A Statistical Gameplay Analysis of Missile Units in Europa Barbarorum

[Chutiya]

Here is a custom-sortable list of every missile unit in EB 1, containing info on their range, missile attack, ammunition, and recruitability as of turn 1 starting positions on the campaign map.

No commander worth their salt can overlook missile units. They are so important in this game, particularly on the higher difficulty settings. And indeed they have been crucial in the real world too, to the point where modern warfare is conducted with essentially no melee combat at all. It's all about missiles in the 21st century. The importance of missiles is simple: it's always better to shoot your enemy safely from a distance than it is to engage hand-to-hand with them. Missile units maximize your kill/death ratio because they do not need to put themselves at risk of death in order to make kills, unlike melee units. Therefore, it is important to know what your best options are as an EB player in regards to the use of missile units. The purpose of this thread is to provide the reader with some information to assist in making those decisions.

Note that no javelin units are included on this list, because firstly javelins are all short ranged and nobody should need a guide on how to win a skirmish against javelins - just don't go near them, shoot them from your maximum range. If, as I said, the whole point of missiles is the ability to make kills on the enemy without exposing your soldiers to risk, javelins fail on that all-important measure, because they have to get in so close to the enemy to fire their missiles. They can't very well make kills without putting themselves at almost as much risk as a full frontal melee assault, which is their biggest downfall as far as missile units go.

Second, and more importantly, javelins are of such poor value. No javelin unit in the game has enough ammunition to take out an enemy unit completely, unless you manufacture some wildly unrealistic situation like shooting the most lightly armoured enemy unit imaginable, directly in the back from point blank range with a considerable high ground advantage, when they are in tight formation. The only thing javelins are good at is taking out elephants. Aside from that javelin units are only useful when they have a function other than merely shooting javelins - like the heavy infantry fielded by Rome and by the Greek factions, or Numidian Nobles and Tarentine Elite Cavalry; i.e. troops where throwing javelins is only a sideshow to their main ability. Specialist javelin skirmisher troops are among the weakest in the game due to their crippling tactical limitations, and therefore do not merit being considered in this analysis.

With that out of the way, let me offer my analysis based on these statistics as well as my considerable experience in using and going up against these units.

1. Saka Foot Archers are the best archer units in the game. They outrange the vaunted Cretan archers, as well as every other non-artillery missile unit in the game, meaning they will always defeat a unit of Cretans by virtue of being able to get a volley off before the Cretans can respond in kind. Of course this is ignoring considerations like armour upgrades and high ground/low ground scenarios, we are talking strictly about unupgraded units on perfectly even terrain standing 300 metres (or whatever unit of measure the range is calculated in-game) away from each other at the start of the battle. And moreover, the Saka player can recruit them from every single settlement in the game, making this particular unit an incredibly overpowered option around which to build an army.

The Cretans are however the 2nd best archers in the game, thanks to their range which betters all others except for the Saka Foot Archers, and their high missile attack, which together allow them to outpower as well as outrange all other competitors. The major drawback is that aside from mercenaries, they can only be recruited in Crete, Antioch, and Alexandria, making it more difficult to mass these units and build your army around them as the core missile troops.

An honourable mention for the Heavy Persian Archers, who have excellent range tied for equal-third in the foot archer class, a good missile attack value, and their good armour which should allow them to beat most other foot archers easily and even compete against the Cretans and Saka Foot Archers.

2. Artillery weapons have excellent stats but are wildly impractical due to their prohibitive recruitment and upkeep costs, and their reduced movement speed on the campaign map also makes them much less viable in single-player. There's no point in recruiting a fantastic unit if it can never get to the battlefield in time. Moreover, their low unit numbers, lack of any melee defence and armour also makes them a poor choice, as an enemy or human opponent can easily deal with them by shooting them down sacrificing a quarter-unit of low-value archers in exchange, or rushing them with light cavalry. It only takes a few volleys from an archer or slinger to destroy an entire unit of artillerymen, in which time you're not going to make too many kills on the enemy and those that you do make are low value. Artillery also tend to be inaccurate, meaning that theoretically a horse-archer unit moving around rapidly can take out an entire artillery corps without losing a single man.

3. Rhodian Slingers are the best anti-heavy cavalry missile unit in the game. Slingers in general, as we all know, are a fantastic counter to heavy cavalry. They're very cheap, very expendable, widely recruitable and therefore easily massed and easily replaced, and best of all, if you get three or four slinger units into an army they can be absolutely devastating against even the most heavily armoured enemy horsemen. Rhodian Slingers have all these attributes, but also have excellent range, outranging all other slingers and allowing you greater flexibility. Their only drawback is their recruitability as they can only be trained at Rhodes. This means that in practice on single-player Hellenic Slingers and Eastern Slingers are just as good as Rhodian Slingers, even if they will lose to them one-on-one and even if they require better micro skills in the subtle art of sniping enemy cavalry without being rushed by them - because you can pump out ten times as many Hellenic/Eastern Slingers per turn than you can Rhodian Slingers.

4. Early Saka Nobles are the best light/medium cavalry in the game. As far as horse-archers go, these are truly world class, thanks to their unsurpassed range which equals that of Cretan foot archers, and their excellent missile attack, which again equals the Cretans. On top of this they are well armoured. So, Early Saka Nobles should be able to win a skirmish against all but the heavy horse-archer type units, thanks to outranging, outpowering, and outarmouring all the other light/medium horse-archer units in the game. In addition they are very skilled in melee and able to go toe-to-toe against all but the heaviest of enemy cavalry in hand-to-hand combat. Think of them as if you could combine the qualities of a Cretan Archer, a Heavy Persian Archer, together with a Persian or Arabian Archer-Spearman, and put a horse under them. They are just monstrously overpowered.

An honourable mention in this category goes to the Roxolani Riders, who aren't as good as the Early Saka Nobles at any of those skills - archery both range and damage, armour, melee combat ability - but they are fast moving, an attribute which can be very valuable in itself in certain circumstances. Roxolani Riders are also superior to every other fast moving horse-archer, they are at least their equals as archers while being more armoured and better in melee.

5. Sarmatian Bodyguard is hands-down the best unit in the entire game, be that missile, missile cavalry, heavy cavalry, light cavalry, or even heavy infantry. General's bodyguards are by default always among the best units in the game, because they have 0 recruitment cost, require only 200 per turn per unit in upkeep, do not require the construction of buildings to be unlocked and recruitable, never need retraining, and replenish lost casualties over time. As long as you keep the general himself alive, his bodyguards are basically an immortal unit, which is what makes them so powerful. When you add to that the fact that they are incredibly cheap - you can maintain five units of bodyguards for the same price as one unit of Hellenistic elite phalanx - and quite often are also brilliant soldiers, you have what is by default the strongest unit class in the game.

The Sarmatian Bodyguards are the strongest units out of the strongest unit class. They are rivalled for this crown only by their Parthian and Saka counterparts, but the difference between them and the Sarmatians is that the latter are not affected by the vanilla Marian Reforms. When the Romans get their hands on a huge city, as they inevitably do unless the human player takes them out very early in the campaign, the Parthian and Saka bodyguards suffer from a huge nerf - they get converted from being armoured horse-archers who double as super-heavy duty shock cavalry into being pure cataphracts, which makes them much less threatening. Just throw a couple of slingers at them, park some mid-tier or even low-tier line infantry to give cover for the slingers in case they get rushed, and the Parthian/Saka bodyguards are essentially crushed. As pure cataphracts they have a hard counter in the form of slingers. As super-heavy horse-archers, they have no viable counters at all, because they can generally wipe out a unit of slingers before the slingers can kill them thanks to their archery. While it's true that one-on-one, the late Parthian/Saka bodyguard will defeat their Sarmatian counterpart, they are overall less effective against all other units in the game after they get the Marian Reform nerf that takes away their archery ability.

[Nad]

Very useful and some good insight.

I would disagree with some of your interpretations though. Take Saka Foot Archers and Cretans, where you rate Saka foot archers as the best archers in the game. Hmmm. Ok, so they have +8 metres range compared to Cretans. Big deal, 8 metres is insignificant in-game and barely time for one extra volley, if you assume that you are perfectly still and firing all the time and the opponent is moving towards you. But the Cretans have +1 missile attack and an extra 10 rounds of ammuntion. 10 rounds! That's huge, and when combined with the extra attack point, it means Cretans will do way more damage to opponents than Saka archers (between 30-50% more).

So I would not look at range as your #1 differentiator, that's flawed. Anything above 190m range is very long range in-game, the difference between that and 209m for the Saka in not significant (compared to for example the 143m range of levy archers; the difference between that and 190m is more significant).

Missile attack really matters. Since missiles have full lethality, every extra attack point effectively is a full % increase in kill rate; so a missile attack of 6 is 20% more lethal than a missile attack rate of 5. That makes a big difference in-game. And ammunition really matters. A unit with 35 ammo vs a unit with 25 ammo is going to do 40% more damage from having more missiles.

Your spreadsheet includes no details about defence, especially armour and shield to avoid the missiles of opponents, defence skill is less important. That has to be considered when thinking about effectiveness. Some archers like Caucasians have very good attack values, but will fall like flies compared to Cretans, Syrians and Heavy Persians, if attacked by missiles.

NB: the ownership is a bit misleading as some of these units can be recruited by all factions through regional barracks. It doesn't really matter ultimately if you get them through your factional barracks or regional barracks.

[mephiston]

This surely is an interesting topic that can bring up some valuable discussion. I don't see any "statistics" applied here really, but the premises are sufficiently clear to do some considerations.

The start is especially good, IMO:

No commander worth their salt can overlook missile units.

Both true and crucially important. Although missiles are considerably weaker than in vanilla RTW, they still play an important role and overlooking them will lead to unnecessary casualties or lost opportunities.

The point you make about not dealing with javelins is fair, as you seem to be more concerned about shooting enemies from afar as efficiently as possible.

Second, and more importantly, javelins are of such poor value. No javelin unit in the game has enough ammunition to take out an enemy unit completely, unless you manufacture some wildly unrealistic situation like shooting the most lightly armoured enemy unit imaginable, directly in the back from point blank range with a considerable high ground advantage, when they are in tight formation. The only thing javelins are good at is taking out elephants. Aside from that javelin units are only useful when they have a function other than merely shooting javelins - like the heavy infantry fielded by Rome and by the Greek factions, or Numidian Nobles and Tarentine Elite Cavalry; i.e. troops where throwing javelins is only a sideshow to their main ability. Specialist javelin skirmisher troops are among the weakest in the game due to their crippling tactical limitations, and therefore do not merit being considered in this analysis.

This I don't agree with. I guess you rarely played the Lusotannan, or the Sweboz: they both heavily rely on specialist skirmisher troops to screen their main line, take casualties and shower exposed units with a lot of javelins to cripple them before engagement.

Even without looking very far, Peltasts can give excellent performances thanks to their good javelins and okay defence and shield plus the secondary sword, meaning they can easily turn into a fast light-medium melee unit after having exhausted their ammunitions. It's true that you can't get much value out of the lowest tier of javelin throwers (Akontistai, Gund-i-Palta etc.) other than them being meatshields and cannon fodder, but hey, what would you expect?

Anyway, in the somewhat shallower SP archery system, compared to the MP one where you add in e.g. projectile accuracy, javelin throwers sometimes underperform and feel kind of lackluster overall. Your description is 100% accurate when you talk about javelin cavalry in SP: they're terrible, I agree. They cost too much, their javelins do little damage and they're too low in manpower to make up for their cost (javelins are efficient only in high numbers).

At this point, you move on to your considerations on specific units. Here you correctly identify some that are undoubtedly key to win missile fights, or play a relevant part in any battle they take part to. However, I think some reasoning is a bit too superficial: let's break down some concepts.

No. 1: steppe archers

Saka Foot Archers are the best archer units in the game. They outrange the vaunted Cretan archers, as well as every other non-artillery missile unit in the game, meaning they will always defeat a unit of Cretans by virtue of being able to get a volley off before the Cretans can respond in kind. Of course this is ignoring considerations like armour upgrades and high ground/low ground scenarios, we are talking strictly about unupgraded units on perfectly even terrain standing 300 metres (or whatever unit of measure the range is calculated in-game) away from each other at the start of the battle. And moreover, the Saka player can recruit them from every single settlement in the game, making this particular unit an incredibly overpowered option around which to build an army.

Nonsense. As already noted by Nad, how can they beat Cretans just with a couple of metres of advantage in range? They can get a volley off, okay, and then? They get torn to shreds. Cretans have +1 attack, +4 armour (6 compared to 2) and +1 shield (1 compared to 0), so they take much less casualties and dish out much more pain in comparison: better both in offensive and defensive capabilities. They can also turn into a decent light unit when fighting in melee. There's just too much value you can extract from Cretans, compared to the Saka archers. Not that I'm saying they're bad, mind you: steppe archers (Sakae, Sarmatians and also Caucasian archers in some sense) are the most cost-effective archers in the game, probably, even if they're vulnerable to cavalry, and their wide AOR makes them highly desirable. But they aren't the best.

No. 2: strongest archer units

The Cretans are however the 2nd best archers in the game, thanks to their range which betters all others except for the Saka Foot Archers, and their high missile attack, which together allow them to outpower as well as outrange all other competitors. The major drawback is that aside from mercenaries, they can only be recruited in Crete, Antioch, and Alexandria, making it more difficult to mass these units and build your army around them as the core missile troops.
An honourable mention for the Heavy Persian Archers, who have excellent range tied for equal-third in the foot archer class, a good missile attack value, and their good armour which should allow them to beat most other foot archers easily and even compete against the Cretans and Saka Foot Archers.

Probably the Cretans are the best overall in SP, in the sense that they have a high damage output combined with more than adequate defence to resist missiles. The Heavy Persians are good contenders too, thanks to their 7 armour, but they have inferior attack and range (as well as morale and discipline). I'm surprised you didn't mention the best archers in missile duels, which are undoubtedly the Bosporans: their 10(!) armour and 2 shield is basically impassable for any other missile unit. They aren't the best of the best when going offensive because of their 5 attack and "short" (compared to steppe archers) range, but they're still a powerful force to be reckoned with. If they're on the battlefield, they're just not going to die to missiles unless you make extensive use of machine guns.

No. 3: Artillery

Artillery weapons have excellent stats but are wildly impractical due to their prohibitive recruitment and upkeep costs, and their reduced movement speed on the campaign map also makes them much less viable in single-player. There's no point in recruiting a fantastic unit if it can never get to the battlefield in time. Moreover, their low unit numbers, lack of any melee defence and armour also makes them a poor choice, as an enemy or human opponent can easily deal with them by shooting them down sacrificing a quarter-unit of low-value archers in exchange, or rushing them with light cavalry. It only takes a few volleys from an archer or slinger to destroy an entire unit of artillerymen, in which time you're not going to make too many kills on the enemy and those that you do make are low value. Artillery also tend to be inaccurate, meaning that theoretically a horse-archer unit moving around rapidly can take out an entire artillery corps without losing a single man.

Totally agree. Artillery units are the crappiest shooters ever.

No. 4: slingers

Rhodian Slingers are the best anti-heavy cavalry missile unit in the game. Slingers in general, as we all know, are a fantastic counter to heavy cavalry. They're very cheap, very expendable, widely recruitable and therefore easily massed and easily replaced, and best of all, if you get three or four slinger units into an army they can be absolutely devastating against even the most heavily armoured enemy horsemen. Rhodian Slingers have all these attributes, but also have excellent range, outranging all other slingers and allowing you greater flexibility. Their only drawback is their recruitability as they can only be trained at Rhodes. This means that in practice on single-player Hellenic Slingers and Eastern Slingers are just as good as Rhodian Slingers, even if they will lose to them one-on-one and even if they require better micro skills in the subtle art of sniping enemy cavalry without being rushed by them - because you can pump out ten times as many Hellenic/Eastern Slingers per turn than you can Rhodian Slingers.

Everything is correct, I think. The only downside of slingers is their low number, which makes them kinda vulnerable in missile fights (meaning that if you overdo in piling up slingers in your armies without archers, they'll get shot and lose men unnecessarily). Anyway in loose formation they're more spaced out than archer and this always helps. Balearic slingers are also super effective vs cavalry, because of their higher attack, but the much shorter range is dangerous and thus they need way more babysitting.

No. 5: horse archers

Early Saka Nobles are the best light/medium cavalry in the game. As far as horse-archers go, these are truly world class, thanks to their unsurpassed range which equals that of Cretan foot archers, and their excellent missile attack, which again equals the Cretans. On top of this they are well armoured. So, Early Saka Nobles should be able to win a skirmish against all but the heavy horse-archer type units, thanks to outranging, outpowering, and outarmouring all the other light/medium horse-archer units in the game. In addition they are very skilled in melee and able to go toe-to-toe against all but the heaviest of enemy cavalry in hand-to-hand combat. Think of them as if you could combine the qualities of a Cretan Archer, a Heavy Persian Archer, together with a Persian or Arabian Archer-Spearman, and put a horse under them. They are just monstrously overpowered.
An honourable mention in this category goes to the Roxolani Riders, who aren't as good as the Early Saka Nobles at any of those skills - archery both range and damage, armour, melee combat ability - but they are fast moving, an attribute which can be very valuable in itself in certain circumstances. Roxolani Riders are also superior to every other fast moving horse-archer, they are at least their equals as archers while being more armoured and better in melee.

Ah, those surely don't belong to the light cavalry label, lol! They are in a totally different league, at least medium cavalry. I personally prefer the Roxolani due to the superior speed and stamina, but yours is a good choice anyway. In SP horse archers are just overpowered, no need to beat around the bush: not even foot archers (their natural counter) can deal with them effectively.

No. 6: the dreaded general's bodyguards

Sarmatian Bodyguard is hands-down the best unit in the entire game, be that missile, missile cavalry, heavy cavalry, light cavalry, or even heavy infantry. General's bodyguards are by default always among the best units in the game, because they have 0 recruitment cost, require only 200 per turn per unit in upkeep, do not require the construction of buildings to be unlocked and recruitable, never need retraining, and replenish lost casualties over time. As long as you keep the general himself alive, his bodyguards are basically an immortal unit, which is what makes them so powerful. When you add to that the fact that they are incredibly cheap - you can maintain five units of bodyguards for the same price as one unit of Hellenistic elite phalanx - and quite often are also brilliant soldiers, you have what is by default the strongest unit class in the game.

Another insane unit in SP. Really, they're just broken. Now that you make me think about it, it's truly the best unit overall in SP. There are other units that are better in a single, specific field: the other Eastern factions and all the Successors field bodyguards that are just as cheap but better in melee, other horse archers are more effective because they're more numerous, most of the elite infantry is a lot stronger in prolonged fights and is extremely sturdy against charges. However, the unique combination of qualities of the Sarmatian bodyguards make them insanely good at doing a lot of different things, so that their versatility is unsurpassed.
Still, you need to be super careful when dealing with slingers, as they can pick off valuable men.


Good post overall: I like your considerations regarding especially the general's bodyguards.

Hopefully the next iteration of EB will include the accuracy parameters for all missiles, already used in the MP part of the game. Missile use can become much more interesting that way, as you have another element determining the effectiveness of a missile unit: it doesn't boil down only to "how much attack has unit X" vs "how much defence has unit Y", things get a bit more complicated. If you're interested, take a look at my small research on missile units in EB multiplayer.

[Chutiya]

Very useful and some good insight.

I would disagree with some of your interpretations though. Take Saka Foot Archers and Cretans, where you rate Saka foot archers as the best archers in the game. Hmmm. Ok, so they have +8 metres range compared to Cretans. Big deal, 8 metres is insignificant in-game and barely time for one extra volley, if you assume that you are perfectly still and firing all the time and the opponent is moving towards you. But the Cretans have +1 missile attack and an extra 10 rounds of ammuntion. 10 rounds! That's huge, and when combined with the extra attack point, it means Cretans will do way more damage to opponents than Saka archers (between 30-50% more).

So I would not look at range as your #1 differentiator, that's flawed. Anything above 190m range is very long range in-game, the difference between that and 209m for the Saka in not significant (compared to for example the 143m range of levy archers; the difference between that and 190m is more significant).

Missile attack really matters. Since missiles have full lethality, every extra attack point effectively is a full % increase in kill rate; so a missile attack of 6 is 20% more lethal than a missile attack rate of 5. That makes a big difference in-game. And ammunition really matters. A unit with 35 ammo vs a unit with 25 ammo is going to do 40% more damage from having more missiles.

Your spreadsheet includes no details about defence, especially armour and shield to avoid the missiles of opponents, defence skill is less important. That has to be considered when thinking about effectiveness. Some archers like Caucasians have very good attack values, but will fall like flies compared to Cretans, Syrians and Heavy Persians, if attacked by missiles.

NB: the ownership is a bit misleading as some of these units can be recruited by all factions through regional barracks. It doesn't really matter ultimately if you get them through your factional barracks or regional barracks.

No. 1: steppe archers



Nonsense. As already noted by Nad, how can they beat Cretans just with a couple of metres of advantage in range? They can get a volley off, okay, and then? They get torn to shreds. Cretans have +1 attack, +4 armour (6 compared to 2) and +1 shield (1 compared to 0), so they take much less casualties and dish out much more pain in comparison: better both in offensive and defensive capabilities. They can also turn into a decent light unit when fighting in melee. There's just too much value you can extract from Cretans, compared to the Saka archers. Not that I'm saying they're bad, mind you: steppe archers (Sakae, Sarmatians and also Caucasian archers in some sense) are the most cost-effective archers in the game, probably, even if they're vulnerable to cavalry, and their wide AOR makes them highly desirable. But they aren't the best.

Thank you both for your replies.

Yes, I agree, I had forgotten about the armour that Cretans have which would let them win a skirmish all other things being equal against Saka Foot Archers, despite being outranged by them.


However, and this is purely personal, I still think I would prefer Saka Foot Archers over Cretan Archers. This is because of the way I structure my armies and the role that archers play in them. If you have a different playstyle then it wouldn't be the case.


I structure my armies around slingers, because for me the most useful skill of missile units is taking out the enemy general's bodyguard, which archers aren't good at due to how well armoured those units tend to be. So I'd have four or five slinger units plus one archer in my standard army. The archer is just there for some variety, to provide a different tactical option mainly for siege battles. As we all know, phalanx pathfinding inside cities is terrible especially on the approach to the town square where the enemy usually concentrates its units. So the way to deal with sieges is to set up your phalanx line a distance away from the town square, far away enough that the enemy won't get triggered to rush you, and far away enough to give them enough time to finish doing the stupid phalanx dance that they do where they spin around endlessly before deciding to get set up in the formation and position you wanted them to move to.


Once they are set up near the town square you don't want your phalanx to move at all due to the terrible pathfinding, in order to minimize unnecessary casualties. So to win the fight the enemy has to come at you. That's where I use my one archer unit per army, I move them behind the line and have them shoot into the town square, triggering the AI into rushing at my ready phalanx line. They're better than slingers at this because they don't inflict as much friendly fire damage. And really this is the only reason for which I recruit archers. In all other situations whatever they do for me is just a bonus, the main reason I give those guys a job is to kite the AI into leaving the town square. Which I wouldn't even need to do if the phalanx pathfinding wasn't so horrible. The archers are a way to get around Rome Total War's worst design flaw.


For this type of role, obviously the more range the archers have the better it works. Ideally you want to draw out the defenders as far away from the town square as possible, to give you the opportunity to hit them in the rear with cavalry whilst they are engaged with your phalanx. The Saka Foot Archers with their incomparable range would therefore be my number one choice.

[Chutiya]

For some reason I can't seem to edit my post. I forgot to add, I will reply to the other things you guys wrote as well, in time. And my last paragraph, I wanted to add that in that specific scenario I value range more than damage. It doesn't matter how many kills the archers make, they just need to get one or two per volley and that's generally enough to make the AI commit to rushing out of the town square.

[mephiston]

I see. That makes much more sense now. Thanks for clearing it up: in the framework of your strategy the long range is probably the most important asset, even if I still think that including Cretans would serve your purposes even better, since their range is just slightly inferior than that of the Sakae (at the expense of the replenishment rate of your archers, but who cares? You say you have only one of them in your armies.), but of course it's a matter of personal preference.

PS Probably you need to reach 20 posts before being able to edit your own messages.