Archers

[Jon Shafer]

Personally, I think Archers should be an early bombardment unit (along with Longbowmen). Their hand-to-hand skills were highly limited, and were reduced to a long range "softening up" kind of usage (one they were very good at though, mind you). So what do you guys think? If you disagree with my view why do you think so?

[Carver]

I don't know. I haven't even built an archer in my last several games. My first research priority is now Iron Working. So my army progresses from warrior to spearman to swordsman. That makes for some good early fighting.

Archers as bombard makes logical sence (an arrow, duh) but I think the gameplay would suffer.

[Jon Shafer]

True, but that would make the race to iron working all that more important. Making archers a powerful bombardment unit would be much more realistic (I think that bombardment units should be stronger, IMO, but you can always change that in the editor). Swordsmen were a much more important attacker in the ancient times up through the middle ages anyways... it would balance out the units better. Right now, all Archers are good for is a 2000 BC offensive. Right now though, I have about 10 Archers on a small island to try and capture the island from the English (and they're doing a good job too), so they can be pretty effective... but I would rather have swordsmen.

[nato]

It sounds neat because it will make the archer different from swords guys.

However, would archers and catapults be redundant then? I mean, would they serve basically the same purpose and be used the same way? Wouldn't want archers to change from being like swordsmen to being like catapults, in game terms.

In support of the idea, here is a quote from a book I read a while ago, where in one chapter the author said longbowmen were used like artillery:

"Archers as artillerymen? Bows as pieces of ordinance? Surely that is stretching things a little far? ... In fact no, not at all ... What follows will show that the remarkable feats recorded by the English and Welsh longbowmen ... were achieved as a result of their deployment as artillerymen, using what were later to become classic artillery tactics in battle."

The book was pretty good and convincing.

[Jon Shafer]

Originally posted by nato
"Archers as artillerymen? Bows as pieces of ordinance? Surely that is stretching things a little far? ... In fact no, not at all ... What follows will show that the remarkable feats recorded by the English and Welsh longbowmen ... were achieved as a result of their deployment as artillerymen, using what were later to become classic artillery tactics in battle."

Exactly, that's my point. Perhaps for gameplay it might not work as well, but it would defineatly be more realistic with them being bombardment units. If the battle system was more complicated then it would make things better. For example, catapults would could batter down city walls better than archers, archers would have a better chance of killing men as opposed to structures, etc.

Who knows though, it could work...

[Civ Old Timer]

I like the idea of bowmen as artillery too. To differentiate them from catapults, make them more mobile but with less punch. ie. They don't need roads but don't hit quite as hard. It would make for more interesting kinds of ancient combined arms. Perhaps catapaults should specialize in attacking cities or walls?

A good idea!

[Jon Shafer]

Originally posted by Civ Old Timer
I like the idea of bowmen as artillery too. To differentiate them from catapults, make them more mobile but with less punch. ie. They don't need roads but don't hit quite as hard. It would make for more interesting kinds of ancient combined arms. Perhaps catapaults should specialize in attacking cities or walls?

A good idea!

Ahhh, here we go. Yes, make them weaker than the catapult, but give them a movement of 2. That way they couldn't simply prance around the entire battlefield owning everyone, but they would be mobile enough to be moved where they were needed to support toops quickly and effectively...

*Runs off to the editor*

As you said, good idea!

[Adm.Naismith]

The whole combat system is quite simple in Civ III, and you mentioned that the catapult/bombard/artillery part is quite weak (editing is a way to fit own taste, not to have a standard balanced game, IMHO).

In a game where army are common units, you should chose standard formation rules, i.e. archer/artillery fire first, then horseman, then infantry.
In this game model you can have an useful archer that "bombard", not attack.

Civ III doesn't implement these rules, so I think is better to keep the archer as attacking units.

BTW, Iron based units are powerful, but the resources system sometimes cut you off from an Iron tile, no way to access it by trade or easy war (my experience on archipelagos map, AI doesn't build harbours ).

Someone from Firaxis (maybe Dan, I can't remember) mentioned last year that with an Archer "no resource required" unit, you can still build a 2 point attack unit and try to recover your Civ from the well of hell.
It was a design decision, and changing archer in a bombard unit must require some rebalancing decision.

[Jon Shafer]

Unfortuneatly, gameplay issues quite often get in the way of reality, due to the simplistic nature of everything in Civ III. Personally, I don't care whether ya got iron or not so I'm going to make Archers and Longbowmen bombard units. If you're stuck without iron during the iron age, then chances are that your civ would be snuffed out anyways.

Also, what effect does the "Rate of Fire" stat have upon bombard units? I'm too lazy to go look it up.

[zulu9812]

I don't know about achers, but longbowmen were fearsome opponents - they could loose up to 20 arrows a minute. Imagine that from 1000 archers...

They changed the dynamics of the battlefield, something which isn't reflected in Civ3 right now. Perhaps make Longbowmen bombard units, but not archers? The longbow had a much bigger range and more penetrating power (even more than a crossbow).

[Zurai001]

I don't know about making archers into distance bombard units, but giving them a 0-range bombard is actually incredibly useful because they provide covering fire when your stacks are attacked. I guess I could see Longbowmen getting a 1-range bombard, they can fire nearly as far as some modern guns.

Rate of Fire is how many times it attacks with the bombard attack. ROF 1 means it can only hit once, ROF 5 means it can hit up to 5 times in one attack. Don't set ROF too high or they become broken vs cities (at least if you don't adjust citizen and building HP).

In the custom rules I'm using now, any unit that has a bow or gun has a 0-range bombard equal to their attack strength with a ROF of 1. I also gave tanks and modern armor a 1-range bombard that's a little less than their attack. I havn't gotten to test Tanks yet but I've found archers and longbowmen to be almost essential in an army now, while not negating the usefulness of catapults or cannons. They might actually be a little too useful; I might need to increase their cost a tad.

[Alfonso]

[Jon Shafer]

Originally posted by Zurai001
In the custom rules I'm using now, any unit that has a bow or gun has a 0-range bombard equal to their attack strength with a ROF of 1. I also gave tanks and modern armor a 1-range bombard that's a little less than their attack. I havn't gotten to test Tanks yet but I've found archers and longbowmen to be almost essential in an army now, while not negating the usefulness of catapults or cannons. They might actually be a little too useful; I might need to increase their cost a tad.

Every bow or gun unit? That would make a successful attack nearly impossible in the age of gunpowder (which was difficult as it was)... Every time you attack a stack with Musketmen, then another Musketmen unit defends the first that you're attacking too... I can see using Archers and Longbowmen (with no attack or defense values for balance) as bombard units, but I think the way you have it makes it waaaay to hard to attack successfully.

[Alfonso]

yo creo que esas unidades sobran en el futuro...

[Zachriel]

The simplest way to make archery more "realistic" would be to let them move after the shot. Currently, you attack with archers, then move your footmen into the empty square, leaving your archers undefended. Archers would work "properly" if they could attack, then move them into the empty square with the footsoldiers. All bombard should move after the shot for this reason.

Leave archers as foot units with post-attack movement, but lethal attack. All non-lethal bombard units should also have post-attack movement. This should be easy to implement as most of the elements already exist in the game.