Am i missing something about arbalesters?

[de la Valette]

Someone has said in the longbow thread that you can't shoot over the heads of your own troops with arbalesters. Yet i do this all the time and they are just as effective.

Am i missing something?

[MonkeyMan]

on the flat, you'll hit hit your own troops sometimes, even on a hill, they'll have trouble aming as the enemy close in. I prefer to use arbelasters infront of a line of spears, and move the spears infront when the enemy are really close. As you say, you can put them behind your troops but you'll lose 1 or 2 from time to time.

[de la Valette]

Thanks as i don't play MP/custom battles there is no way to check how many of your own men they kill with out paying far too much attention to what your men are doing!

Can't be that bad as i didn't even notice with 5 sets of arbs firing over a line of spear troops on a flat until 3/4 of their ammo had gone.

[Puzz3D]

While it's fairly flat, there is some arc to the arbalester's trajectory. Depending on the relative positions of the units, it is possible to shoot over the heads of another unit on flat ground. It's also the reason why back killing does not extend very far behind the target unit. In situations where you are shooting though a friendly unit, it appears that men who don't have a clear line of sight to a target don't shoot. Since there is considerable inaccuracy in the shot, your own men can still get killed.

[Swoosh So]

Arbs can fire through woods and hit troops on the other side too! http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

[Puzz3D]

Hi Swoosh,

I think the firing through woods is a result of fewer trees. There are about 1/2 the trees in MTW than there were in STW, but they are a little bigger in diameter. One of the devs posted this a while back.