I think you undersold the Trebuchet. They are monsters with the flaming shots, arguably better suited to bashing troops than walls with the kill tallys you can get.
100% agree. in Gongsun's campaign, I got 2 of these early. They suck at level 1 for sure. But now mine are at lvl 6 and they wreck ~300 kills each a battle just blowing infantry formations up.
Trebuchets at low level are rubbish even against walls I've brought 2 sets of level 1 trebs to a siege and they failed to take out a single wall. however stick flaming shot on them and even at low level they destroy light/unarmored units to the tune of 300-500 depending on how open the map is. They're also surprisingly effective on wooded maps considering the fires they set also give the same debuff to nearby units as fire arrows.
@@Gigas0101 that would seem not very fun, but with the heavy damage and morale penalties, the enemy would continually route as you continued to pepper them with shots. I do expect the Treb to nerfed a bit at some point...probably just accuracy at higher levels.
I just love the generals command when the archers run out of arrow. It is so fking epic "弹药已尽，拔剑杀敌!" (Ammunition depleted, pull your sword and fight!) I makes me less guilty when I send them in melee combat.
They can give your front line a breather when both sides are winded. Just pull the big boys out of the fight through the archers for a quick R&R. Really impact full when it works out.
@@Powerofriend Usually I mix up Onyx dragon with Protector of Heaven, the spearmen dont get winded easily, and it is better to use Onyx Dragon to backstab and flank the enemies. They do tons of melee damage, but they are glass cannons.
Just make Onyx Dragons and you never have to feel bad about that ever. Those guys can stand up to sabre infantry in melee, and they'll kill most polearm units and even militia cavalry.
@@BassFlapper Well, yes. The thing is, the different game had different cultures in them. That is the thing. All of this is in China at one time, so it makes sense that the units are relatively similar. Now, I didn't play Shogun, but I assume it is at least similar? On the other hand, in Rome, you have a ton of cultures, which makes a ton of different units.
Trebuchets are crazy once you get the firepot upgrade on your general. I play on a mac, so only on the smallest unit size, but one hit of those firepots takes out practically an entire unit of infantry or cavalry. What's left usually immediately breaks/shatters. And a fully replenished Trebuchet unit fires four of those shots in one go.
@@SVASH-hz5ji the fire damage units, the fire shot have a -5 moral debuff, and there is also the nearby fire debuff that have moral and fatigue penalty plus a 25 damage every 5 seconds for the units in range. Lets say that attacking from a forest might not be the best idea vs artillery and archers with fire.
Oh yea its really silly (awesome). I've won citiesI shouldn't have by all rights by just sitting back and letting the Trebuchets make entire units run away while the city is on fire.
I would suspect that the repeating crossbows count every volley as an ammo rather than every shot like other units(like a hellstorm rocketbattery in TW:WH). Making them deal alot more damage than what their stats would suggest. I have yet to use them though since i usually go towards the onyx dragons in the techtree instead.
It works like you said - they can fire much more than you would expect after examining their stats. Usually they are still firing when my militia archers are already depleted.
worth noting that all the ranged unit equipped with heavy armor move significantly slower, the basic crossbowmen can kite infantry somewhat but the heavy armor versions will struggle to disengage
I thought the same thing, but this game is truly all about the generals. The units are tertiary, unlike warhammer. Have to remember that these guys are culturally homogenous (for the most part..), so you won't see a ton of variety
@@guster2244 that's not an excuse, not even close, some older tittles had better clothes/armour variety just look at the 3:28 ... what the actual fuck ?, how much woul it take to make at least one more hair style and one more armour variety? its even worse when i looked up armour from that time period, CA simply know that moders will fix that so why the hell they should waist dev time, when some poor bastards will do this for free, lazy just lazy
Eric Rinaldo China is around the size of Europe, culturally most of China was somewhat similar, but when it came to armies one would find northern armies different from southern Chinese armies in both look and composition
Zerk, it would be interesting to address how unit level affects different units. When my units got to rank 10 i had the option to rename them and they upgraded to better more elite units too.
you forgot to say that repeating crossbowmans are utterly bugged : only 1 out of 10 guys are actually firing, making the unit TOTALLY crap since it doesn't even deal 30 casualties in a long battle in extreme size... meanwhile my trebs are usually at 800 and any archer/crossbowman unit is around 300.
I have no problems with common repeating crossbowmen, they deal hell a lot of damage if placed properly. And not bugged - whole company fires, not Just one soldier.
@@sanek9500 I'm playing the game at max graphic settings, and extreme unit size, are you too? To be precise, I've seen 1 out of 10 rep crossbowman firing, while being in a plain and facing the enemy directly... meaning no LoS problem nor firing angle..
Did y'all miss that Crossbowmen outrange bows by like, a lot? that was a shocking surprise when I found that out, expecting the usual balance of high damage low range, then found my archers all dead before they got a volley off.
It was because Chinese crossbows were designed differently than the European one. Both their draw weight and power stroke were much higher thus resulted in longer range and better armor penetration. While European crossbows were out-ranged by bows, it was the other way around for Chinese crossbows. That only applied to standard crossbows though, repeater crossbows traded all that for more bolts downrange. Another benefit for crossbows historically was that you can trained some random schmuck you drafted into your army to use crossbows within a couple of months, bows take years to get any good for war.
wtf. Thunder of Jian'something isnt just a slight improvement what are you on about. their ammo is 27, where heavy crossbow men have only 16. thats a fucking massive difference in ammo. regular crossbowmen will run dry when the thunders have almost only spent 50% of theirs.
hello im new. I have a simple question So how do crossbows work? can they fire above the infantry in the front line? i like playing archers any recomendations?
Mercenary archers might not seem so good, but in practice (since you have easily available assault infantry and melee cavalry as well) they're really overpowered. Their maintenance costs aren't bad either. Or maybe it's just because Sun Jian has such a strategicly dominant position as well. He's just hideously powerful overall.
Why aren't there more artillery units? Is it because its historically accurate? If its historically accurate, why weren't there more artillery units in real life?
Well it's only about the year 200, right? Maybe they just didn't have much developed. I tried googling but I can't find much on the subject. It sounds like China just really didn't do much with artillery, for whatever reason, until they got gunpowder some centuries later.
I think it would be useful if you also shown on screen or said which lords/factions can use those units. Because they are not available for everyone. BTW i cannot use the repeating crossbowmans. They are somehow bugged for me. They often dont want to shoot even if they are in range and when they shoot they never kill anyone even with 21 basic ranged damage. I used them in few battles and most kills i had on them was 2! yes really only 2. While archers or normal crossbowmans have dozens or even hundreds kill count. And the suppresion they was hardly noticeable. It seems like they are bugged somehow but either way i swapped them for something better.
Trebuchets are SOOO OP. I have 4 in every army and enemy forces 85% of all battles can't even touch my units cuz they shatter after few shots. It works on every difficulty.
I bought it and although everything else is well designed, there isn't that feeling of " can't wait to unlock this unit!" Hopefully one day they do Medieval 3!
To be honest, I don't think I've ever upgraded from archer militia to archers in any campaign. I never get that reform in the tech tree and it never seems to matter anyways. Archer militia with fire shot seem to be able to deal with everything just fine. And trebs are the most broken unit in this entire game.
Thunder of Jian`an are general snipers, you need like 5 units of them to kill one in 5 secounds. The shots of them don't spread as much as other archer/crossbow units.
And the heavy armor one is actually able to hold back a Ji Cavalry by them self. Because of the slow down effect plus the fast fire rate, when the cavalry charge arrived, they usually lost 1/3 of their number and a chunk of moral, then the heavy armor would ensure the crossbow man stay fairly Ok until some help could come or even push the enemy cavalry moral further and rout them.
One thing that the Yi marksmen do have that it doesn't say they do is fire on the move, can't remember if the Yi archers have it as well. Donno if it's a bug or if they forgot to give them the icon for it
heh didn't even mention the best missile unit...the hidden axes... deployment with 100% invisiblity all the time (even when moving)stupid high fire rate and scare the bejesus out of the silly cav that thought you weren't guarding your flanks IF they survive the barrage before getting hacked to pieces. siege? just put 1 in front of all the arrow towers, fire arrows 2x and move to the next set.... burn um all down without anyone even knowing they are there. Hilarious!
Kinda sad that ALL these units look pretty much the same, and there is no difference in armory between guys inside same unit. It is rly poor design for me.
I honestly think that these videos don't really help as much as specific army guides. I understand why you did it, since all the factions use similar units, but watching 1 video every so often to learn about 1 unit type isn't helping with how to play the game or good army builds. Plus most of the commentary is, "This is just like the last unit except slightly better."
Tip: To combat the enormous upkeep costs of trebuchet you can swap the unit (downgrade) to regular archer or archer militia and then upgrade back up to the trebuchet when anticipating needing them again. This becomes much more effective as your replenished rate rises and it can easily save you hundreds or thousands of coin a turn while still retaining decent non-seige capacity. For example: in Zheng Jiang's campaign I had two trebuchet. Swapped them for archery militia, saved 300+ coin a turn, and it only took me one turn to fully replenish swapping back and forth due to tech and building choices. This let me move my army and, if I got jumped, still have units filling out my roster and bringing something to the fight.
@@astrohawke Hasn't been an issue for me; especially with upgrades into improving base rankings. I rarely use trebuchet for anything other than seige and the morale damage and burning of the town and structures does much of my work for me. I've never had their lower rank be an issue; I have had the cost become one. Obviously if you can full time them within the army, do that. If you can afford to keep the retinue and just disband it until needed later, do that. But if you need the army but need to free up funds, swapping it on a downgrade is perfectly doable and overlooked.
Somehow thought Zheng Jiang's custom peeps would be here along with the Azure Dragons and the Yellow Turban Azure Dragons, but those are more melee units who randomly have bows rather than full-on archers I guess.
from CA atleast. they left out 15-20 differnt possible units that could have been added to this game. but alas its easier just to get everyone access to the same units the whole game. woo?
I think the repeating crossbow is underpowered. Records say it was legendary and could swing the tides of war. It has shorter range than the regular crossbow but insanely high fire rate which is lethal at close/medium range.
They are still belong to a certain class, and are thus covered in that specific class. For example, he covered Azure Dragon in Spear Infantry and Jade/Yellow Dragon in Melee Infantry
@@Arrakhis And good armor and movement speed. You can actually use them as back up infantry when out of ammo and they do pretty well. Literally the only reason I play yellow turban campaign.
