Fire Emblem's Hollywood Archers

About the video itself I found some threads on r/askhistorians:


What I’ve gleaned from these posts is that the archery depicted in the video is only a separate style, but not the one true style archers used in the past. His style of archery isn’t a “forgotten art” so much as it wasn’t even an art many European medieval archers used to begin with. That is, the facets of archery that the video claims are “myths” aren’t actually wrong; those myths were true for some types of archery but not others. So the modern perception of archery (what the video tries to debunk) isn’t necessairly inaccurate as a whole. Remember that technologies and techniques tend to develop differently in different areas of the world; the archery in the video seems to have been mostly used by non-European (horseback?) archers, and that European archers worked the way you would imagine. I don’t know. I know very little about history, having never taken a proper history class. It just seems from the Reddit links that the claims the video makes are exaggerated, but not false (originally I was going to write that the posts said the video was all inaccurate, but then I realized that the posts that said so were mostly written by one person and they stuck out a lot in my head.)

Still an interesting video, in my opinion, but maybe the tone is too… click-baity? Promotional? “Cool?” It’s hard for me to describe this sort of thing.

What’s the takeaway for Fire Emblem, then? Maybe there could be more different archer classes, some of which use a type of archery like that depicted in the video, and some who act more like stereotypical Fire Emblem archers (i.e “modern” archery.) The former group could get a skill that allows them to attack at 1-range, as other posters here have said. The other could… hm… what are the advantages of stationary archery… have increased accuracy and critical rate? More sheer power? A fragile speedster vs mighty glacier divide seems logical, I guess, except the stationary archers might have increased range instead of having good defences… They would have three-range combat (or more?) in exchange for not having one-range combat. There’s obviously a lot of misconceptions about medieval combat and Fire Emblem probably uses plenty of them (weapons were almost never heavy enough to weigh the user down in real life, apparently), I suppose.

Also… what if the “modern” archer class could attack at ranges greater than three, but couldn’t double and/or had reduced damage? That might be interesting… and I think that might simulate uses of archers as artillery units better.

Don’t know what to say about crossbows. The video doesn’t actually say anything about them and I have little knowledge of them.

… Incorporating ideas like this into Fire Emblem is fun, I swear, at least as a theoretical exercise.

Welcome to the designers’ gang, lol. I love these sorts of theoretical ramblings.

The video was definitely “designed to go viral,” that’s pretty obvious. Still pretty fascinating. Basically: white people ruin everything, especially archery (cranking the badassery factor down from 11 to 4).

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well as far as crossbows go historically, i do remember seeing somewhere that in general they were typically favoured by mercenary’s in Europe at least, mostly due to the automatic nature and there relative power, but couldn’t match the longbow (or the english longbow and longbowmen) in sheer range and in power as well actually (correct me if im wrong) if your talking historically one needs to remember that archers in Europe had to deal with the knight, the medieval tank of Europe so they had to shot through thick armour. atleast of what i can remember of the top of my head.

Well, considering I found the video through r/fantasy - a totally different place - and the viewcount on the day-old video, I guess it did go viral, heh. That sort of thing isn’t necessarily bad, though, since more people can learn about this sort of thing. If the video were written in an academic tone, it almost certainly wouldn’t be this popular, even though it would be more accurate and more intellectually tight otherwise. There’s a bad and a good side to everything, I guess.

Also, the archery shown in this video would probably be used by a Hunter class. The modern perception of archery fits the regular Archer class, I think. Could an artillery archer be a branch promotion possiblity from the base Archer class? Considering that I don’t think artillery archers that fired en masse would have been very skilled, it would be more appropriate to make it a third tier 1 archer class, but what would that class promote into? (Maybe Ballistician?) Eh, artillery archers might be better off as regular archers considering that perhaps it’s what regular archers actually were, but having a third Archer class (not counting Bow Knight) would be pretty cool, though I’d imagine the game’s class tree would be pretty bloated.

I wonder if, in real life, crossbow users were different enough from regular archers so as to count for a different specialization… I wonder how making a separate class for crossbow users would turn out.

Hero Crest --> Hunter: Gets counterattacks at 1 range if the attacker misses, at 0crit penalty. The vanilla bow series gets 2-3 range, with -20 hit at range 3. Has only 5 move. Can’t use ballistae.

Orion’s Bolt --> Sniper: Gets to use crossbows. All attacks get +15 Crit. Bows at 2 range get +15 Hit. Can use Ballistae (which are likened to crossbows). Has normal promoted 6 move.

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as far as i am aware crossbows were more automatic as compared to longbows making them slightly easier to wield as far as i know. they were far closer to guns then bows were that’s for sure.

It’d look something like this, wouldn’t it @BwdYeti?

http://puu.sh/eYoPp.gif

Fire Emblem: Immortal Sword introduced a third T1 archer class, Crossbowman. Any regular bow they wield basically becomes a crossbow for simplicity’s sake; they use altered formulas Dmg = MT*(2 as T1, 3 as T2) - Def, and factor strength into accuracy. The Arbalest (T2 class) gets a skill that grants the ability to attack at 1-range; there aren’t actually any specific 1-2 range crossbows in FE7x.

I wonder how using (Skill/2) or something instead of (Str) in damage calculation for crossbows and similiar weapons (if you want a steampunk or modern FE, guns) would turn out, actually. It might make Skill less useless, and it does make a certain bit of favor sense, but it would only apply to a certain subset of units, and I’m not sure how accurate to reality that would actually be.

Or maybe make all bows use (Skill/2) + (Str/2) instead of (Str)? Just an idea I’ve had for a while. I’ve always been a little irritated at how Skill (or Luck) is usually seen as the least useful stat in FE.

(While I’m at it, other special weapons of other types that run off stats instead of Str or Mag to add to Might, like a tome named “Fortune’s Force” that uses the attacker’s Luck instead of their Mag, or other stats as the defensive stat, like an axe called “Delay Crusher” that uses the defender’s Speed instead of the defender’s Defence. But that’s not specific to bows.)

Steampunk remakes of FE1/6 now need to be made.

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steampunk remake all the way.

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cue cries of THEY RUINED FE FOREVER

Yeah, that’s the problem with remakes when you change the tone. People tend to be uncomfortable with change sometimes, especially when the change comes to something that’s a part of their pleasurable past or identity - in this case, an old video game.

As for me, though, I’d actually like the idea. Only after Exalted Legacy is finished, though. I’d want a more straightforward remake first.

(Would a steampunk FE have both archers and gunners? Would there be a conflict between them of some sort?)

Better idea yet; let’s make a Steampunk sequel to FE3 and call it a trilogy!

Speaking of which, this is still of relevance to my planning for Exalted Legacy. FE1 had Hunter as a second bow-wielding T1 class, and until now I’d been reusing the standard Nomad class. After seeing this, though, I’m definitely inspired to do something a bit more interesting with the class. Currently this is my thought for the promotion branch:

  • Archer - Bow - Sentry (+1 range when moving < 2 tiles) →
  • Sentinel - Lance/Bow - Sentry (+2 range from Sentry as a T2), Cover
  • Ranger - Bow/Sword - Guerilla (grants the ability to move after attacking)
  • Hunter - Bow - Pinpoint (+5 crit) →
  • Sniper - Bow - Precision (+15 crit), Toxotai (counter missed attacks at melee range, 0 crit penalty)
  • Warrior - Axe/Bow - Focus, Provoke

The Archer is faced with a choice between more movement and increased stationary production (encouraging the Sentinel to act similarly to an armor class - sticks with 5 mov). Hunters then face the choice of either doubling-down on their archery skills (a crit boost and limited melee attack) or a class that offers true melee options. Ballisticians are a non-promoting class of their own, as in the original.

Would Hunters be a mounted class, then? If not, would a third Bow Cavalier class be a good idea to complement axe/lance/sword cavaliers (if the weapon cavalier split is in EL), or should mounted archers be left to tier 2? One of the images in the video, and one of the Reddit threads, showed that horseback archers were the ones who might have done that style of archery.

Also, are you sure you’ll be able to implement those class skills?

(Given that modern archers tend to stand still, wouldn’t they have longer range when they’re not moving? The description for your Sentry skill says moving > 2 tiles, not moving < 2 tiles. Or maybe I’m misreading something?)

Hunters would be dismounted, and if I can find somewhere to easily plug in the Nomad class I’d be wiling to do that (since yeah, weapon cav split is definitely in EL and it’d complete the set).

As far as the skills go; I’d imagine the counter if enemy misses would be the most difficult one. Most of the others are relatively simple. One of these days when I have money I’m probs just gonna fork over some cash to the wizards to get a good skill system done.

Does it have to be “counter only if the enemy misses, and can’t crit?” I mean, that’s kind of complicated as you said, and maybe the class could be fine without that restriction. Or it could be “can’t double on the counter”, but that might be harder to implement.

“In the far off kingdom of X, a deadly new invention is made. With the advent of gunpowder, X’s offensive potential rises substantially, it conquers all of its neighbors without difficulty. It now threatens Altea. . . .”

“Lord Marth! GET TO THA CHOPPA. RETREEEEAAAAT”

Hey, that might actually be a good idea to link bows to guns in gameplay mechanics. Bows will still be the standard and would work they way they did earlier. Guns would be significantly more powerful and maybe work like crossbows (either not taking the user’s stats into account at all for damage, or using (Skill/2)), but would be rare since you’d be playing as Marth’s (Marth’s descendents?) faction, so would border on Too Awesome to Use. (That’s actually how guns would work in my personal FE setting, minus the Marth part.) Also, woujld guns have WTA against all non-gun physical weapons or something?
That’s still a bit of a pipe dream though. We’ll get to there eventually… maybe.
The question is: where would kingdom X be? Across the sea, I guess. The map of Marth’s continent seems pretty filled up.

Valm invents gunpower perhaps? Awakening takes place in the same world. That’s be interesting; if gunpowder were a “forgotten invention” in the distant future, kinda like Greek fire today.

I once had an idea for guns gameplay-wise; they’d be uncounterable/unable to counter attacks, too heavy to consistently double, but deal significant damage per hit. It’d make sense to take strength out of the damage calculations too, like what Yeti does with crossbows. The idea being that they basically disrupt the flow of combat (kinda like how the spread of guns upended traditional warfare).

From what I’ve heard that’s actually what guns were like before they overtook bows in warfare - large and slow to fire. But someone who’s actually studied history would know better than I do.

The whole “disrupting the flow of warfare” idea seems interesting, actually. But how would a Fire Emblem type game where everyone uses guns work, and more advanced guns that don’t take forever to fire? I don’t mean something like X-COM; I mean something you can tell is distinctly Fire Emblem with guns. In most JRPGs, guns never really seem all that different mechnically from any other weapons, and are often weaker because guns are given to mage and support classes for some reason, like Lucca in Chrono Trigger and Chemists in FFT (note: haven’t played FFT, but watched a stream of someone playing it recently for a good while.) Authentic gun-centered gameplay would be interesting, I guess, but I don’t know if it would be a good idea for an FE hack due to how that might change the flow of gameplay, with everyone being able to attack from range with weapons that deal large amounts of damage.

inb4 all maps become trench warfare and FE becomes reeeeally boring because it’s about outwaiting your opponent.