Talk:Arbalester/@comment-108.170.147.95-20151206090456

Don't let the stats fool you. Most people think more damage = better unit. This is actually not true in terms of casualty infliction rate. Accuracy, range, and attack speed count tremendously as well. Mobs of arbs can kill off just about any unit faster than HCs, except paladins and hard counters. HC is of course a better choice when you don't have full archer upgrades such as thumb ring, bracer, ring armor. But for civs with FU arbs, it's usually better to mass them instead.

People think cavalry is like a hard counter to archers. Rock beats paper, cavalry counters archers. This is in fact not true.

Basically the way this works is that  a block of archers on stand ground all focus their fire on a single target, killing it one by one. Attacking paladins however, have a limited number of "spots" they can hit around this block, and on top of that they inflict individual damage on separate units. It takes them several hits to kill an archer. Now imagine if the block of archers are standing next to a forest patch, cliff or building so that the number of sides facing the enemy is minimized. If you understand this set-up, it's easy to see how the damage/casualty ratio of the archers can exceed that of the paladins. If you doubt me on this, play the classic Agincourt scenario (NOT THE ES ONE! It's available on aok.heavengames.org) where you are pitted off against waves of FU frank paladins with an inferior amount of castle age longbowmen. Believe me the scenario battle is winnable and goes to show how proper positioning and unit screening can beat much more powerful and expensive units.

Just like in real life, ranged units almost ALWAYS offer a distinct advantage over melee units when deployed correctly.

When rightly used, arbs can make or break a game. They're MUCH cheaper to mass than similar tier units and with the production going you can easily overwhelm an unprepared opponent who invested in a melee only strategy. Even if he's going for paladins remember that by the time he gets a 180hp/7pa pally you can have blocks of arbs spawn camping his stables.

Even in non-brit civs, arbs are unbelievably annoying and difficult to deal with if you were not prepared beforehand. Their range allows them to inflict kills beyond your units' capacity to reach. In team games it sometimes even makes sense to focus entirely on arbs so as to offer a comparative advantage to your team members. Generally speaking arb + halb is one of the most reliable and cost effective spams that the game offers.

However, there are many ways to ruin an archer spammer. Ironically rams (especially siege ram) are one of them. Since it's difficult to individually micromanage arb fire, a HUGE portions of their shots would inevitably be wasted on hitting advancing rams, allowing your onager to get close and get off a shot - boom, arb stack flattened. Of course if you don't have onagers, massed skirms, and in some cases, even FU horse archers would do the trick.