The effectiveness of Mounted the Mounted Crossbow.

With their speed, armour-piercing and mid-weight armour they are very good at taking on any knights in a chase. With armour and weapon bonuses they become decent medium cavalry. When I am playing Hungarians I use them extensively along with my HA and Szekely. The mounted crossbows take out the VG and Kataphracts, Knights, and Halbreds; the HA and Szekely take on spears, Byz swords, and archers.

mfberg

Load up on mounted Crossbows and head for Constantinople. The Byz Kats will fall before the faster MC's.

They´re even tougher in the XL Mod and can beat Mounted Sergeants in close combat, as I found out to my misfortune.

i can't remember how many German generals my one unit of valour 6 mounted x-bows has assassinated..certainly more than 4, including an emperor! one unit, kill the knights; use foot archers to decimate the rubbish, and as i haven't got the XL mod, my mounted x-bows are never allowed to go up close and personal with anyone except routing peasants.

Every unit is useful(bar the crappiest ones). But it's always tough to find a use for EVERY in each strategy.

Mounted X are useful as an extra unit, outside the main group. They can slush armoured inf from position & lure it outside a defensive position(at least against IA). And having one or 2 is often a big annoyance for the enemy. More is a good way to lack firepower, though.

I have also enjoyed taking them behind the enemy units by continually flanking. Even when I have lost some of my mounted x-bows, the distraction that they have caused and the enemy soldiers they killed made it worth it.

I've never found them to be worth the money but if I have some to hand or simply don't have any decent units they're better then nothing. I'm not a very good micromanager (especially comapared to others) so I prefer to use rathre more clumsy period-esque tactics