Talk:Longbowman (Age of Empires II)/@comment-27291286-20151130032153

Longbowmen are pretty good, but a large part of their power comes from bonuses from being british. Comparatively, the British arbalest has 11 range, which is still amazing.

Other advantages of using Arbalest include it being made in the archery range, meaning not only is it far easier to get the unit production infrastructure in place, you also benefit from the British team bonus (20% faster production). On top of this, British lack thumb ring, which means base accuracy is actually very important. Arbalest has a base 90% accuracy, while the longbowman only has 70% (80% for elite). The arbalest upgrade is also much cheaper than elite longbow, and you can research it at an archery range instead of bungling up your already complicated castle production line.

They do cost more gold, have one less attack, and one less range, but they tend to be used over longbowmen by good players, mainly due to being built from archery range instead of castle.