Shooting xbows and archers

[mic111]

Just have a maybe easy question.

Do xbowmen have to stand in front of enemy to be more accurate rather than back of your own troops and shoot over them? With Archers the case is easy as naturally they shoot up to give the speed to arrows but do not know about crossbows.

Is there any penalty (like shooting some of your units) in the game for placing xbowmen at the back?

[Zhou]

Well the answer is that it's better to have both your archers and crossbowmen in the front lines with a clear shot against the incoming enemy. If they are placed behind, say, a unit of spearmen, they will both tend to shoot nearly vertically into the air, and the result is a "shower" of arrows that is very inaccurate and deals paltry damage. Your crossbowmen will generally not shoot your own units in the back however (same probability as archers). Just keep in mind that for the most efficient use of your ranged units, you need to either place them in front of your lines or place them on an elevated area behind your lines.

[Artos]

Best use for them is to use them like arqebusiers/handgunners. At first place them at front and when the enemy engages, withdraw them to rear. Then you can use them effectively at the flanks. And try using them in elevated terrain like Zhou said.

I'm playing with mods though so in my game crossbowmen don't shoot like archers.

[Shazz]

Do crossbowmen hurt your own teammates if they are positioned semi-flanked to engaged enemy units ? Or do they randomly hit anything in their direction?

[Zhou]

Do crossbowmen hurt your own teammates if they are positioned semi-flanked to engaged enemy units ? Or do they randomly hit anything in their direction?

I am not sure I understand what you mean by "semi-flanked"...do you mean like having the crossbowmen out on the flanks of your main line concaved inward? Kinda like..

\_____________/

Where the \ and / are the crossbowmen? If that's the case then, yes, there will still be instances of friendly fire once the enemy forces have engaged your front line. However, in that instance, the crossbowmen will once again be in the role of pointing their crossbows skyward and shooting up at a steep angle as a way to "prevent" friendly damage, and will severely limit their effectiveness. Once initial contact is made, ranged troops need to either focus fire on the reserve units of the enemy force or be used as line infantry as most of their ranged damage dealing is done before the main battle lines meet.

[Shazz]

Yeah well semi-flanked was perhaps not the greatest term but yeah I get the main idea, because I was getting confused thinking you could actually use them on close-up infantry, which would make them 100 times better if they didn't inflict any team casualties.

Thanks for the help anyway Zhou.

[mic111]

Thanks that is all clear now. Generally I would think that manouvering with missle unmounted is quite hard to make.

[Zhou]

Honestly guys, I find the unmounted ranged units in this game to be very specialized in their roles. Archers and Crossbowmen are amazing at defending bridges and walls, but they are less than stellar in the open battlefield. Given the dominance of Heavy Cavalry in this game, unmounted ranged units (with the exception of certain units like the Almughadvars of the Spanish) are often too troublesome to be worth the time. They only deal minimal damage (2-3 flights of arrows/bolts) before initial contact and are left to either sit around or join the melee with subpar secondary weapons. There are only a few ranged units that I would constantly add to my armies regardless of type of battle, and they would be:

Longbowmen (Stakes are amazing)
Janissary Archers (Once again...stakes!)
Genoese Crossbowmen (Prolific melee fighters)
Adventurors (ARMORED longbowmen!)
Musketeers (Can cause serious damage)

As for the rest...like all the pavise crossbowmen and archer militia, etc, I would never use them as another unit would play a more active role in my military machine. Granted, I am a VERY big fan of missile cavalry, so I am biased

[pravoslavnie]

Best use for them is to use them like
I'm playing with mods though so in my game crossbowmen don't shoot like archers.

@ Artos

what mod are you using and how does it differ from vanilla? what exactly is different and how do you benefit from it?

[Ippius]

In general u want them to be at ur front and firing and u don't want them to do that really dodgy lob which hits nobody...
btw I think the French longbowman is the Scots Guard not Adventuros....

[Shazz]

I am a VERY big fan of missile cavalry, so I am biased

I too follow in the light of the HA . Although I always feel like somethings missing if I dont have any stakes deployed, so I always include a few archers .

[Zhou]

I too follow in the light of the HA . Although I always feel like somethings missing if I dont have any stakes deployed, so I always include a few archers .

You know, that just makes me wonder...how many archer units in the game actually have the deploy stakes ability? I can only think of the English Longbowmen and Janissary Archers. Any others? I wonder why they didn't give the stakes ability to more high-tier archers? Hmmm.

[Kalis]

Try the high tier archers with high melee stats.
For example, Byzantium Guard Archers (Trebizond archers work if you don't have access to Byzantium Guard Archers yet), and Venetian Archers.

They can shoot fire arrows to force routs, and they almost as good as armoured swordsmen in the melee too!

To be honest, I find archers are more for routing power than killing power.
5 archers all firing fire arrows can easily force a company to rout, and then you can send cavalry slashing in for the kill

[coreally]

I'll only ever use archers in an open battle if they have the long range ability. With that, they're very good for taking out enemy heavy cavalry as it draws up before a charge, targeting enemy artillery or for targeting the enemy general while the main battle occurs. Outside of that, my main armies will rarely have them. (much prefer a unit of any cavalry to them)

However, if I'm playing the Italian states I'll always have at lest 6-7 units of xbows. If I can move my xbows parallel or behind the enemy, they can cause awesome damage while my Militia units hold them. One note though. I will never fight with xbows in hilly countryside. They're useless. Unless you're defending, you're going to firing uphill which makes xbows redundent. Firing downhill is better, but as said before they don't have much time to fire before contact occurs.

[Tacticalwithdrawal]

Honestly guys, I find the unmounted ranged units in this game to be very specialized in their roles. Archers and Crossbowmen are amazing at defending bridges and walls, but they are less than stellar in the open battlefield. Given the dominance of Heavy Cavalry in this game, unmounted ranged units (with the exception of certain units like the Almughadvars of the Spanish) are often too troublesome to be worth the time. They only deal minimal damage (2-3 flights of arrows/bolts) before initial contact and are left to either sit around or join the melee with subpar secondary weapons. There are only a few ranged units that I would constantly add to my armies regardless of type of battle, and they would be:

Longbowmen (Stakes are amazing)
Janissary Archers (Once again...stakes!)
Genoese Crossbowmen (Prolific melee fighters)
Adventurors (ARMORED longbowmen!)
Musketeers (Can cause serious damage)

As for the rest...like all the pavise crossbowmen and archer militia, etc, I would never use them as another unit would play a more active role in my military machine. Granted, I am a VERY big fan of missile cavalry, so I am biased

then you are using them wrong

Crossbowmen in particular can decimate enemy infantry formations (particularly mounted ones).

I have often wiped out an enemy cavalry charge by targetting it with 2-3 units of crossbomen, often only a coupleof the knights make it to the ranks.

But yes, archers are better, they don;t have to fire direct-line (crossbows in anything else are a waste of time) so I often put units of archers in behind the first rank of spearmen, the damage they can do is fairly devestating.