Who the hell finds it fun to either waste time trying to lure them into a trap or chase them down? And it’s so much worse against ai because they don’t need to micro manage the way humans have to so it seems whenever I use them they get wrecked under the first half assed volly from any unit. This applies to literally any game. Who has fun with this shit?
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Horse archers, or skirmishing units in general, are countered by archers or siege units. Unless the game is wildly unbalanced it always works.
Repost. Stolen from an Asian news site in the 13th century.
Which in turn reposted it from a Roman source
Pretty sure, historically, they were also pretty powerful. I remember at one point reading about several nations that had serious issues with horse archers. A ranged unit of constant mobility, of course they’d be difficult to deal with.
How effective they are does depend on what kind of game you’re playing, however.
In Age of Empires II horse archers are only really good in those civilisations that have adequate research for them. And then it requires a good deal of player skill to micro the units to make use of their enhanced mobility.
In Mount and Blade Bannerlord it all depends on terrain. Horse archers are deadly on any sort of open terrain, but introduce trees or even a mild amount of rockiness and those horse archers are in a serious disadvantage.
They were also rare. To effectively pull off horse archery, you needed good horses, good riders that also happened to be good archers (both of which weren’t trivial on their own, let alone combined) and good coordination. Bows are more effective the closer you are, so to get the most out of your arrows, you’ll want to close in, but then you also need to wheel off again without your riders getting in each other’s way, so you needed to drill maneuvers for that.
So you either need to have a sufficiently large body of soldiers with the leisure to train both archery and riding instead of working the fields, or you needed a society that treats them as basic skills anyway and only needed training in the military application. Nomadic peoples like the Scythians or Mongols often had the former, so they were notable sources of dangerous mounted archery, particularly where the raising and support of a professional army wasn’t feasible. Rome had the Equites Sagitarii, but they were part of the distinct social class we would call Knights, so not your rank-and-file soldier (and those were already more professional than later levy- or retinue-based militaries).
So if we were concerned about accuracy*, these units should be expensive and require good management to make the most of them, but be very dangerous too. The point about open / closed terrain certainly fits as well.
What’s a bit more foggy is how games usually handle bow effectiveness at range, but that’s its own topic.
*I do care about accuracy, but not at any cost - games need to be fun too, and that’s worth sacrificing some accuracy for.
Yeah, in Age of Empires II they’re more expensive than Skirmishers, who are archer-countering units. They’re also more expensive than regular archers, and that’s not going into the research that a good cavalry archer needs, as they’re also subject to some of the most expensive research options.
In Bannerlord you can get good horse archers only be recruiting young nobles. Then you have to spend time on levelling them up, because at the lower tiers they’re just not that good, and you risk a number of the dying before they reach a high enough level.
So between the two games I play that prominently feature horse archers, I’d say they’re managed pretty well, with the increased costs, slower training times, player skill, or levelling requirements.
The age old conundrum of the unit that may or may not be strong in real combat situations, but becomes absolutely gamebreakingly busted when added to videogames, because it’s strenghts translate into overwhelming advantages with none of the real life drawbacks it had to endure, usually via game design, bad balancing or games putting said units in unrealistic situations.
Take for example anti-aircraft guns since WW2. Other than the obvious real example of the FlaK88 being turned into an AT gun by the Germans, several others of these become anti-infantry or even anti-armor rapid firing nightmares in war games, because they’re put well inside their optimal range and within threatening range of infantry and tanks. Which would usually destroy them from afar. The OTO Melara gun is a good modern example. Italian radar guided 110mm naval gun, was never mounted onto a proper line vehicle that was adopted by any country. But the prototypes, like the OTOMatic, absolutely terrorize every game where they appear, as a hyper accurate, rapid firing, high damage anti-everything gun.
Horse archers are just the ancient ages example of that.
Um…archers on chariots were almost certainly extremely effective in any era they appeared. The main reason they stopped being popular in combat was because horses became big enough to ride after thousands of years of breeding.
So you’re saying we just have to add a “horse farm” minigame that has to be played every time the units are used?
The horse archers in civ 6 are so pathetically lame that the only reason to build even one is to get 3 points toward a golden age. The computer builds swarms of them, of course, but anything can kill them, even a recon unit.
I guess they wanted a change after Keshiks and Camel Archers being completely busted in Civ V.
You can have a giant swarm of them though, it’s fun
I am mostly talking about bannerlord and total war.
In Rome Total War they are really nicely balanced imho.
Less about balance and more about them being fun to play against
Would balancing not make them fun to play against?
Not really. They still take a lot of time to deal with.
It’s chess where I find they’re super op - I mean seriously, the ability to no scope bishops from across the map while moving like a knight is totally unbalanced and the Devs need to too back the update.
Thank you. You just gave me a flashback to Total War: Rome campaign I played as a kid. I didn’t play long, because it got boring fast. I had exclusive horse archer armies that wiped out whole armies without losses.
Horse archers are amazing lmao. If you’re throwing them directly into the front lines they will be fucked several times over. Understand: they are merely archers that can quickly reposition. This makes them one of the best units in the game.
Deploy them to the far flank and reposition them frequently. They are excellent at drawing out the enemy cavalry so you can harass them, hit them with your own cav, etc. Big block of infanty? Harassing fire. Other horse archers? Wait for them to engage your footed archers and then deploy your horse archers to double up on them.
Their weakness, as you’ve noticed, is large blocks of powerful foot archers. That is what your cavalry or heavy infantry is for. Once your other forces engage, then deploy your horse archers. They’re a reserve force and a force multiplier.
That’s fine. But it takes so long to deal with them that it kills my patience
I like them in fire emblem, I suppose they have too much range in three houses but in most games (in the franchise) they’re actually pretty bad.
IDK. I skipped horse archers in my latest dark elves playthrough of total war warhammer 3, because they are so trash. No shields + large targets means they die really easy to missile fire, And since you can’t use a longbow on horseback they lack the range to engage other archer units without taking a few volleys first.
Basically they are only good for fighting factions like undead that that have no ranged units.
Chariot archers > horse archers
The Huns would like a word with you.
Depends on the terrain
