Best Arrow Types?

[EmperorBatman999]

Attila changes up the role of missiles quite a bit, and now range is a factor and ammunition is limited. I've been having some trouble readjusting and my archers barely score any kills during a battle when they used to shred enemies back in Rome II. So what arrow types are suitable for what purpose in Attila?

[Theo]

I rotate between flaming (morale) and whistling (before charging in the Horse Archers) most of the time. Heavy shot I use occasionally for sniping generals (this is when your army is made up entirely of horse archers).

Once you have killed the enemy generals, flaming arrows can end battles by themselves on the highest difficulties.

[wittmer85]

Did they fix heavy shot? Because I have significantly better effects just using flaming arrows always. Doesn't matter the unit type flaming arrows always cause the most casualties.

[RightNow0815]

You should look at the different traits the ammo types have. They offer some pretty "hard-counter"-ish options

Standard Shot VS low-armour Inf + skirmishers
35 Base + 10 AP, best used in combination with flaming vs LOW-ARMOUR INFANTRY
Example: 4 Archers in your army fight against 4 enemy archers, try to use three of 'em on standard shot to focus fire on the enemy while the 4th one tries to hit the morale with flaming shot. You can substitute the flaming shot unit with whistling shot, but as far as I experienced, it isn't that bad to kill some units when hitting with flaming - which damages the morale even further. Whistling shot however has more morale and other penalties, but imho flaming does the job better in this case.

Whistling Shot VS charging enemy infantry, unengaged wavering units (very situational)
10 Base + 2 AP, -12Morale, -8 Melee Attack, -25% Rate of Fire. Best used to fire one volley on charging enemy infantry units. But beware of friendly fire, so don't use against already engaged melee units.

Heavy Shot VS melee infantry
30 Base + 15AP + 10 Bonus VS Inf. Did you manage to get rid of the enemy Skirmishers and want to melt infantry? This is your choice.

Flaming Shot VS cavalry, combination with standard against skirmishers // with heavy against infantry
45Base + 0AP, +10 Bonus VS large, longer reload compared to standard shot. This is your choice to do both, morale and HP damage. Since cavalry plays a major role on the battlefield in TW:A always try to shoot at least a quick volley of flaming arrows on charging/flanking cavalry units. Even if no men drop, it does a considerable amount of HP damage and will ensure that your spear units // cavalry support faces less resistant enemies.

If you cant remember these chaotic data, just hover your mouse over the ability icon on the unit card. Essentially, the most effective use of each arrow type should be clear then.
I hope some things are clearer now.

Regards.

[AnonMilwaukean]

Right off the bat, tooltips for when you hover over arrow types show a variety of things.

For one, flaming arrows are better against cavalry (horses, camels, elephants) according to the tool-tip, but do less armor piercing damage and take longer to reload.
Secondly, heavy arrows are better against infantry, do more armor-piercing damage, but take even longer to reload.
Whistling arrows affect morale of all units they pass over (including your own).
Standard arrows reload the fastest, but do no extra damage and have no other effects.

This is paraphrasing from when you hover over the different ammo types while selecting ammo for the ranged unit at hand (though siege units vary). The ammo type is the first consideration.

The next consideration is the target: some units have a very high innate chance to block missiles, while others don't. At the same time, shield wall and other abilities can increase (or decrease) the chance to block for a unit. Hence, a unit with a high chance to block that is also deployed in a shield wall could feasibly sit and take ranged fire for eons and take only few casualties, while a shock cavalry unit in a wedge formation could take large casualties in just a single volley or two (wedge decreases block chance to something very low IIRC, essentially lowering the block chance to 0%).
All in all, I use flaming ammo against cavalry and towers, heavy ammo against targets with reasonable armor, and standard ammo against lightly armored opponents. Whistling ammo I use maybe on the first volley, while my ranged units are still out front, before pulling the ranged units back to protect them and let them fire over the heads of their comrades in the front line. Same stuff I did in R2, just now more units have a good chance to block incoming ranged fire, and the AI is better about changing unit formations to increase the blocking chance (or in the case of loose formation, to simply decrease the chance of even getting hits that have to be blocked).

In the end, it seems like ranged units now are less effective in general, as the OP pointed out. I never really check game files, but just qualitatively I'd say it feels like the chance to block missiles that are approaching from the front or side is higher than in R2. In the campaign I played as the Huns, I had to feint with their shock cavalry over and over again to get the AI units out of loose formation before firing on them with the mounted archers. Otherwise, the casualties that I inflicted via mounted archer fire were usually not so great.

Edit: The poster directly above me typed basically some of the same things that I typed here (next time, I should finish my post before getting a snack!). Hence, I got ninja'd, and his post gives a bit more quantitative info for you, even!