Archers oneshotting people in mail, outrunning melees, swinging faster than melees and kill them in 3 - 4 hits while having no counter but simultaniously countering cav ? Are you sure we are talking about the same game here ?
While I agree that Lemmy doesn't seem to be up to date concerning a few changes (e.g. the running speed), he is right about the real counter. It's like cavalry: you have someone who is more or less untouchable for you as long as he is focusing you (shielder for archers, pikeman for cav), but you have no one who - once focused you - brings you in trouble (as the shield and the armour often slow down the shielder as much as the arrows slow down the archer). At least not for the majority of the round. Of course you are in trouble when the enemy survivors of the infantry clash in the middle start cleaning the map, especially with the mobility nerf. But I mean a class which naturally is really effective against archer, without having good chances of being killed by the archer himself. That's why I exclude cavalry from that list. Yes, you die most often to them, but they also die most often to you.
I think in this case the upkeep is the problem, because it basically killed the class of heavy or even plated cavalry. With heavy cavalry (and a few proper soak stats for armour and horse) archers would have a counter again. This change would also need a few other changes, and so on. I just want to point out that my biggest problems I have with cRPG are not some item stats or skill mechanics (although some of them are horrible indeed, e.g. that the 18str archer is more or less the standard build, and that other builds with less or especially with more str are not that optimal), the biggest problem are two things: the battle game mode, which favours some classes and discriminates against some others, and the absolutely fucked up and useless upkeep system, which only rudimentally accomplishes its job on restricting items, so that the viabilities of items had to be varied, resulting in a reduction of variety.
Unless these points don't get fixed, cRPG will never be without constant complaints and lobbying of different, unfortunately not small groups.
