You gonna do my men slingers like that by calling them the worst unit? First of all, all ranged units are overpowered in Crusader. Being a ranged unit already makes them good. If we go by sheer efficiency, slaves are of course the worst. If we go by price, spearmen are the most useless. I've found some good uses for slingers, especially in crusader extreme where they are quite useful in killing large bunches of slaves, something that crossbowmen with their low rate of fire struggle with. They are also a great combination with crossbowmen because many units get REALLY low by a crossbowhit but dont die from it. The slingers can then finish them off. If you are on a budget and need some support on the walls, they are quite reliable.
I know, they are not the WORST unit. Playing slingers only is rough though Combining them with ranged units is good, but lacking range sucks especially against archers
Slaves aren't worst... If you use them to attack somebody directly, you're doing it wrong. You use them to set fire to buildings while the enemy is running through them and then run away. A fire that spreads especially unchecked will kill knights, horse archers, siege weaponry, anything in its path. Use Slaves to set fires and dig or fill moats. Spearmen also dig and fill moats, but aside from that... Spearmen are definitely more useless and Laddermen are the most useless of them all
Run away? Slaves are there to be expendable with their 5 coin cost lmao they're more like Arabian kamikaze, there's no running running away, only certain death xD
Easy win :) You have quite good position on map. You had also everything what you needed - oasis, stone and wood ;) I think that it would be much harder if You were for example in the middle of the map, surrounded by Rats and with less resources. This quest to kill Rats with slingers was good and interesting, but because of Your position on map it was too easy, I think
20 seconds in and I already love this. I used to do this kind of thing on this exact map from that exact position, except every AI would be enemies to each other.
I mostly use slingers when I put a forward tower to rush another lord with slingers(sultan mostly). The problem with putting forward tower with arches against another lord with slingers is, your archers on the tower won't aim for the slingers and prioritize other units, including the enemy lord, completely ignoring enemy slingers, who slowly chip and destroy your units on the tower. Putting my own slingers on the forward tower clears defending enemy slingers, since they won't be able to reach enemy keep to spam projectiles on the lord and other meele units. A composition of 5 crossbows, 5 archers, 5 arabian bowmen, 5 slingers and 5 shields on top of a lookout tower does wonders against Sultan for instance. Another plus is, to finish off some units, such arabian bowmen, who took 1 crossbow hit and survived with minimal hp. Overall, I wouldn't call them useless.
The issue is that he wouldn't be able to spam them all that much, they'd die easily, and I forgot if they can even destroy walls. Probably not. He'd have to head for any gates out there cuz they seem to be able to destroy gates. So overall it'd be even more tedious than in this video.
Hi Jeff, would you like to try and confirm "arrow shot priority"? I always think that archers and crossbowmen prefer to attack invading ranged troops rather than the melee ones 🤔
Nice Video, as always! I have a challenge: Can you beat the first mission (1v1 vs Sultan) with only 1 fire ballista? Like... Sultan has very few archers and i think with rushing you maybe can beat him because you outrange just everything and ballistas also got good damage output vs swordsmen. I think maybe this works?
I tried it. It is possible to lock him inside his castle with no gold or popularity or more than a few swordsmen left, but i then can not reach his lord anymore... Hmmm
It's possible with slaves even, doing it with fire ballistae would require a great number of them because as far as i can remember, it takes about 4000 Ballista Javelins to take down a lord.
@@X_mezo_X i mean only using ONE unit. That is the Challenge. You only May use ONE single fire ballista. No starting Units or any buildings or Walls allowed. Nothing but one ballista. I think with 2 it already is too easy, since i am getting already pretty Close winning with Just one.
@@NostaleFreak96 Now that's an interesting take on the aspect, although needs a proper plan in order to prevent the ballista from being destroyed, in this case keeping the gatehouse of sultan permanently shut (which will eventually be destroyed by him as a last resort to get some gold) Curious to see how it goes.
@@X_mezo_X as i Said... It is no Problem to Deal with all of His Units If you are Careful. But as far as i have tried, i can either Focus on ruining His Units OR His Economy. Right now i can make hin loose all His gold and His Units, but he can Finish His Castle. Which is kinda nice because if His Gate is closed He has zero Economy. But then i fail to Target Units on His keep, so i cant kill the Lord.
Slingers are excellent for early game agression and defenses. Just place a couple of slingers or even one near the Production of the enemy but out of Range of their defense and their economy will take signifikant damage due to peasants beeing killed Goliathstyle. When the enemy sends out some troops to take care of them they can just run away. If your enemy uses armored infantry to attack, Slingers are very cost efficient to deal with them. Slingers are not bad at all. If you use them wisely they can be devastating.
thanks that's what I have been looking for.. I built a farm next to hill and it glitched out. It was non accessible because the house got raised up. It was strange so I took it down.. but then realized rocks on the top of the hill got cleared.. so I placed a wall piece next to it then stairs and then another stairs from the wall down to the hill.. it worked and I gained a huge advantage against AIs because the hill was only supposed to shield me from all of the enemies in the extreme trail.
Man, I really want to play stronghold crusader again... I don't have a cd reader and can't install stronghold collection. I recently played Crusaders 2 and I was like. "WTF is this shish"
I've noticed today when fighting the Sultans (mission 24?) that they will leave the keep and try to scare you away if you are only attacking with ranged units. Probably same behavior for all AI.
amazing video Jeff! :) I need to ask you a question, I came upon a video from guy named Persian Stronghold, and he made video when 1 wolf lord fought 6 rat lords, and he managed to kill 2 and almost third one, so my question is does AI lords have different hp? I dont think it is in vanilla game, and I havent found it in UCP.. It surprised me, so I thought u as a Stronghold expert should know this. :D
Vanilla AI characters do have different amounts of hp. There is even a visual indicator of that ingame. Lords with blue dots above their health bar have additional health; those with yellow dots have less health. Wolf at 5 blue dots has the tankiest Lord, while Rat with 5 yellow dots has the squishiest one.
And also i'm sharing good knowledge the usefull of Slinger I'm also using Slinger when besieging the Abbot castle this tactic i was using: 1 Siege Tower, 50 Slinger or more, 40 Arabian Swordsmen, and 8 Fire Thrower if you're like going to burn Abbot castle, the method are: 1. Put your Siege Tower on Abbot thickest wall, because Abbot thickets wall can useful i you putting a lots ranged unit, even shortest ranged like Silnger can be useful here 2. Rush your Arabian Swordsmen first for shielding your ranged unit, then rush both your Slinger and Fire Thrower 3. Watch it your Fire Thrower burning Abbot church, cathedral, and other his building, with also watching how your Slinger obilitrate Abbot Monk and his Archer 4. After the Pyromaniac party over, move your Arabian Swordsmen towards Abbot 5. Well done my Lord, you have already beat Abbot
Not really true, but they do have the fastest time to kill of every ranged unit on the lord. The Lord dies on 1500 shots of arrows (Archers) 1000 Shots of Bolts (Crossbows) or 1500 Stones (Slingers). Due to double the attack speed compared to Archers, they kill the lord the fastest.
They do, but only because of their speed. All diggers dig at the same pace, the only difference is movement speed. If you need to dig quickly and willing to lose some, use slaves, if you want reliability, use pikemen. There is a video floating around on this topic, but idk which channel uploaded it.
@@proximityclockworkx1572 Pretty sure it's better to use slaves in digging as well because of the fact that for some reason, using units for moat just makes some of them vanish into thin air, therefore losing a bunch of slaves to digging like that shouldn't be as problematic as losing pikemen for example.
Depends. Arabian archers and European archers have the same range but Arabs shoot faster. Slingers also shoot faster than European archers but at the cost of range. I suppose that out of the 3, it's easier to spam slingers for that purpose.
Lol I think nobody would have minded if you had put up a few ballistae or mangonels, because they're defensive machines, just to .amr it a little less tedious xd
@@Jefflenious I did not even come close to thinking you'd actually respond to this comment.. I am a big fan of your videos Perhaps 7 rats with only slaves?
>Slingers >Worst unit >mfw They're a situational unit, yes, but they're a lot better than you think. Many people don't give slingers enough credit. They're surprisingly good.
Good for??? I tried to take a Wolfs castle with them and failed miserably. With the help of Siege Towers, Shields, and slaves(to dig the moat) Their range and lack of health is just too much of a downside to actually use them effectively in sieges. In what scenarios are they capable of doing their job? I'm curious, really.
@@Jefflenious Speed can be your choice... but in the AI Lords Tab of the Patch (Increase the rate of additional attack troops) to 200.... BTW i am talking about the unofficial crusader patch
Wouldn't it be harder to do slave only? Slingers are ranged units so it's decent already. Though in reality unless the map is really open and bad any units are fine. What about hunter only LMAO
He got them from defeating the rat, if your opponent has resources with them when they get defeated, you get to acquire some resources that they used to hold.
Well, they are the cheapest and most spammable ranged unit in the game. European archers need bows, crossbowmen need crossbows and leather armour and all of the other ranged mercs are really expensive. This means that against enemies who have little to no armoured units, you can very quickly and easily conjure up an omnicidal shooting squad.