A thing that many people do not understand with crossbows. Yes they deal less damage than bows. Yes they reload slowly. But they are consistent with their damage no matter where they hit. They will always deal the same amount of damage no matter how well armored the enemy is. Lets take for example Tier 3 archers vs tier 3 Crossbows. Archers will hit an imperial legionare on the chest and deal 40 damage. Crossbow will deal 80. Archer hits leg and deals 30 damage. Crossbow deals 70. This is the thing with crossbows. They dont have the highest Damage. But as i said again, they are consistent 60-85 damage per shot.
how about to test battanian fian champions against each of top tier unit in game. how good they are, especially against cav and highborn branches which are mostly cavalry for other factions
Admittedly this is kind of a result of the test itself. The crossbowmen have a really wicked range but low damage output (because of reload times) and low ammo. If the person you are shooting at puts shields up forget about it, tell them to hold fire and use them as infantry.
I came back to bannerlord after a long tym.. back then palantine guards were like machine gunners. Their rate of fire has been seriously nerfed in the following patches.
What mod/feature of the game did you use for the free roam camera? Great video anyway. Biggest surprise was Aserai Archers. I thought they were 2nd or at least 3rd best.
Conclussion: If you can't get Fians, get crossbows. Also, It whould be neat for the high tier crossbow unit to use their pavise shields as cover for ranged vs ranged combat. That whould be an incredible buff for those units
They have been nerfed. But also, how are they affecting your gameplay in a negative way? Are you using them and the game is too easy? (there is a solution, don't use them, or don't use as many) Are you losing against AI with Fians? (Run some horse archers/mounted skirmishers around them and then charge cavalry into them while they are turning around.) This is a single player game, and Fians can be worked around. If you don't want to solve tactical problems, why even play the game?
I'm shocked the Palatine Guards did as well as they did, especially compared to the Aserai Master Archers. I imagine its because of their better bows. I would still argue that the Aserai are, in general, better archers, though, since they have two quivers of arrows instead of the Palatine Guards' one.
If you look at my newest video, where i let every archer empty out their quiver, which tested each unit's potential in big battles. The aserai ones overall did the second best while the palatine guard was the second worst one.
I think it depends on strategy. Each culture will allow you to use different strategies. The Imperial have a good Hammer and Anvil setup with Heavy Infantry and Heavy Cavalry. If you think about the Palatine Guard as more in support of this strategy, then the limited ammo isn't as much of an issue.
Well in a shield wall, archers will hit the shield at least 95% of shots, unless the archer formation is very long, so the sides of legionaries can be exposed.
In this game u Have only 1 ranged unit worth slot in Ur army=Fian champion. Best bow. Solid skills. Armored like heavy t6 Cavalry. With good melee weap. And skill. Ez to get in villages, from forest bandits. Only if U need arched cavalry u can make khuzait guards... but fian champs have more arrows. And better bow.
Ah forgot to explain that one. So the mods i used for my infantry testing are crashing right now, even if roll back 4 updates ago (with that mod version too), so I had to use bannerlord's native custom battle. However, since the hired blade has the same crossbow that the vlandian sharpshooter has + 10 more xbow skill, it's needless to say that they must be a little bit better than the vlandians sharpshooter at being an archer. However, their total arm and leg armor is the worst out of every top tier archer, and they have a bad sword too. So it's kinda balanced.
Ofc this video will be in favour of xbows. Almost all the arches has 2 spare quivers instead of one. While xbows hit harder, if you give the archers enough time to empty their ammo, before combat, im certainly sure archers are always better, unless you include perks for both units, now they are more niche for every situation
Enemy infantry will reach archers before they can use both their quivers, also, don't forget that crossbow's do more damage, like the bound crossbow does 100 damage while bows from t5 archers range from 55-66 damage and also have worse accuracy. The trade off between a firing faster, having more arrows, but have less damage and accuracy isn't worth it in most battles
@@Mr.Chicken im talking about raw damage in time with limited ammo without any threat at sight. Thats all. If you are adding more variables to the equation, ofc xbows will win. To prove the entire usefulness of all ranged units, you need to do: -shooting vs standing units without moving and see how many units they will kill until depleted ammo in x time. -the same in siege scenarios: infinite ammo for xbows destroys completely one of the biggest advantages of bows. After doing those test, you can add whatever you want to test more, but with the info of those 2 test, at least you can learn the max potential of every unit. Now the issue is to create the perfect scenario to use your bows in optimal conditions
They should have the biggest range, yes. They are still the second best archer in this test, as they killed the most heroic line breakers with their crossbow before they reached them. I'll make a proper melee test in my next video.
WTH? Even with like -10 body armour the Sgt Crossbowmen still beat Shock troops?! Damn they're probably better than Palantines. Which remindes me how massacrated my boys were ;/ They took their helmets,their shoulder pads,their Body armour was nerfed...they took their drip.. But most importantly they forgot the -cola- quiver buff to compensate ;/...
Watching these makes me want to crash my economy buying hundreds of Highborn Youths and training them into Fian Champions. Or maybe getting Khuzait Khan's Guard simply because they are a more versatile unit compared to the Fian Champions. Sure, worse archers, but better overall.
tl;dr: vlandian sharpshooters are cost effective and require less babysitting and in practice i actually prefer them to Fian Champions despite them being objectively weaker as ranged support the Vlandian sharpshooters inspire a lot of confidence. I always liked them the best out of all the ranged units, including their equivalent in Warband, due their ability to provide high ranged damage while also being well armoured. the Battanian Fians are hands down the best archer, i won't try to make a case that the sharpshooters have anywhere near their ranged power, but there's something to be said about the logistical cost of raising a meaningful number of them. it takes a lot of time developing relationships in villages where Battanian noble recruits can spawn, and you must also compete with local lords who are also found running around hoovering them up as soon as they can. if you want to convert bandits into fians, you'll be spending a lot of time leveling up and skilling Leadership (or you have to get your hands on a castle and leave them in there long enough, if that's something that hasn't been patched out). they also do not cost an insignificant amount of money to upgrade and maintain. in the meanwhile, your army will most likely be wanting for ranged support; if you're Battanian you'll be relying almost entirely on infantry charges, perhaps with some cavalry, unless you want to hire mercenaries (extremely expensive in the long run) or hire troops to upgrade to archers from other cultures (and take the resulting Morale hit from what i affectionately call the "troop racism mechanic"). in the end you're rewarded with hands-down the best ranged support in the game, but with all these considerations i barely consider them overpowered considering they're still archers with only decent melee performance (but admittedly fantastic armour, for champions at least) and the same vulnerability to cavalry charge as any other archer. on the other hand, Vlandian sharpshooters can be raised from any old peasant for about half the total upgrade cost, one less tier (they max out at tier 5) and cost nearly half as much to maintain. You can easily raise a number of these troops even before reaching the mid-game, if you wish, and if (read: when) they eventually die you will be a lot less tempted to savescum or ragequit. their crossbows fire slower, but have extended range, high accuracy, and do higher damage per bolt. This helps them kill horses and punch through armour a bit more reliably, as seen in this video their effective DPS is much more than you would expect. the slower attack speed also means that, while they only have one quiver of bolts, they can maintain fire for a reasonable amount of time. also as demonstrated in this video, once they're forced into melee (whether for lack of bolts or an enemy closing in) they can rely on their much better than average armour and strong shields to keep them alive, and while their arming swords aren't the best weapons, they make a good pairing with a shield and in large groups (which as i've said is not really difficult to achieve) can fend for themselves. this combination of high-powered ranged attacks and strong melee defense specifically is fantastic in a siege defense scenario, as they'll often be the first in line for defense once the enemy scales the walls. of course, when both units are mixed with complimentary units to cover their weaknesses (shield infantry and spearmen) i believe the strengths of the fian champions starts to far overshadow the sharpshooter in terms of ranged effectiveness and the sharpshooter's self-defense capability becomes less of an advantage, and more of a liability as their lack of a second quiver of bolts means that any protracted engagement puts their effectiveness on a time limit. that being said, i've found (and i'm sure you have too) that it's very rare any significant conflict (sieges and large field battles between professional militaries) goes exactly as planned, and I always feel more confident taking on fights knowing that if my backline gets into trouble they'll be cut apart less like paper and more like that annoying plastic packaging that fights back against your scissors: they're certainly far from impenetrable, but they'll always give more resistance than you'd reasonably expect.
Good explanation, totally agree with relative acessebility and cheapness of sharpshooters compared to fians, it's extremely annoying to see those 20-30 fian champions you've been training for 3-4 hours on looters and weaker enemy parties die in a single tough siege.
It's interesting to see the relative performance, but this is also evidence that archers are busted, generally. Way stronger than their historical performance, but more importantly too much of an alpha unit choice for campaign gameplay-wise. 100 guys with bows should not be beating more than 2x their numbers. That makes upgrade decision super obvious (more damage per party size cap) and trivializes how players approach fights in campaign (use and protect archers as primary source of damage, either on foot or horseback). Yes, I know shield wall helps bridge this gap. But the fact of the matter is that while archers were used throughout history and did respectable damage arrow performance against especially higher-end armor was nowhere near this strong. If it were, we'd have seen musket/rifle tactics with bows.
Historically the crossbows were so strong against armor, the pope banned them. I'd also like to point at the battle that made longbows famous. Or the mounted archers being entirely unstoppable. Or slingers, look what the slingers did. They out ranged archers for considerable ages and armor couldn't hold versus the sheer trauma
some people think that Battania has the best archers, some people think that Vlandia has the best archers, but we all know that mounted archers are the best archers...
UPDATED BEST ARCHER TESTING VIDEO - th-cam.com/video/6Xw3iI0bEPY/w-d-xo.html
Bannerlord has immensely changed, I will be making updates to this video and all my other testing videos after Bannerlord's Full-release!
Subscribe to stay tuned!
OLD EDIT: There have been many changes to the game, the biggest change for archers is that the Imperial Palatine Guard now have two quivers, so they are much better.
Ahoy! Don't forget, I did two rounds for each archer,, so the max ranged kills each could achieve is 500, thus max losses 200.
Please like & sub as the next video will be purely testing their melee skill!
I tested two rounds of this for every archer, to get a result that's a little more reliable. Thus the ranged kills, losses, melee kills etc, are all from both rounds.
I pointed this out in the video, but wasn't clear enough.
Assumed as much as the title says 250 vs 100 and it didn't look like 500. Great choice. Did any show a very different outcome between battles?
The Aserai really underperformed, I thought they'd beat or be close to the Vlandian sharpshooters.
If you take a look at the Google sheet and for each cell, you'll see the results (like 130 ranged kills + 137). The results were similar, where usually they were less than 5% higher/lower than the other.
The aserai has the highest bow skill (aside from fians), but as they are equipped with a bow with only 62 damage, they don't fare as well as xbows or the palatine guard who has a bow with 66 damage while the speed is the same.
@@Mr.Chicken
Hmm, so Aserai archers could still perform reasonably in tests against other archers, as the skill might do more at long range. But that shouldn't really count. In actual battles they could get slightly more headshots and hits against shielded units. But otherwise they will underperform.
And I thought they'd be worth it to take a detour for! The second quiver is still nice, but so is the armor on the imperials or the Vlandian shield, the Aserai are pretty squishy. (Khuzait and Sturgians were never supposed to be good, so I never had many of those). Iirc fians are already better at tier 5, right?
Yep fians are still best at t5
I cannot be the only one in this game who sits on their horse making machine gun noises in their head while their Battanian Archers mow down everything before them, can I?
It's been meta tactic since day 1 lol 😂
Someone out there is the only one that doesn't sit on their horse making machine gun noises in their head while their archers mow down their enemies. But that person is neither of us
Making all your companions into skilled archers makes it even more fun. If you like playing around with mods you can install the ballista bow mod and give it to your companions. It's like having modern artillery in medieval times.
Jonatan Mendoza im making machine gun noises when i see my 400 imperial elite cataphracts charging into enemy lines
@@LL-gx3yj
Nah that’s when you’re supposed blast Sabaton and Death Grips.
My take-away, X-bows are Much more impressive than I'm often led to believe. Not only are they comparative to most archers they compete against at range, but unlike the archers they actually win the melee engagement after.
Actually, they are more impressive, Even the lowest tier of xbow can get kills when the lowest archer cant. Xbows always got real power behind them.
yea, a vlandian army of just crossbows works very well, I tend to divide them into two groups, so no matter which one the enemy engages with, the other can continue shooting. Limited ammo does suck for extended battles though.
F1f5 makes archers 100 x better in my opinion. Xbow don't retreat fire properly for obvious reasons.
@@Jasta85 You can divide them into two groups? Did you just change what formation a crossbow unit was in, or is there a way to do it in the battle?
@@horationelson1840 I separated them by tiers, so for example tier 1-3 xbows in one group and tier 4-5 in another, depends on how many of each I had.
This is a fantastic video! It really shows how much effort you put into these.
Also, Battania FOREVER!
Surprised because I thought aserai would rank higher....but on another note, I love xbows because how versatile they are and can be used as infantry in dire situations.
Yep, they have highest bow skill, but because their bow is trash, they are also trash. After my infantry testing, amount of skill barely matters, it's mostly what weapon they have.
Crossbows are great. For the main character and they have been doing some damage to my Battanian Fian Champions.
@@Mr.Chicken bow-/xbowskill is important for accuracy
In this frontal clash it doesn't matter this much for dmgoutput but that changes for mounted archers for each side (shooting or/and target)
I think their bows were changed out for a shittier one and man it fucking shows. My poor aserai.
@@BigOso1873 İn any case ı choose aserai :D
i respect the amount of effort that went into this keep it up
A comparison video with the same setups, but giving the archers high ground this time to see the effects of positioning ( if any) would be pretty awesome
absolutely this
Best archers are forest bandits who will gladly join your party if you're powerful and then upgrade to fians. No need to spend money for recruitment, and also makes the place safer!
True, and the morale from battles more than compensates for the cost of recruiting em.
@@eonnephilim852 I mean, by the time you have the perk that lets you upgrade them it's fair to assume you'll also have the perk that removes the morale penalty for recruiting them in the first place.
Great video, really good layout for info and explanations
Damn... that showed really good how much my boys the Palantine Guard was nerfed since the beginning. when the game started the PG was on par with the Fian and could even just barely win in a shootout thanks to their better armor. but that armor was taken away from them and even their bows are one tier weaker then than. at least they are still the best commoner archers in the game.
The only scientific tester of this stuff out there. Thanks.
A good comparison! I appreciate the efford you put in it ;)
it would be interesting to see how the archers do in range vs archers.
I was thinking of doing that but them moving, firing, and generally not staying in a formation could vary the results too much. Maybe doing a 100vs 100 archer fight but both units are holding their ground, while being 100 meters from one another. Maybe that could work but it's not a perfect scenario.
@@Mr.Chicken might have to do it over 3 attempts and get the average.
Not to be particular, but what about mercenaries, such as the Arboreal or the Boar Champion, or foresters? Not to discount your content, very interesting results!
They are all lvl 21 so they are T4 troops. (But hired xbow is T5 & should compare to the vlandian sharpshooter). The mods I was using to test troops before are crashing so I'm using the native custom battle, where there are many limitations, such as I can't use any troops beyond the main factions.
But from all the testing I did, it's evident that the most important thing about every unit is what weapon they have, which is more true for archers as they get damaged less than other troops.
The veteran Forester and the arboreal have great bows, but worse bow skill, however I would think they would perform better than the worst 3 archers the video showed. Lastly, these mercenaries have a lot less armor and a worse one handed weapon, so they would get slaughtered in melee.
@@Mr.Chicken
Don't the minor factions have tiers 2, 3 and 5? I think I upgraded some Saplings to Arboreals and I had the impression they were nice. But in between my fians, so didn't test em separately...
@@teambellavsteamalice no they only have up to T4 units, that's why I didn't bother with them, only mercenary troops with the name "mercenary" can be T5, like the hired xbowman
@@teambellavsteamalice Arboreals were very effective a year ago before they were nerfed. I don't know why devs decided to nerf all mercenary troops...it was not a very smart decision.
@@oleksandr2234 they might have their reason. Too OP merc can affect the gameplay. Might be wrong. Let's wait and see
4:04 triple stab kill, that looked awesome.
Vlandians have made me proud, favorite faction but I’ve always loved their crossbow men, they pack a punch make it easier for lesser units to one hit stronger enemies
No great surprises here. Thought the Khuzait would have done better. Imperials performance was pretty solid, but sharpshooters are the better regular infantry.
Great video. Would love to see mixed archer and xbow units with a similar setup.
Thank you for the wonderful video, I'm glad to see that fians are not as OP as they used to be in past, I just like crossbows more than bows and I'm glad they're a decent choice compared to the other ranged troops.
Watching those strugian bowmen fill up linebreakers with arrows felt like I was watching my character on the easiest difficulty just eat arrows
This is a great video. Great information on developing a very tasty Army.
It's good that this guy is a youtuber and not a scientist. The practical methods of his are quite controversial.
by the way, it would be good to test horsemen archers, but dismounted. Mainly the Khan guards who are also technically archers t6
I love making a 50/50 split army between vlandian banner knights and vlandian sharpshooters.
Sharpshooter mow down pretty much everything in their path, banner knights hold off enemy cav and crushes charging infantry.
If you outnumber the enemy they'll not advance on you so you can line up the sharpshooters and send in banner knights from behind enemy lines.
I rarely take more than 3 casualties before I obliterate a 150-250 strong enemy force
Also keep in mind, in a realistic battle scenario, where its a shieldwall backed by archers versus a shieldwall backed by archers, imperials and crossbowmen will perform much worse, due to their severely limited ammo compared to aserai, battanian, khuzait and even sturgian archers. Still hilarious to see just how OP archers are in this game in ideal circumstances though, they really need to make armor more effective.
They really don’t. People looove to ignore that archers were every bit as effective as even musketmen and stayed in use well into the 16th century even after plate mail came into use. Shields are and have been throughout human history the best defense there is against archery, hence why just about every army in history has on average had large shields. Armor in bannerlord is if anything too effective against archery lmao
They're really only OP because of the ai not using units properly
@@nekogaming5300 archery was not as effective as you think
@@lkjhgf7971 archery most definitely was. It might not have been english longbowmen level but it was ALWAYS an important stape of the worlds armies
@@nekogaming5300 I don't mind archers being represented in this game as powerhouses (as they should), but rather that you don't need to use any other troop types in order to win. Archers in Bannerlord are like the Swadian Knights in Warband, once you get an army of them going there really isn't anything that can stand up to them. Every army in history used some form of archery and/or projectile units, but most of them also saw value in combined arms. Hell, even the Achaemenid Persians and Medieval English knew that they needed some form of infantry and cavalry presence to make their archers effective, they couldn't stand on their own in prolonged battles and you couldn't rely on them in each and every situation.
It took years to train effective archers, while it took only several weeks to train an infantryman to march and drill into basic formations. They could represent this by splitting archers as a separate troop tree, with slower replenishment pools. This way, they can keep archers as strong as they are now, but they will also be much more valuable to recruit and you will have to use other troop types to support them.
I could watch 500 Battanian Fian Champions slaughter 500 recruits all day long
feels bad to see that sturgia sucks at everything... Even their noble troops are outshined by other factions
Yeah, unsure why sturgia's noble line go to horseback, and not a stronger melee fighter. Doesn't really make sense.
I'd really like either some beefed up axe+large shield melee monsters/ or really high athletics + 2 handed sex axes for their noble troops
@@ГенадийСамобранцев Yeah, from what I've read, they're primarily based on Slavs and varangians, with some norse influence.
They definitely still feel more like a Nordic faction though.
@@ГенадийСамобранцев Sex axes??!😱
great vid, can you please expand to unmounted Horse Archers, other bow troops like the hired and the regular battanian Fian? (not champion) as they are rank 5 it would be a fair and interesting comparison to the other rank 5 archers.
Hey! I'll probably end up doing a separate video outside this mini series. For mercenary troops, I cannot test them currently, due to problems with mods.
what about Bucellari (Imperial mounted archers)? some people consider them the 'best' imperial faction archers so they just dismount them
Oh, this setup is very nice. Do note that the Aserai have two quivers. The crossbows have greater accuracy to compensate their slowness but usually don't run out as fast. The rest do run out in huge battles.
If you fight an elite force against hordes of noobs, the extra headshots have a nice morale effect too.
I wonder, how do dismounted or stationery horse archers compare to actual archers?
Curious about the melee performance too.
Finally, I saw a tip of spreading infantry into a bunch of small squares. These don't block LOS as much and armies can wrap around or be drawn to the sides for even more killy archers!
I'm planning to replace a lot of infantry with not upgraded Aserai Skirmishers (tier 3 shield/javelin infantry that become the archers. And fill all garrisons with these cheap troops. Not using tier 5 as shield infantry means more damage infantry while tier 3 is more easily replaceable. Would that be a good idea?
The bucerallii acts like a regular Palatine Guard. But with 2 quivers, you can used them as regular archers because of that (and most players does that)
The mameluke acts like a palatine, but with less armor. But they have a shield
The khuzaits has 2 quivers, and most of them swords. Do not use them as archers, just use them as horse archers
Kind of wish you used dismounted horse archers too! The khan guard's are a direct competitor to the fian champions.
Prove it
@@nobodythenobody9779 They have the exact same bow stats as fian champions and similar armor
This is absolutely fantastic, I definitely want to see more! Have you considered repeating with like 500 looters to test vs unarmored targets too?
Yep I was trying that, but the mods i was using before would crash no matter how many times i would roll back updates. Currently i can only do native custom battle, which limits one side with only 300 troops.
However, i was planning on making a video with 100 archers vs 250 recruits (can't get looters from native custom battle), and i actually recorded every battle. And the results were very similar with the ranking being exactly the same, but the aserai archer being a rank higher (this is shown in my Google sheet).
It appears that crossbow's huge damage compensates their low rate of fire against low armoured targets.
I didn't make a video about the recruits as barely any of them reached most of the archers (like 5-15). Do you think I should use like 50 archers vs 200 recruits, so it would be 4v1?
@@Mr.Chicken Thanks for the info, that's good to know. Sucks that my favorite faction has the worst archers and by such a big margin too :( I don't think it's worth another video vs recruits instead of line breakers, but I'd love to see more comparison videos with different units in the future
Here's another idea - dismounted horse archers.
Good content!
Awesome video
Makes so much sense why my army of ~100 fian and sharpshooter rips open any army I come across
Thx for the good video!
Great video! Those Fians are incredible. I almost always go with heavy cav, but I'm currently level 45 on a playthrough with almost 400 Khuzait kahn's guards... It's absolutely INSANE. I literally just shower the enemy for a while then delegate command and they just ride circles around everyone while using FREAKING gatling-gun arrows. To be honest it's kind of taken the fun out of it lol. Oh what's that? The Northern empire is here with 1500 men? I'm just gonna sit on my horse sipping my beer while my boys have their fun.
Sturgians: Are great hunters in the lore
Also Sturgians, looking at bow: "what kind of balalaika is this?"
You could turn that range effectively into percent by multiply 100
Can just as easily do it yourself in your head since he gives you all the numbers. 85,8% for the Fians.
I knew my Vlandian crossbow wouldn’t disappoint! I love them in game cause it seems when I’m leading an army I’m alway outnumbered by the enemy so I’ll play Defense find a good high spot to put them with my infantry in front and when the enemy gets close I have them hold fire and charge in with infantry and it works every single time
I do the same since they double as good infantry I can put more of them on the field and do even more ranged damage before they get close whatever reaches my line just broken up by my cavalry then swarmed by heavy infantry
Also if the enemy is on a hill I can fire on them while staying out of range of their archers then group them with the infantry then push as one big shield wall
This is why my boys become bucarelli or crossbowmen. I like theirs shields for my melee push once infrantry walls meet
Vlandian sharpshooters doing me proud. I am a rhodok simp and will pick walking armored ballistas every time.
Khan guards are the best for me. My favorite troop. They decimate the enemy via range before switching to a glauive yo decimate them with cavalry. They take after my own heart. Cavalry woth spears and bows exactly how I play. Brings a tear to my eye
@Mr. Chiecken - now put a Bonus with Imperial Legionnaires.
That what I was talking about , when it was a talk about best melee unit - no shield = certain death.
The legionaries with shieldwall would make it to all the archers without taking much loss.
@@Mr.Chicken would crossbowmen fare better against shielded targets?
@@rohitrai6187 Crossbows are more of a counter to Cavalry Units. Throwing is effective against shielded targets. So skirmishers and some infantry.
I knew sturgian bowmen sucked but dang
Seems like I had the good idea back when I went all palace guards with my imperial campaign...
The Fian Champion is the only troop that I immediately recognize on the battlefield and make a point to kill. I had something like 4 archers in a battle, one being a Champion and he ended up having something like 23 kills.
If you unmount Aserai Mameluke Heavy Cavalry i bet they will be second …. Steppe warbow, piercing arrows, sword and shield.
Great vid by the way 👍
2nd place would be Khan's guard if basing it solely on ranged kills. 260 bow skill. Debatable on how melee would go. Khan's have better armor, and 220 polearm skill, Mameluke's only have 130 one handed, but a shield.
@@Th1sUsernameIsNotTaken yeah they would properly do great in melee with the long glaive as well.. but my thoughts were only for the listed ones in the vid.
@@NosyNorseman Mameluke's weren't listed in the video, so what do you mean your thoughts were only for the listed ones in the vid?
I'm simply saying if you're going to include horse archers then you have to include Khans, who would definitely outperform Mamelukes.
I would like to point out that Vlandian Crossbowman were about to fire another volley just before the meele. If they got that off i believe they would've been very close to fian champions
Remember that the Xbow is better in defense and siege attack. Since the Y-Axis counts towards bow damage, while altering nothing on Xbow. Only the Fian are better at siege defense than the Xbow. Of course, archers are still good at defending, but attacking... each arrow can do an average of 20 damage.
- I ran some personal tests on the simulator.
- Bucelarii are ~good at offense and defense, but they are hard to accumulate as they use WarHorse to upgrade.
Cheers from Brazil \õ
yayayya thank you for this video
Although Palatine Guard passed the test with flying colors as they should have, don't forget that they're the only foot archer unit that gets just one stack of arrows at all tiers, while even infamously terrible Sturgian archers get two. They seem to severely underperform in longer engagements, and I hope the devs will adress it by giving them at least a small round shield so they can be used to tie down enemy flanking cavalry or block incoming fire once they exhaust their ammo.
This was shown in the next video, which was about testing each archer's potential
You should've added Khan's guard off of horses, they've got better archery than the archers if I remember correctly
Wish this had dismounted horse archers as well.
Khan's Guard verse Imperial Buccaleri
A thing that many people do not understand with crossbows. Yes they deal less damage than bows. Yes they reload slowly. But they are consistent with their damage no matter where they hit.
They will always deal the same amount of damage no matter how well armored the enemy is.
Lets take for example Tier 3 archers vs tier 3 Crossbows. Archers will hit an imperial legionare on the chest and deal 40 damage. Crossbow will deal 80.
Archer hits leg and deals 30 damage. Crossbow deals 70. This is the thing with crossbows. They dont have the highest Damage. But as i said again, they are consistent 60-85 damage per shot.
how about to test battanian fian champions against each of top tier unit in game. how good they are, especially against cav and highborn branches which are mostly cavalry for other factions
I was always wondering why people said the sharpshooters were the best, and I was out here using battanians like nobody’s business
can you please include the mercenary crossbowman, its the highest skilled crossbowman in game....
Colonel Failure needs to see this video! (Or maybe he shouldn't since he has it in for Battanians lol)
Surprised about the Vlandian Crossbows, when i played their fraction I typically tried getting Imperial archers
Admittedly this is kind of a result of the test itself. The crossbowmen have a really wicked range but low damage output (because of reload times) and low ammo. If the person you are shooting at puts shields up forget about it, tell them to hold fire and use them as infantry.
thanks homie
I came back to bannerlord after a long tym.. back then palantine guards were like machine gunners. Their rate of fire has been seriously nerfed in the following patches.
What mod/feature of the game did you use for the free roam camera? Great video anyway. Biggest surprise was Aserai Archers. I thought they were 2nd or at least 3rd best.
RTS camera
@@Mr.Chicken Thanks. I'm assuming that's a mod, since I have not come across an in-built feature where you can use free roam camera (without dying)
What about dismounted horse archers? How do they compare? I know it may seem pointless but it would be good information for siege battles
I suspect dismounted Khan's guard will give the fians a run for the money
Tested it in another archer video i did, they get recked lol
@@Mr.Chicken Kguards good now trust me true chads roll with horse bois
In my Khans guard video i tested them against fian champions in archery, and they got recked
@@Mr.Chicken yea i just saw that. U got a new sub, fellow horselord
Conclussion: If you can't get Fians, get crossbows.
Also, It whould be neat for the high tier crossbow unit to use their pavise shields as cover for ranged vs ranged combat. That whould be an incredible buff for those units
Batannian archers been OP since this game became available on EA. Taleworlds, you guys actually doing anything back there...?
They have been nerfed.
But also, how are they affecting your gameplay in a negative way?
Are you using them and the game is too easy? (there is a solution, don't use them, or don't use as many)
Are you losing against AI with Fians? (Run some horse archers/mounted skirmishers around them and then charge cavalry into them while they are turning around.)
This is a single player game, and Fians can be worked around. If you don't want to solve tactical problems, why even play the game?
It's makes sense that imperial Sargent crossbows are better malee because they have Shields than imperial archers but they are better range units
I'm shocked the Palatine Guards did as well as they did, especially compared to the Aserai Master Archers. I imagine its because of their better bows. I would still argue that the Aserai are, in general, better archers, though, since they have two quivers of arrows instead of the Palatine Guards' one.
If you look at my newest video, where i let every archer empty out their quiver, which tested each unit's potential in big battles. The aserai ones overall did the second best while the palatine guard was the second worst one.
I think it depends on strategy. Each culture will allow you to use different strategies. The Imperial have a good Hammer and Anvil setup with Heavy Infantry and Heavy Cavalry. If you think about the Palatine Guard as more in support of this strategy, then the limited ammo isn't as much of an issue.
Fuck I love this game. Nice video more pls
Was there a similar test of imperial legionnaires with a shield against archers?
Well in a shield wall, archers will hit the shield at least 95% of shots, unless the archer formation is very long, so the sides of legionaries can be exposed.
Sturgia, most under rated faction in Bannerlord.
In this game u Have only 1 ranged unit worth slot in Ur army=Fian champion. Best bow. Solid skills. Armored like heavy t6 Cavalry. With good melee weap. And skill. Ez to get in villages, from forest bandits. Only if U need arched cavalry u can make khuzait guards... but fian champs have more arrows. And better bow.
You forgot hired crossbow
Ah forgot to explain that one. So the mods i used for my infantry testing are crashing right now, even if roll back 4 updates ago (with that mod version too), so I had to use bannerlord's native custom battle.
However, since the hired blade has the same crossbow that the vlandian sharpshooter has + 10 more xbow skill, it's needless to say that they must be a little bit better than the vlandians sharpshooter at being an archer. However, their total arm and leg armor is the worst out of every top tier archer, and they have a bad sword too. So it's kinda balanced.
This might end up the same result but how about testing with shield wall slowly advancing towards the archers? Would end up with different result?
The infantry should get to the archers with only a few losses, but more factors come into play, like what shield infantry is shield walling
Sturgian archers pull out hand axe... this is going to end badly.
So, after the battanians, the vlandians are on par with imperial troops.
Thanks.
Ofc this video will be in favour of xbows. Almost all the arches has 2 spare quivers instead of one. While xbows hit harder, if you give the archers enough time to empty their ammo, before combat, im certainly sure archers are always better, unless you include perks for both units, now they are more niche for every situation
Enemy infantry will reach archers before they can use both their quivers, also, don't forget that crossbow's do more damage, like the bound crossbow does 100 damage while bows from t5 archers range from 55-66 damage and also have worse accuracy. The trade off between a firing faster, having more arrows, but have less damage and accuracy isn't worth it in most battles
@@Mr.Chicken im talking about raw damage in time with limited ammo without any threat at sight. Thats all. If you are adding more variables to the equation, ofc xbows will win. To prove the entire usefulness of all ranged units, you need to do:
-shooting vs standing units without moving and see how many units they will kill until depleted ammo in x time.
-the same in siege scenarios: infinite ammo for xbows destroys completely one of the biggest advantages of bows.
After doing those test, you can add whatever you want to test more, but with the info of those 2 test, at least you can learn the max potential of every unit. Now the issue is to create the perfect scenario to use your bows in optimal conditions
Why did you decide to use Sturgian Line Breakers as the base tier 5 infantry
Genuinely was surprised by vlandian sharpshooters am i seeing right but i think they have biggest range?
They should have the biggest range, yes. They are still the second best archer in this test, as they killed the most heroic line breakers with their crossbow before they reached them. I'll make a proper melee test in my next video.
I love fian champions, they are so damn op
This is why the Vlandians are the most powerful faction in game.
Bannerlord balance at it's finest
Do asarai use self bow or composite bow ?
They use a steppe recurve bow
@@Mr.Chicken Thanks
Thanks
Darn it they had swords too!
No way ranged troops should perform so good in mele.
Make the best melee and cavarly pls
WTH?
Even with like -10 body armour the Sgt Crossbowmen still beat Shock troops?!
Damn they're probably better than Palantines.
Which remindes me how massacrated my boys were ;/
They took their helmets,their shoulder pads,their Body armour was nerfed...they took their drip..
But most importantly they forgot the -cola- quiver buff to compensate ;/...
It's a shame for crossbow man... Historically they would have pierce them so hard on distance!
Watching these makes me want to crash my economy buying hundreds of Highborn Youths and training them into Fian Champions. Or maybe getting Khuzait Khan's Guard simply because they are a more versatile unit compared to the Fian Champions. Sure, worse archers, but better overall.
tl;dr: vlandian sharpshooters are cost effective and require less babysitting and in practice i actually prefer them to Fian Champions despite them being objectively weaker as ranged support
the Vlandian sharpshooters inspire a lot of confidence. I always liked them the best out of all the ranged units, including their equivalent in Warband, due their ability to provide high ranged damage while also being well armoured. the Battanian Fians are hands down the best archer, i won't try to make a case that the sharpshooters have anywhere near their ranged power, but there's something to be said about the logistical cost of raising a meaningful number of them.
it takes a lot of time developing relationships in villages where Battanian noble recruits can spawn, and you must also compete with local lords who are also found running around hoovering them up as soon as they can. if you want to convert bandits into fians, you'll be spending a lot of time leveling up and skilling Leadership (or you have to get your hands on a castle and leave them in there long enough, if that's something that hasn't been patched out). they also do not cost an insignificant amount of money to upgrade and maintain. in the meanwhile, your army will most likely be wanting for ranged support; if you're Battanian you'll be relying almost entirely on infantry charges, perhaps with some cavalry, unless you want to hire mercenaries (extremely expensive in the long run) or hire troops to upgrade to archers from other cultures (and take the resulting Morale hit from what i affectionately call the "troop racism mechanic"). in the end you're rewarded with hands-down the best ranged support in the game, but with all these considerations i barely consider them overpowered considering they're still archers with only decent melee performance (but admittedly fantastic armour, for champions at least) and the same vulnerability to cavalry charge as any other archer.
on the other hand, Vlandian sharpshooters can be raised from any old peasant for about half the total upgrade cost, one less tier (they max out at tier 5) and cost nearly half as much to maintain. You can easily raise a number of these troops even before reaching the mid-game, if you wish, and if (read: when) they eventually die you will be a lot less tempted to savescum or ragequit. their crossbows fire slower, but have extended range, high accuracy, and do higher damage per bolt. This helps them kill horses and punch through armour a bit more reliably, as seen in this video their effective DPS is much more than you would expect. the slower attack speed also means that, while they only have one quiver of bolts, they can maintain fire for a reasonable amount of time. also as demonstrated in this video, once they're forced into melee (whether for lack of bolts or an enemy closing in) they can rely on their much better than average armour and strong shields to keep them alive, and while their arming swords aren't the best weapons, they make a good pairing with a shield and in large groups (which as i've said is not really difficult to achieve) can fend for themselves. this combination of high-powered ranged attacks and strong melee defense specifically is fantastic in a siege defense scenario, as they'll often be the first in line for defense once the enemy scales the walls.
of course, when both units are mixed with complimentary units to cover their weaknesses (shield infantry and spearmen) i believe the strengths of the fian champions starts to far overshadow the sharpshooter in terms of ranged effectiveness and the sharpshooter's self-defense capability becomes less of an advantage, and more of a liability as their lack of a second quiver of bolts means that any protracted engagement puts their effectiveness on a time limit. that being said, i've found (and i'm sure you have too) that it's very rare any significant conflict (sieges and large field battles between professional militaries) goes exactly as planned, and I always feel more confident taking on fights knowing that if my backline gets into trouble they'll be cut apart less like paper and more like that annoying plastic packaging that fights back against your scissors: they're certainly far from impenetrable, but they'll always give more resistance than you'd reasonably expect.
Good explanation, totally agree with relative acessebility and cheapness of sharpshooters compared to fians, it's extremely annoying to see those 20-30 fian champions you've been training for 3-4 hours on looters and weaker enemy parties die in a single tough siege.
It's interesting to see the relative performance, but this is also evidence that archers are busted, generally. Way stronger than their historical performance, but more importantly too much of an alpha unit choice for campaign gameplay-wise. 100 guys with bows should not be beating more than 2x their numbers. That makes upgrade decision super obvious (more damage per party size cap) and trivializes how players approach fights in campaign (use and protect archers as primary source of damage, either on foot or horseback).
Yes, I know shield wall helps bridge this gap. But the fact of the matter is that while archers were used throughout history and did respectable damage arrow performance against especially higher-end armor was nowhere near this strong. If it were, we'd have seen musket/rifle tactics with bows.
Historically the crossbows were so strong against armor, the pope banned them.
I'd also like to point at the battle that made longbows famous.
Or the mounted archers being entirely unstoppable.
Or slingers, look what the slingers did. They out ranged archers for considerable ages and armor couldn't hold versus the sheer trauma
Infantries : Yeah, Archers have weak armor and melee skills. Heheheheh boi.
Fian Champions : (Laugh with 220 skilled two handed swords)
Yeah I'll stick to my sharpshooters
French look on warily at the Battanians.
Is it really fair to compare anything to Battanian Fian champions?
Long story short, Crossbows rule. (and of course Fians are still OP, but they're a noble unit.)
some people think that Battania has the best archers, some people think that Vlandia has the best archers, but we all know that mounted archers are the best archers...
I would trade higher k/d for a good shield wall. vlandian sharpshooter is my pick