crossbowman vs arbalest

[Icedfate]

the description says the arbalest does slighly less damage but resists ranged attacks.

but when i go to promote the crossbowman to an arbalest, their weapon stat stays the same.
so where is the demage reduction being applied?
also, not sure why they need strength if strength has no effect on the physical damage of an xbow. .i guess it's to hold that bigazz shield?
if imuave a squad of 9 xbows, would it be better to make them all arbalest or just the 3 in the front?
or should i just put 3 tanky meless in front of 6 xbows?
or should i just not even use them at all and just go with warbows and raiders?

right now i have 3 squads of 8 guys each,
8 warbows
8 raiders
8 crossbow (3 promoted to arbalest)

i can't decide which ones are better. i just bring all 3 on every map.

the warbows have the extra range, while the raiders get the free move after attacking, but then warbows don't need that since they have the extra range, but i can't tell which does more damage.

the raiders seem to consistently destroy an entire squad more often than my warbows do.

going back to the crossbows, they seem to do a lot oess damage than the bows, especially because they get no benefit from artifacts as far as i can tell, except i did put the sayunara war pike on them to get then+15 against cavalry and then i put guerrilla bow formextra hit rate and the aldor tower shield to double down the ranged defense against archers.

i usualy send them in to eat up the arrows and they seem to be decent against guns as well

[grognardgary]

I've never used crossbows myself. They're better against armor from what I've seen in their use against me. But I'd rather have more range than a slight plus against armor.

Arbalests seem interesting but not enough to replace My warbow squads. Raiders are great. Fast and powerful give them that artifact that gives them a second move and you can blow holes through almost any line and follow up with your heavy infantry to crush what ever is left.

[Dancing Dragon Games]

The difference is in the calculation - it's a "skill scale" factor that is lower for Arbs

[phenir]

Originally posted by Icedfate:

the description says the arbalest does slighly less damage but resists ranged attacks.

but when i go to promote the crossbowman to an arbalest, their weapon stat stays the same.
so where is the demage reduction being applied?
also, not sure why they need strength if strength has no effect on the physical damage of

Imagine the crossbow does 100% weapon damage while the arbalest does like 90%. Those numbers are made up. So even if they both have 100 weapon stat, the crossbow would do 100 but the arbalest would only do 90.
Strength affects physical damage taken. Fitting for a class meant to be tankier than its counterpart.

[MrPibbs]

I believe the way it works, or is supposed to work, is Arbalest shots only deal 40% damage... but they fire 3 of them, making the total damage 120% of a Crossbowman. Also adding extra chance for criticals/misses etc.

A squad full of Arbalests attacking at range late game is like over 100 individual attacks I believe.

[Reformed Automatan]

I find arbalests are better for squads that are attacking adjacent enemies, raiders for 2 range and warbows for 3 range. Arbalests fire 3 weaker bolts when fighting at 1 range, this completely shreds anything that doesn't have heavy armour. There own armour and resistance to bows contributes to this. As for there strength stat, strength gives some resistance to physical attacks so they are tougher.

[Icedfate]

so a squad of 9 arbalest is not weaker than a squad of 9 xbows?

[Dancing Dragon Games]

Originally posted by Icedfate:

so a squad of 9 arbalest is not weaker than a squad of 9 xbows?

I can't imagine in what scenario that would ever be the case

[478188]

Game does not seem to punish you for changing class. So maybe try it both ways. If the arbalests don't end up helping as much as your archers, just change the crossbows back into archers and choose a fresh path. You could consider turning 8 melee unit's into rangers as a replacement as well.

[Icedfate]

i wasn't really debating crossbows vs bows, but rather specifically trying to determine if promoting all my xbows to the higher tier of arbalest was going to reduce their DPS or not.

if i hypothetically were to only care about pure DPS and nothing else, do the lower tier crossbowmen have higher DPS than the Arbalest?
i mean, if i'm playing in such a way that they never end up being attacked in melee, then that extra armor or lack thereof shouldn't mater.
i'm looking to maximize their damage output.

i feel like i failed to articulate this, because i was providing some background, in that i have a squad of 8 warbows, a squad of 8 raiders and another squad of 5 xbows/ 3 arbalest.
yeah, not very creative, i just clumped them together into groups like that.
each one has a different tactical use, but i was trying to maximize the crossbowmen damage. unsure whether to leave them unpromoted or not.

the 5 xbows qualify for the promoting.
what i was looking for is advice, should i promote those 5 xbows to arbalest or not?

[MrPibbs]

Originally posted by Murphy's Law:

Originally posted by Icedfate:

should i promote those 5 xbows to arbalest or not?

I would reclass the squads to:
2x Frontline Arbalest
1x Warbow
5x Raiders
- Durable Frontline
- Light Cav Movement, Hit & Run
- +6 Weapon Strength on each unit from that Tier 1 Tech
Because of the Move -> Shoot -> Move, you will have better utility than than the +1 Range.
If you have a hill that is an advantage you can use it 3x with 3 Raider Squads on the same turn, instead of once with a Warbow Squad.

Mixed unit tactics requires units to be different archetypes, not different troops. This squad would either get +0 or +2, depending on if Raider counts as both Archery and Light Cavalry.

If this is the route you'd want to take, you'd be better off turning that Warbow into another Arbalest to better distribute damage among the front line.

[Icedfate]

welp, i didn't know it was different "archetypes", that makes it far less useful. it's like that helmet. there's a helmet that says that like "+2 armor for each different archetype", so even with healers, heavy infant, light, cavalry, mages, in there, the most you get is +10 armor and there's other artifacts that just flatout give armor plus some hp and str and i don't have to make my units all messy and random.

it's sad, because the tech is not worded that way. it just says "different type" not "different achetypes" ,so every heavy squad i make has a mix of 1 zwei + 1champ + 1sentinel or paladin.
i thought i was getting the boost, but again, since the game gives zero visual indacation if it's actually applying the boost or not, i couldn't tell, so i decided to just ignore it.

i don't mix in melees or healers into my ranged squads, because the whole point is for them to not let them get attacked directly.
i use them to back up my melee squads. i fire at an enemy to soften them up before moving my other guys in.

i've actually played through twice. i'm on chapter 26 on warlord and i've just been running with 3 ranged squads, 1 full of arbalests, 1 full of raiders, 1 full of archers.

the archers, i don't want to dilute, because they have +3 range.

i'll admit my arbalests seem to have the lowest damage, but they do resist ranged attacks. so i can have them fire at walls, but then , the archars do the same thing but better, so this became more of an aesthetic choice for me, so all 3 squads look different.