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?

  • Varyag@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    17
    ·
    1 month ago

    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.

    • Artyom@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 month ago

      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.

      • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        1 month ago

        Also because they were absurdly expensive for the civilizations that were using them. The loss of their chariots to Sea People invasions and the cost of replacing them is sometimes listed among the reasons for the Bronze Age collapse of the Hittites and the decline of Egypt despite their battlefield victories.

        • Kusimulkku@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 month ago

          And it takes a lot of time to train soldiers to effectively ride horses, shoot bows and especially to ride horses while shooting bows while also making sure there’s enough money/logistics to take care of those troops. Much easier to give tons of people a simple bow and tell them to have at it. Or spears. Just… spears for everyone.

    • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 month ago

      So you’re saying we just have to add a “horse farm” minigame that has to be played every time the units are used?

  • robolemmy@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    16
    ·
    1 month ago

    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.

    • Coelacanth@feddit.nu
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      1 month ago

      I guess they wanted a change after Keshiks and Camel Archers being completely busted in Civ V.

              • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                1 month ago

                They’re pretty easy to counter in Rome 2, you just need to remember it’s necessary and not all-in on heavy infantry. Infantry skirmishers clap them right back to the steppes and there are good auxiliary cavalry options from the start available in Italy.

                I definitely remember being frustrated when I first played it trying to chase them around with legionaries but the correct answer is don’t do that then.

      • BalooWasWahoo@links.hackliberty.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 month ago

        Ah, yes, mount and blade. Where not becoming a solo warrior of death horse archer is harder than not becoming a stealth archer in skyrim. If it helps, I liked to have big armies of the super ground archers and put two groups of shield infantry on the left and right of them. It seemed to work okay against horse archers.

        • Denjin@lemmings.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 month ago

          I always create a horde of lance wielding heavy knights and just plow through everything. Even better if you equip all your companions with jousting lances and take mass prisoners.

      • Kusimulkku@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 month ago

        Wasn’t it so that you could wreck them with foot archers? Even if they can’t fire further (don’t remember if that was the case) having foot archer vs horse archer shootout was always really costly exchange for the horsey bois.

  • Tattorack@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    1 month ago

    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.

    • lennivelkant@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      1 month ago

      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.

      • Tattorack@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 month ago

        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.

        • lennivelkant@discuss.tchncs.de
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 month ago

          Skirmishers as in “Light Cavalry”, designed to catch closing archery and ride them down? I’m not big on RTS (I suck at multitasking), but I’m always fascinated by gamified implementations of historical dynamics.

          I don’t suppose they also support “recruit auxiliary specialists” as option?

          • Tattorack@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 month ago

            Age of Empires II is honestly a somewhat strange combination of historical and not. Take, for example, the upgrade lines for certain units:

            Militia -> Man-At-Arms -> Longswordsman -> Two-Handed Swordsman -> Champion.

            So the skirmisher is a spear-throwing foot soldier with a shield. Historically a foot soldier would have a shield, a few throwing spears, and then a melee weapon. But in Age of Empires II the spear throwing and the melee are divided into two separate units.

            Age of Empires II does have a light cavelry line, though, and they’re pretty quick. But only civs historically known for their good cavelry have bonuses towards them that make the viable (i.e. There are various steppe-civs in AoEII, as well as Mongols and Huns, and I’m sure Turks and Saracens have some benefit to light cav as well).

            In this regard Age of Empires IV is more historically accurate, as that game can have completely unsymmetrical civs, whereas Age of Empires II has far more symmetrical gameplay.

  • *Tagger*@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    1 month ago

    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.

  • bouh@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 month ago

    Horse archers, or skirmishing units in general, are countered by archers or siege units. Unless the game is wildly unbalanced it always works.

  • undergroundoverground@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    edit-2
    1 month ago

    Much like in real life, see them off with large groups of light cavalry. Meet them on their own terms with something that can chase them down and mob them.

    Edit: but yeah, I find them to be largely ineffective or game breaking and nothing in-between.

  • Landsharkgun@midwest.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    1 month ago

    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.

  • Randomguy@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    edit-2
    1 month ago

    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.

  • Kusimulkku@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    1 month ago

    I think playing with them can be fun. And done right they usually have some counter. For example, foot archers being able to fire further than the horse archers so ample enough of foot archers should be able to cause them problems.

  • minimalfootprint@discuss.tchncs.de
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 month ago

    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.

  • xhrit@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 month ago

    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.