Archers, Crossbowmen or Mounted Archers?

[Gazza the Lionheart]

I am currently playing M:TW version 1.0 and am about to starting building my forces up. I have decided to play as the HRE, who I haven't used before, and noticed they had mounted crossbowmen. Having never used a mounted missile unit before I was wondering which missile unit was the best to use, archers, crossbowmen or mounted missile units?

[Cheetah]

Crossbowmen are definitely better than archers, so get them as early as you can. Mounted range units are of a different class, they are mostly useful for harassing your opponent, attacking his inf ranged units and chasing down routed units. I always have 1 or 2 horse archers, szekely, mounted srg, etc in my armies. They require more micromanagent than the foot archers but they worth the investment.

[ichi]

I've got a campaign going right now with the HRE (MTW WesMod) and Mounted XBows are a critical part of my army. In smaller battles I use them to flank and harass, then chase routers (a la Cheetah).

In larger battles (more than 20 units) I start off with 6 or 8 Mounted XBows on the field. I hold my other units back while the Mounteds go to work; I work 3 or 4 on one enemy unit at a time (usually the highest quality I can get to), until it gets below 1/2 strength. The Mounteds take some archer fire, but that means fewer missiles for the rest of my guys to absorb.

Sometimes the AI will send units to chase; then I skirmish and wear 'em out or lure them close to my fighters and trap 'em.

They have a slow rate of fire, but when they are out of ammo I withdraw them (one note-this has given a few units some coward vices) and bring on the rest of my fighters and foot archers.

With critical units depleted or tired, and some archer units out of ammo, the enemy army is easier to beat. Just have to be careful not to run off too much time in the first phase.

In MP, one Mounted XBow can also provide recon and at high enough valor even harass enemy archers lines.

Cav archers are vulnerable to enemy archer fire, and with only 40 guys per horse archer unit, I think you still need foot archers. Quite frustrating to watch them forget to skirmish and get wiped out by cav.

I put a thread in the Main Hall that gives the stats for cav archers.

ichi

[Voigtkampf]

Err, if I remember correctly, the crossbowmen can't shoot over the heads of the first lines, and since I almost alwas put up a defense line of speermen in front of my missile units, the crossbowmen seem inappropriate for that position. In my experience they can give up perhaps two voleys on the charging unit before they have to spur and run behind the speermen in order not to get spanked up http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif

Therefore I use archers, but mounted archers are perfect for harassing the enemy, especially for slower footmen. But archers are not the key unit of any army and I don't recommened ever having more than two cav archers or max three archer units.

[Lord Rom]

Even tho they dont shoot over the front line's head they are still very valuable behind you infantry targeting enemy infantry. They lower the enemy morale since they are taking fire and manage to hit some now and then. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[HawaiianHobbit]

I use archers, the crossbow men and mounted crossbow men don't fire fast enough for me.

[frogbeastegg]

If crossbows have a height advantage they can shoot over the heads of other units so just stick them on a slope like so:

http://www.totalwar.org/strategy/frog/xbowgoodside.jpg

Archers do have their uses after crossbows appear, especially against the AI and its rubbish armies. Archers have a higher rate of fire so if you are confronted with a large mob of unarmoured targets (like the AIs peasants, militia etc) archers can really do damage. Crossbows are still very effective against unarmoured targets but they cannot shoot as quickly, leaving the archers with a tiny advantage in this situation. Against armoured units there is no question though - take crossbows. You should consider arbalesters over crossbows, they aren't much further up the tech tree and they are even better against armoured targets.

Mounted missile units are a bit of an aquired taste as they can be very fiddly and require a bit of practise to use well. Try them out in a few custom battles and see what you think. Infantry missile units have better range and accuracy so it is always good to pack a few in your army even if you have some mounted missiles.

[Red Harvest]

Assuming we are talking Early, I would go for archers or mounted crossbows--with regular crossbowmen a distant third. Fire rate is low for crossbows, but mounted crossbows are mobile enough to compensate. Where mounted Xbows shine is in things like delaying, drawing out enemy cav, chasing routers, and charging into archers in the enemy rear once full engagement commences. Archers are a better pure missile unit until you hit later eras with more armour. Their main advantage is rate of fire. They will inflict casualties much more rapidly than xbows unless the enemy has good armour.

Later on you want arbalesters of some sort. They have better range and hit much harder.

[Brutal DLX]

Mtd. xbows are the first cav you can build, ie lowest on the tech tree if I recall correctly, so they are a must to build until you can get mounted Sarges.
They are good versus any kind of foot infantry but unless they are of high valour you better avoid using them to charge any other unit, save archers. Since they use crossbows, they don't do much damage so you will primarily use them to make enemy units chase them.

So, they are not a real missile unit, use foot archers for that until you can get pavise crossbows/arbalesters.

[Russ Mitchell]

Mounted archers, in vast quantities.

Or, "It's fun to charter some akinji, and ride them all across the Christian Sees..."

People complain all the time that the archers run out of arrows too soon, particularly horse archers, who can regularly reposition themselves... used correctly, this is an advantage, not a defect... People have this funny idea that the purpose of battle is to win. That's well and good, but the purpose in battle in the middle ages was very often to force your neighbor to try to live small while you sat pretty... you can do that with traditional horse-archer tactics... simply build up or hire several stacks (size dependent on context, obviously), and send them in to shoot the heck out of whatever they've got on offer. I once had a 2/3-strength unit of horse archers almost manage to undo a King's retinue when the AI left him unguarded in a "behind theater" province... but that meant that the next time I attacked, his unit with six remaining horsemen didn't fare so well... particularly for the interfaith slugfests so common to Horsearcherland, it's highly profitable to simply go in and beat the snot out of their units and run away before they can do you any real harm, constantly keeping them understrength. Mounted xbow troops can do it too, after a fashion, but they'll be much more liable to be chased down by heavy and medium cav in the process...

[lancer63]

Them three are equally useful to me. archers are great to take on advancing masses and the only non artillery unit which can destroy stockades. An the overhead shoot has its uses too.
x-bows are good to me in desert conditions and to harrass slow foot units. Agreed arbalesters are better against armor and have better defense but kind of miss it in the desert and don't like to use them to kill peasants and militia. Waste of expensive ammo.
Mounted x-bows are a must to me. They are annoying foes and strong enough to defend against any non spear, no armor unit. They can tie down more valuable units like royals pronoiai or feudal/chiv. cavalry.

[Aymar de Bois Mauri]

Quote[/b] ]Them three are equally useful to me. archers are great to take on advancing masses and the only non artillery unit which can destroy stockades. An the overhead shoot has its uses too.
x-bows are good to me in desert conditions and to harrass slow foot units. Agreed arbalesters are better against armor and have better defense but kind of miss it in the desert and don't like to use them to kill peasants and militia. Waste of expensive ammo.
Mounted x-bows are a must to me. They are annoying foes and strong enough to defend against any non spear, no armor unit. They can tie down more valuable units like royals, pronoiai or feudal/chiv. cavalry.
I agree. I use them the same way, although with MC I tend to avoid melee with RK, Pronoai or Feudal/Chiv...

[desdichado]

I've found that x-bows can fire over the heads of infantry in front even if on level ground. Perhaps this reduces their accuracy but they can do it.

Gazza the Lionheart - I notice from your post you are using MTW v1.0. Am I right in assuming you have not patched the game? May be something you want to try as it fixes a lot of early issues (such as overpowered spearmen) but be aware it will change availability of some troop types to the correct period (early, high, late).

All missile units have their uses so won't restate what everybody else has talked about but mounted x-bows are just fun to play with. When I'm defending I'll put the mouted x-bows way out front and to the side. If you keep them out of range of enemy foot missile troops AI will quite often ignore them. Wait till the main body of AI army passes and then target the heavy cav/inf in the rear. Almost guaranteed to disrupt their line of march. Quite often you're main body will face the front line of enemy while the rear is still making up its mind what to do. Move in your forces, crush them and then mop up the rest.

[Foreign Devil]

Quote[/b] (desdichado @ Dec. 08 2003,21:58)]
One fun use for mounted xbows I don't think anyone mentioned is to use them against enemy royal knights. Often, in early these are the most powerful unit the AI has. Since there are only 20 of them, you can kill most of a unit with only a few volleys.

You can often force an enemy general/King to withdraw this way. I once made the pope himself run from the battlefield screaming like a girl... ooh man was that satisfying.

[DojoRat]

Quote[/b] (lancer63 @ Dec. 08 2003,17:31)]Them three are equally useful to me. archers are great to take on advancing masses and the only non artillery unit which can destroy stockades. An the overhead shoot has its uses too.
x-bows are good to me in desert conditions and to harrass slow foot units. Agreed arbalesters are better against armor and have better defense but kind of miss it in the desert and don't like to use them to kill peasants and militia. Waste of expensive ammo.
Mounted x-bows are a must to me. They are annoying foes and strong enough to defend against any non spear, no armor unit. They can tie down more valuable units like royals pronoiai or feudal/chiv. cavalry.
Can you really use archers to attack stockades? I assume you mean with their arrows, since any unit can tear down a wall.[U]

[Aymar de Bois Mauri]

Quote[/b] ]One fun use for mounted xbows I don't think anyone mentioned is to use them against enemy royal knights. Often, in early these are the most powerful unit the AI has. Since there are only 20 of them, you can kill most of a unit with only a few volleys.

True. They are quite effective.



Quote[/b] ]You can often force an enemy general/King to withdraw this way. I once made the pope himself run from the battlefield screaming like a girl... ooh man was that satisfying.
Yeah, happened to me too.
Entertaining to say the least... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif

[Aymar de Bois Mauri]

Quote[/b] ]Can you really use archers to attack stockades? I assume you mean with their arrows, since any unit can tear down a wall.
When you attack a wooden castle, your archers will use fire arrows to burn the stockades wood. The same with siege engines.

There are some images on some posts, but I don't know were they are.

[HopAlongBunny]

Mounted crossbow can be very effective. Slow rate of fire, but they got range. If used with HA you can really do damage http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif Let the HA pull the unit you want, faster firing=greater amount of attn; MC's sit back and start firing as unit chases HA-unit usually continues after HA and MC's continue firing as unit passes. Often, about the time the unit hit MC max range on fly-by, MC's now have units attn and unit begins to come back. Ping-pong MTW style http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[DojoRat]

Quote[/b] (Aymar de Bois Mauri @ Dec. 09 2003,12:26)]
Quote[/b] ]Can you really use archers to attack stockades? I assume you mean with their arrows, since any unit can tear down a wall.
When you attack a wooden castle, your archers will use fire arrows to burn the stockades wood. The same with siege engines.

There are some images on some posts, but I don't know were they are.
Thanks,

This will help in VI.

[Aymar de Bois Mauri]

Quote[/b] ]
Quote[/b] ]
Quote[/b] ]Can you really use archers to attack stockades? I assume you mean with their arrows, since any unit can tear down a wall.

When you attack a wooden castle, your archers will use fire arrows to burn the stockades wood. The same with siege engines.

There are some images on some posts, but I don't know were they are.

Thanks,
Anytime... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif




Quote[/b] ]This will help in VI.
Precisely, VI is all about wooden fortifications... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Hurin_Rules]

Mounted X-bowmen are fantastic.

A few of their uses:

Use impetuous units' impetuosity against them. When they come out to attack your mxbows, pull them out further and just wear them down. One time, I fought a Danish army that had 6 mounted knights but only one unit of archers. My 7 units of mounted xbowmen virtually destroyed the entire army with only about 10 casualties. 6 units of destroyed royal knights for virtually no cost

Pull out infantry archers, and then ride them down. If you're being harassed by archers, mounted XBowmen can just ride them down. What I do is use them out front at first, then when the main armies engage, you flank enemy archers with your mxbows and ride them down. You'll take a few casualties, but not many, and your mounted xbows will gain valor quickly.

Use them for pursuit. Put them in wedge formation and these guys are great for pursuit. They can chase down fleeing units very effectively, and they gain valor pretty quickly. Jack them up with a couple of upgrades and they are fearsome indeed.

In short, use them in the beginning of a battle to wear down royal knights and other elite units. During the battle, have them flank units and ride down enemy archers. In the later stages of the battle, have them ride down the enemy. There really isn't a time when they are not useful.

[Aymar de Bois Mauri]

Hurin_Rules

Father of Thúrin Turambar (UFT) ??? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/idea.gif