THERE IS NO CROSSBOW PROBLEM! (Anti-disinformation post)

[Musashi]

I've been seeing people post two things as if they were fact so much that I felt the need to make a new post addressing them.

1) Crossbows have longer range than archers.

This is absolutely false. Go here and look at the stats. Crossbowmen have the same range as archers. Crossbow Militia and normal professional crossbowmen all have the same range as Peasant Archers and all other standard archers (120). Aventurier and other elite crossbowmen (Who are actually using super heavy crossbows or arbalests as they were referred to in the first Medieval) have the same range as Longbowmen and other elite foot archers. Crossbowmen do not have a range advantage over archers.

2) Crossbowmen have a higher rate of fire than archers.

Not true. They still have a noticably lower rate of fire than archers. It's just not as pronounced as in the first medieval (In other words they fire more than one volley every five minutes). They're faster than they used to be, but they're still slower firing than archers.

There are NO "crossbow problems". They are nicely balanced against archers. They hit harder, and fire slower. That's it.

[Carl]

Excellent peice of debunking Musashi. well done.

Sadly I can't let you off with a tottally nice post.

The Crossbow units people tend to complain about in relation to archers are Mercanery crossbows, Genose Crossbows, and Pavise Crossbows, (and the militia equivelents of the last two). All these do in fact have 160 range. On the flip side you are 100% correct about the speed. Tests on number of volleys into closing enemies lead me to belive that they actually fire half as often.

[Musashi]

160 is the range of all elite archers though, so it's not longer than archer range.

I've seen people saying that crossbows outrange longbows and fire faster, which is just not true.

Additionally, the Pavise Crossbowmen are basically meant to be the Pavise Arbalesters from MTW, they're just not using the term arbalest to describe heavy crossbows in this iteration of the game.

I could agree that mercenary crossbowmen should have the 120 range, since they look more like Crossbow Militia or castle trained Crossbowmen.

[pevergreen]

The problem with crossbows is the firing upwards animation. IIRC a CA dev said that was a bug, and it doesnt do any damage. It does, but it barely hits. 1 kill from maybe 400 bolts against spear militia.

[Carl]

True enough on those saying they out-range archers. Was just pointing out the most complained about units have the same range. I think the mercenary crossbowmen are given such good range to make them useful from start to finish and to give factions like the Scots, (who have no long range AP missiles of their own), the ability to get them if they really need them. (Allthough, without derailing this thread, I belive scots where intended to function without it most of the time).

[Lord_hazard]

Has anyone tested the rate of fire in this game yet? Seen how many volleys the different missle units fire within a min?

[Bijo]

@Mushashi
You are right. Those two statements made, when I saw them before as well, also made me think whether they were being serious, those who were claiming them to be. I thought I was playing a different version of the game or something.
Maybe they didn't pay attention to other factors such as height of ground whereon the crossbowmen/archers stood, weather influence, fatigue, etc.?

Anyway, good thread

[Carl]

It's not just taht, but Crossbowmen can only fire as often as the reload animation will let them, which is considrably longer than the same for Archers, who actually have to wait out the Min attack delay, Crossbowmen on the other hand don't and thus fire less volleys. But if you look at the min attack deleys you might be forgiven for thinking they had the same fire rate.

[Varyar]

If we're going to compare archers and crossbowmen I'd be much more interested in comparing Rate of Fire than anything else.

[Lord_hazard]

If we're going to compare archers and crossbowmen I'd be much more interested in comparing Rate of Fire than anything else.

Agreed, but has anyone ever actually made a rate of fire test?

[pevergreen]

Yes, do a search.

[TevashSzat]

The thing that has people saying that crossbow units are better is that if it is one on one, crossbow vs. normal archer, the crossbow unit especially the pavise ones will take less casualties and kill more simply because they have a huge pavise.

[dopp]

That's the pavise at work, not the weapon. Making the archers uber to counter the pavise is a pretty lame solution since it overpowers them against everything else.

[Von Nanega]

That's the pavise at work, not the weapon. Making the archers uber to counter the pavise is a pretty lame solution since it overpowers them against everything else.

I agree with this post. I modded LongBows way up one time and it needed to be put back to almost vanilla because I was wasting all other troops with the horrendous power. Longbows are an interest of mine so I have been trying to fix them up. My fix to them was to add skill, to reflect a lifetime of training and use, then .5 more missile attack and .5 more range.

[JCoyote]

Yeah the only real issue there is that crossbows generally shouldn't be doing parabolic fire, and archers should have a bit better range, or at least longbows should, over all versions of crossbows. I could go either way on a peasant archer knowing how to land an arrow in a formation with long arching fire, but for longbowmen that was their stock in trade.

The balance, of course, is the superior armor penetration of the crossbow. Even given bodkin heads, the longbows shouldn't be getting quite the bonus against armor the better crossbows get. I think there should be a spectrum, where the as the AP goes up, the best longbows' AP matches the entry level crossbows, and the best crossbows' AP matches entry level firearms.

And really, later crossbows should be similar to gunpowder for armor penetration... the advantage of gunpowder being the shooters don't get physically exhausted from firing like they can with the various bows, and can carry more ammunition...

(Just wondering, is ammunition amount hard coded, or is it allotted individually based on unit types? Seems like about 30 for everyone.)

I kinda think there should still be some rebalancing and adjustments to the missile infantry. There are a lot of balancing factors that can mitigate some changes... like archers and longbows have the lowest infrastructure cost, by highest unit cost, etc. Firearms should really have the highest infrastructure cost of all, but inexpensive unit costs once achieved. With crossbows somewhere between. Which does make sense; firearms aren't hard to make, but developing all the industry required to make usable ones in any quantity is far from easy in a medieval world... but once there, watch out.

[Lord_hazard]

Yes, do a search.

I did i couldnt find any threads about rate of fire.