Archers vs. Crossbowmen - A Complete Discussion

[Senlassa Foxy Lassa]

I want to create this thread in order to begin a discussion with all of you in regards to what I feel is one of the most debatable topics in the game, whether archers or crossbowmen are more effective, this is not to say equipping your protagonist with a bow or crossbow, but rather bow archers are any better or worse than crossbowmen.

I've used what I consider to be a very simple tactic for most battles which relies on the ranged to thin out (if not obliterate entirely) the crowd, originally I had used bow archers exclusively for this because of the faster rate of fire going on the idea that even with less damage done, more hits would still build damage and worst case scenario if they arrived at my line they would be adequately softened up for my infantry to just push down effortlessly. I've used this technique with both Nord and Vaegir archers, and both were incredibly effective early on but I have noticed people saying that A. Nord archers aren't the greatest (which is true, but they sure were effective for me) and B. that crossbowmen are the better deal.

To that end I began a playthrough using exclusively Rhodok troops, using the same starting amount of crossbowmen that I would use archers, and I am noticing that the enemy waves are not nearly being cut down as quickly as with my bow archers and in more than one instance only one or two had been killed by the time the enemy reached my wall of infantry, leading me to actually lose a soldier. The deeper end of this is also with this point where I still have not met the efficiency I had with bows, I already have a much higher weekly cost for my army than I previously had.


Crossbow = slower fire rate, higher damage
Bow = faster fire rate, lower damage

Bow archers can fire two or three times in the amount of time it takes a crossbowmen to fire even a single time and reload but a well placed bolt can take a man down instantly, and so I want to know everyone elses opinion on this, because it is arguably the most opinionated subject in the game. Do those of you who use crossbowmen feel they need to be used similarly yet differently than standard archers? Do other people who use standard archers feel crossbowmen are less effective? Let's get it all out there, create a good discussion and see if we can't give each other a few tips in this direction.

[Sohei]

Archers are high DPS burst damage, low total damage. Low armor and shield penetration. Troops never get high enough skills or proficiencies in Native to maximize the potential but the player or companions can. Good arc of fire while mounted - shoot even directly to the rear.

Crossbowmen are low DPS but high total damage. High armor and shield penetration. Troops don't need skills to maximize the potential of crossbows. Troops can avoid incoming missiles while bending over to load. The player can also take cover while loading to avoid missiles. Poor arc of fire while mounted and limited to light crossbows.

For player and companions, bows have the best max potential with skill investment. For companions that are focused on party skills instead of combat, leaving them as footmen with siege crossbows will be better. For troops, crossbows are more effective for most situations. Only in siege offense do bows show any potential advantage and crossbows are still effective for that as well.

To maximize the damage potential of crossbows in field battles you can use a small number of cavalry such as yourself or with a few companions to ride around and distract the enemy. Even if you do no attacks and just ride at full speed you delay their advance and give your crossbowmen time to shoot all of their bolts. I have often done this against larger forces and received zero casualties. If you just stood in one spot and let the enemy attack they may not be as effective as bows.

[Bones]

Crossbowmen are pretty unstoppable when you have many of em.

[Senlassa Foxy Lassa]

That brings about a tremendous cost and need of time for training of so many units, which is not practical until mid to late game when you have the resources to afford it and the troops to defend your trainees from real battles.

Has anyone ever tried mixing crossbowmen and archers into a single file of troops? My theory in this is beginning with the more effective against unarmored and lightly armored (i.e. looters and most bandits) archers and then hiring on crossbowmen from a different faction where they can be adequately protected and allowed to increase in rank. This would in theory provide the distance coverage from the bowmen with the more armor-friendly bolts you'd find with the crossbowmen.

[Reno Story]

Bowmen do indeed have a higher rate of fire, meaning they can keep the pressure on quite easily.. But also tend to run out of ammo quicker, meaning to get the best effect, a player will need to manage his bowmen and save ammo for when the perfect moment comes.

Crossbows, however, due to their slower rate of fire, tend to hold out longer than a bowman, and because of this, it's safer to let them fire at longer ranges without the risk of wasting all your bolts. They hit hard and work really good against heavily armored foes, and with higher ranking crossbowmen, a volly of bolts can really even the playing field, provided you manage your firing line properly.

I guess you could say that range plays a major role when it comes to these two weapons. With bows, while higher ranking bowmen tend to do just fine at longer ranges, bows are best for shorter ranges, able to dish out a storm of firepower that wittles down shields and can kill and scare off dozens of men before they reach your units. Crossbows, however, due to their slow speed, are best for long range battles, able to snipe enemies at sometimes quite impressive ranges depending on their rank. For some units, the fact that they may come with shields also makes them fairly decent melee units should they get into a scuffle.

[Senlassa Foxy Lassa]

Has anyone put much use into the Khanate horse archers? Being a specialization it sounds as though they would be good, but I have as of yet resisted trying them out as much as I have foot archers so far.

[Sohei]

You need to manage the movement of the horse archers to make them effective. The AI will tend to charge with them straight into the enemy before starting to circle. You need to get them to follow you or move to a point so you can keep them away from the enemy. After the formations have broken up it is safer to let them charge and run around on their own. A few will tend to get caught because the AI is stupid but those that don't can be very effective.

The AI is particualry bad at hitting a moving target with its own ranged troops so cavalry archers have good defense as long as they don't run into anything and get caught. Effectively managed cavalry archers are very powerful.

A mix of cavalry archers and crossbowmen also works well. The cavalry archers keep the heat off of the crossbowmen and make the enemy turn their backs and negate any shields. The crossbowmen keep pouring out damage after the cavalry archers have run out of arrows.

[Fendelphi]

The way I see it, Crossbows are great for a "dedicated Volley", a moment where they fire at the enemy while they are exposed or another oppotune moment.

- Due to the stopping power of single volley, this is great for bringing down enemies with their shields facing the other way(lead away by your cavalry), or for taking out knights at close range.
Also, a lucky hit can be a one-shot kill.

- Crossbowmen is also more conservative in terms of ammo usage. They are less prone to running out of bolts, compared to archers.


Archers, on the other hand, are great for "softening" up the enemy. The sheer amount of arrows will often find an unshielded enemy(or a horse). Either because the enemy was facing another way at that exact time, or because another arrow just broke the shield.

- The damage is more consistent because of that. On a %-basis, they hit as often as the crossbowmen(possible slightly more actually), but the amount of hits in a timespan of, say 10 seconds, is much higher. So generally, mutiple enemy troops will be wounded, making a lot of enemies easy pickings for your cavalry and infantry.

- From what I hear(and seen, to a degree), Vaegir Marksmen and Sarranid masterarchers are more accurate than the best crossbowmen, often taking headshots of immobile targets at close range. This offset the relative low damage of bows. A knight taking 3 headshots is just as dead, as a knight with 2 crossbow bolts in his body.

To sum up:
Crossbows are great for devastating volleys, while Bows are great for a constant Barrage of steel-tipped death, wounding a large amount of enemies, and eventually killing them off(if not taken down by your other troops).


For a "pure" army(taking only Archers or Crossbowmen), I would pick Crossbows, but that is because Rhodok crossbowmen are still decent in a melee, and less likely to run out of bolts.

If you only plan for a smaller group of ranged troops, Archers might be better.
A 10 man crossbow volley is simply not effective(IMO) in making a dent in the enemy forces, compared to the debiliating effect of a 10 man archer barrage, which weakens a lot of enemies, and has a good chance for some lucky headshots, or hitting at an unshielded location.

[Fendelphi]

Originally posted by Sohei:

Troops can avoid incoming missiles while bending over to load.

Or get shot in the head :D
Even seen a throwing axe take down an enemy, because he decided to reload his crossbow with the Nords charging at them.
Looked pretty awesome. :D

[Sohei]

Sure, they will still take hits but the smaller target will help reduce the number of hits on average. This works especially well on siege defense where they have a wall protecting their legs.

However I have been known to aim for the crotch during field battles to take head shots on them while they reload.

[Senlassa Foxy Lassa]

I've actually been instantly taken out of a fight by a stray crossbow bolt that hit me square in my full helm covered face, so I know all too well what they are capable of, but that shot, like most, come down to luck it usually seems.

[Paperclip *PIRX*COP*]

I find that having different types of weapons available to use at all times makes me more versatile because they tend to be effective against various types of troops attacking me, and so I've always used a mix of archers and crossbowmen as part of my ranged units standing together in a firing line.

It's sort of like having a tank having both high explosive and armor piercing rounds stored in its ammunition bin as it lumbers about the battlefield; using the former would be especially useful against "soft" targets (i.e., arrows against the looters, bandits, and militia) while at the same time having the latter for use against "hard" targets (i.e., bolts for piercing through the enemy "shells" like armored knights, shielded huscarls, and so on) and so regardless of the composition of forces that I meet -- (1) unarmored, (2) armored, or (3) a combination of both -- I'm assured that I always have some sort of missile flying out to greet them that's particularly effective against whatever they happen to have.

From a melee perspective, having some troops that have decent fighting skills like the Rhodoks crossbowmen helps augment the others in my firing line that are not as proficient in hand-to-hand combat and so they at least have a little bit of bite in them overall in case some enemies do manage to break through my front line units and find themselves stuck among my missile troops.

It also helps me in terms of trying to manage a limited budget; having cheap missile troops mixed in with the more expensive ranged units helps keep overall expenses down.

I tend to do the same thing with my companions, as well; some are dismounted and armed with siege crossbows to take advantage of its brute force and the high stopping power of its ammunition. Others are skilled in bows to take advantage of its higher rate of fire. Still others are mounted and armed with light crossbows along a "sidearm" of light lances, to accompany my mobile troops of Khergit archers and lancers. They run around, charge in and out of the enemy lines, and just basically act as a nuisance to the main enemy force, messing up with their cohesion and overall movement, and buying my ranged troops in the back line more time to keep doing what they do best which is riddle the enemy with holes using their flying, pointy sticks.

As you can imagine, my infantry tends to play a more secondary role based on my fighting style. They hold their ground and will only engage if and when the enemy manages to reach my main force, and hold them in place while I call in my reserve force of heavy cavalry to crush them from the wings. Once the enemy breaks, then I order a general charge and everyone just dives in for the free-for-all mopping up operation of chasing the rest of the fleeing enemy troops.

[Sohei]

Another way of mixing archer troops for defense is to mix them with some heavy infantry. Choose one stack of infantry for this and change their troop section from infantry to archer. They will then spawn and mix with the archers in battle.

I don't use this myself but some others have suggested it. I tried it and it does work but I just prefer leaving infantry separate.

This is something like the historical Tercio in theory.

[Senlassa Foxy Lassa]

I am reminded of one of the things we were taught during my military training, the setting up of a proper kill zone, where rather than have one force firing directly inward on an opposing force you would set up two or more defensive structures and provide them with interlocking lanes of fire so that you can engage that opposing force in one area from multiple angles, minimizing their ability to effectively use cover. This seems like it would have some relevance in the game as well, as even shielded enemies would have to hold that shield to their front or whichever side it was that they were being fired upon, so if you had a second group of archers, say horse archers, and you sent them away from the main force using the backspace command could you tell them to hold their ground and fire in from another angle towards the opposing force?

This should force the enemy into a position of being fired upon by multiple sides, leading some to turn towards the horse archers and approach them and others to continue forward as they were but both of those groups would then have exposed flanks to at least one of the groups of archers. If you combined this technique with a cavalry strike from yet a different flank you could in theory pull off one very technical bloodbath.

[Asphe]

Originally posted by Ishida:

Crossbow = slower fire rate, higher damage
Bow = faster fire rate, lower damage

It really depends on two things. Are you cheating? And are you playing at maximum difficulty?

If you're cheating... it doesn't matter what you pick. If you're playing at minimum difficulty (in particular, taking 1/4 normal damage) you'd probably want to pick archers instead, for the higher fire rate, allowing you to kill stuff faster.

At maximum difficulty... well the typical crossbowmen in Native has chain / medium armor and can function as medium infantry. Some have pikes and most have board shields. Since you're taking full damage at maximum difficulty, crossbowmen are much more survivable.

The slower rate of fire becomes an advantage since it's more likely that their higher damage bolts will be shot at shorter range (greater accuracy). In situations where you keep the range open (i.e. sieges), the reloading process makes crossbowmen 'duck', reducing their target profile. Plus even if they do get hit, they take less damage. Since the game uses the typical RPG "HP" mechanics, crossbowmen are usually twice as durable as bowmen (they usually take more than one 'arrow' to get killed, unlike most bowmen).

Originally posted by Ishida:

That brings about a tremendous cost and need of time for training of so many units, which is not practical until mid to late game when you have the resources to afford it and the troops to defend your trainees from real battles.

Has anyone ever tried mixing crossbowmen and archers into a single file of troops? My theory in this is beginning with the more effective against unarmored and lightly armored (i.e. looters and most bandits) archers and then hiring on crossbowmen from a different faction where they can be adequately protected and allowed to increase in rank. This would in theory provide the distance coverage from the bowmen with the more armor-friendly bolts you'd find with the crossbowmen.

If you are playing at maximum difficulty in the end-game, the issue usually boils down to having mounted troops... or not. This is not so much a consideration of the tactical aspects, but the strategic aspect... namely being able to move fast enough on the map.

That being said, one of my favourite tactics is to use crossbowmen/archers in two groups. I have one group form a line and hold fire (i.e. hold up their shields), while the other groups form a line of fire. Once they run out of ammo, I have them swap roles and orders.

Originally posted by Ishida:

Has anyone put much use into the Khanate horse archers? Being a specialization it sounds as though they would be good, but I have as of yet resisted trying them out as much as I have foot archers so far.

In Native, my end-game army will have only two kinds of archers. Crossbowmen in garrisons (since I don't take them out on campaign, I just use Rhodoks. They are slightly superior to the Swadian troop-type. In the early part of the game, I have both) and vKHAs or Veteran Khergit Horse Archers with my campaign army. As long as the battlefield has no trees, vKHAs are excellent archers, being cheap to maintain, effective bowmen, mounted and make great decoy or nuisance skirmishers.

Originally posted by Ishida:

I've actually been instantly taken out of a fight by a stray crossbow bolt that hit me square in my full helm covered face, so I know all too well what they are capable of, but that shot, like most, come down to luck it usually seems.

In MP, this will be deliberate. In Native, I can bring a bag of khergit arrows and get headshots on moving khergit troops with half the arrows. Other players are far better.

Originally posted by Ishida:

I am reminded of one of the things we were taught during my military training, the setting up of a proper kill zone, where rather than have one force firing directly inward on an opposing force you would set up two or more defensive structures and provide them with interlocking lanes of fire so that you can engage that opposing force in one area from multiple angles, minimizing their ability to effectively use cover. This seems like it would have some relevance in the game as well, as even shielded enemies would have to hold that shield to their front or whichever side it was that they were being fired upon, so if you had a second group of archers, say horse archers, and you sent them away from the main force using the backspace command could you tell them to hold their ground and fire in from another angle towards the opposing force?

This should force the enemy into a position of being fired upon by multiple sides, leading some to turn towards the horse archers and approach them and others to continue forward as they were but both of those groups would then have exposed flanks to at least one of the groups of archers. If you combined this technique with a cavalry strike from yet a different flank you could in theory pull off one very technical bloodbath.

Enfilading fire in other words. You should take note that everyone in Calradia is right-handed. They hold their shields in the same hands... and expose the same flanks when facing a threat. In addition, you shouldn't limit yourself to just horizontal enfilade... get below (above too but in WB, shields have an arrow magnet effect, so above is iffy, plus AI troops are terrible shots from above). In a siege situation, you can abandon the walls and form multiple firing lines covering the breach with heavy infantry blocking access routes. In effect, the enemy will pass through the breach a few at a time. All of your archers get a clear shot and if firing from a lower elevation, slightly better chance of a leg hit.

[Senlassa Foxy Lassa]

I've not gone into multiplayer, my ability to tolerate watching people in games where common sense is required is no longer very strong, as years of Battlefield and Dota 2 have caused me to see far too many people make far too many absolutely horrible decisions, even with full situational information. Also I turned off the damage mitigation, did not realize it was a thing until I checked the options for a difficulty because originally I would ride into my horse with and just start hacking people down with impunity and it just seemed so easy........then I saw I was taking 1/4 damage and changed it. It was IMMEDIATELY after I changed it that I got hit by the stray bolt in the face during a battle and one shot, I fell off of my horse, my companions carried me off the field and I thought "yes, oh yes." I've been hit by a rock early game with these settings and lost 75% of my health.......must be tossing boulders.

I'll fire up a playthrough and start in the Steppes, experiment with the Khanate a little.