Longbows vs. Chu-Ko-Nus?

When CKNs get range, they experience the same 3-range targeting bug as Longbows, and still have lower (14 vs. 18) ranged strength than LBs. And terrain limits are the same for both.
 
Longbows vs. chukos is a good question.. Both of the archers have promotions that benefit each other in a different way. I guess it all depends on the terrain maybe? I have seen English longbows stop armies with great wall since it was easy for longbows to fire at units with range.. I haven't seen chukos in action but I have used them before and the only complaint I had was not having the logistics promotion counted for the extra attack for a total of 3 attacks per turn... English longbows might have the same issue though since longbows already start with range, a later promotion.
 
Longbows every time.

CKN's get more exp in theory, but throw theory out the window when you have to spend 3 turns healing off what damage a city throws at you.

Also, longbows...never...stop. With longbows, you can keep taking cities with the only damage you take being on the horseman (or knight) that takes the city, unless it hits 1 health, in which case even it wouldn't take damage.

Even just 1 or 2 longbowmen can slowly take down a city well into the industrial era, so the city has to have truly awesome defensive placement to protect against them, and if it has that much forest/jungle, it's probably not an important city anyway.
CKNs shouldn't spend time healing because if someone is properly attacking a city their ranged units won't take damage.

And longbows have higher ranged combat strength than CKNs, so when both have range and logistics (or the CKN equivalent), the longbows deal more damage per turn.
By the time they get the 4th promotion they probably they will have been upgraded to gatling guns or are close to being upgraded (at least on standard and quick) so the combat strength difference is a mostly moot point.
 
I'd say that I prefer LB in large numbers and CKN in smaller numbers in open terrain, CKN in forests, and LB in unforested hilled terrain.

BTW, in later wars both are negligible - modern armour and air power do too much damage too quickly for bazookas and machine guns to be relevant.
 
Longbows for sure. Go Honor if you want fast upgrades so much. But man oh man does the AI know exactly which bloody forest tile to leave unchopped making it impossible to capture the city in reasonable time.. Just recently I faield to take a city off William becuse of just 1 tile which made it possible for only 1 out of my 6+ lbows to fire upon it.

And I hate the fact that all the AIs beeline Chivalry and get knights. Several times I've ended up near Ghandi and tried to cbow into lbow rush him. Knights with Cover 1 and Medic 2 stall so much that the war drags until he gets gunpowder.

Oh yeah, gunpowder. I hate the fact that Deity AI can survive a lbow rush until it starts churning out fat gunpowder infantry. Here's a challenge: start near Washington and try to kill him before Minutemen and terrain put a stop to you pitiful domination efforts lol
 
the str gap between CKN and longbows is lower (chinesee generals give bigger bonus)

14*1.3 - 18*1.15 = -2.5 ( difference vs cities without statue of zeus // morale promo )
Longbows are a little higher vs units when more promos are involved ..

But at gatling tech, which you should probably beeline (Oxford) with both civs, CKN-us pull ahead due to better generals ..

I would go CKN > Longbow :

-have better fire power right out of the gate (double attack)
-get to logistics(double attack ) & range faster (and then march to deal with healing issues)
-in the end (gattling - industrialisation tech) end up more powerfull (GG) ..

And longbows are also a solid unit ...
 
Longbows for defense, CKN for offense.

Longbows can pick off units before they get to your cities (plus a few more when they're retreating) and CKN double attack is nice for quickly getting city HP down.

Actually, i think its the other way around.
It's simple- the enemy is heading for your cities, so you will get max 1 extra shot with longbows, most of the time. By the time they are in range of your cities your extra range doesnt matter. And CKN can get 2 shots each turn to defend your cities.
Not to mention defending cities is already fairly easy

Using longbows to siege means you can get enemy's cities to 0 HP without receiving any damage at all
 
Actually, i think its the other way around.
It's simple- the enemy is heading for your cities, so you will get max 1 extra shot with longbows, most of the time. By the time they are in range of your cities your extra range doesnt matter. And CKN can get 2 shots each turn to defend your cities.
Not to mention defending cities is already fairly easy

Using longbows to siege means you can get enemy's cities to 0 HP without receiving any damage at all

Using longbows for attack is often not viable due to terrain. In that case they're no better than crossbows. Also, when attacking it's best to take cities down ASAP and the CKN double attack comes into play then.

As you said, defending is pretty easy already, so longbows can still pick off units that are retreating whereas CKN can't.
 
CKNs shouldn't spend time healing because if someone is properly attacking a city their ranged units won't take damage.

I normally move ranged units into place, attack the city until it's at 1 health, or very close to it, then move in and take it with a mounted unit that was waiting out of range.

I thought that was pretty standard.

When I have to bring in meat shields, such as very early game when working with archers, my experience is that the AI likes to target the unit it can kill in the fewest turns, making my ranged units popular choices for them and normally leaving me preferring to let a ranged unit soak up damage rather than have a melee unit attack the city and soak up damage from half health.

CKN's are even more likely to be targeted by the AI due to their lower strength.
 
Pretty sure (60%) the AI targets damaged units before full HP units, hence range units taking no damage.
 
I normally move ranged units into place, attack the city until it's at 1 health, or very close to it, then move in and take it with a mounted unit that was waiting out of range.

I thought that was pretty standard.

When I have to bring in meat shields, such as very early game when working with archers, my experience is that the AI likes to target the unit it can kill in the fewest turns, making my ranged units popular choices for them and normally leaving me preferring to let a ranged unit soak up damage rather than have a melee unit attack the city and soak up damage from half health.

CKN's are even more likely to be targeted by the AI due to their lower strength.
Cities prioritize attacking units with the lowest health so just have like 90 health melee units to take all the hits.
 
AI will attack a full hit points unit over a damaged one provided it thinks it can get the kill. I was training archers to logistics in the early game by attacking a city state, they all had full health, which was enough to take the city shot + the archer shot and survive. Later on I brought a spearman so he could take the hits, I have him attack the city once and fortify. He builds a composite bowman and focuses fire to kill one of my full health archers.

Regarding the thread, I think less-experienced players really underestimate the value of raw combat strength in a unit. The CKN has 77% of the combat strength of the crossbowman and only 27% more combat strength than the composite bow. So basically it should be considered to be a composite bow with barrage 2 and logistics, which is strong, but has a very low shelf life when it can't be built until the medieval era. And the nature of how combat strengths interact often means that the CKN will be doing like 60% of the damage of a crossbow when it attacks a high CS like a city on a hill. The other thing is that logistics only comes into play when you have a full two moves. A very significant amount of the time the CKN will be able to attack only once, if it has to move first to get in range, or if it has to pillage to heal. In all of these instances you will wish you had a vanilla crossbow.

I actually think CKN is one of the worst UU, why do the creators need to nerf its combat strength to "balance" in a game with zero balance whatsoever. If you just made it a straight crossbow with logistics, china still wouldn't be as good of a civ as Poland/Maya/etc.
 
Using longbows for attack is often not viable due to terrain. In that case they're no better than crossbows. Also, when attacking it's best to take cities down ASAP and the CKN double attack comes into play then.

As you said, defending is pretty easy already, so longbows can still pick off units that are retreating whereas CKN can't.

Having played quite a few games as England recently, terrain is rarely an issue for longbows. There is always an angle to shoot from.

CKNs are better for defending because generally you have multiple turns of shooting from the safety of the city and will do more damage the the one shot per turn longbow.
 
Cities prioritize attacking units with the lowest health so just have like 90 health melee units to take all the hits.

Might try something with this at some point, but I don't think that's quite the case.

I'm fairly sure that, for instance, a city will attack a 100 health warrior over a 90 health infantry.

I know I've seen a city keep attacking a ~75% health cbow over a half health pikeman in rough terrain with 2 promotions. I also know that I have seen full health scouts one shot by a city in mid game, with injured units nearby (more than once, because I thought they went after the most injured every time, so when a city was surrounded by hills, a scout would be a good choice for taking it. First time I thought it was some weird thing, but I saw they did it every time, in spite of injured units nearby.)

It may not be which one they can kill fastest, but I have seen them not attacking the lowest health unit.

I'll test a few things when I get a chance, though.

Having played quite a few games as England recently, terrain is rarely an issue for longbows. There is always an angle to shoot from.

CKNs are better for defending because generally you have multiple turns of shooting from the safety of the city and will do more damage the the one shot per turn longbow.

I think terrain is less of an issue for longbows than crossbows normally, simply because there are more places for them to attack from. It's harder to shoot "though" gaps at 3 range, but, at that distance, it's possible they find more hills to shoot from. CKN's can only have access to, at most, 12 hexes at max range, which, for some cities in jungle, forest, or hill, will make a city hard to take. Longbows get 18 hexes, 50% more. That makes for a significant chance of being able to hit even the toughest cities to get to.

You could claim CKNs can get right up next to a city, giving them 18 hexes to work with too, but then I could say longbows can do the same, giving them up to 32 hexes to work from (and, thus, taking away any double attack advantage, since twice as many units shooting would do just as much damage, before factoring in the CKN reduced strength).
 
Longbows are better in the end, but imho CKNs have their sweet spot if you have a target that you can train them on. Untrained CKNs are also not that restricted by rough terrain (against moving targets that is), because of their nuke potential.

It's strange comparing them though, the Great General-Bonus (and to a lesser extend, the free gold from their ub) is what puts China WAY ahead for midgame-domination imho.
 
Longbows are better in the end, but imho CKNs have their sweet spot if you have a target that you can train them on. Untrained CKNs are also not that restricted by rough terrain (against moving targets that is), because of their nuke potential.

It's strange comparing them though, the Great General-Bonus (and to a lesser extend, the free gold from their ub) is what puts China WAY ahead for midgame-domination imho.
Comparing CKN with longbow is like comparing Impis to Samurai. Longbows are better than CKNs in small groups because they take less damage but if you are able to spam CKNs they do a lot of damage within a very short time. Therefore CKNs are arguable better in the offense because they can finish the job faster before the opponent can respond with higher era units and defensive buildings.
 
Actually, i think its the other way around.
It's simple- the enemy is heading for your cities, so you will get max 1 extra shot with longbows, most of the time. By the time they are in range of your cities your extra range doesnt matter. And CKN can get 2 shots each turn to defend your cities.
Not to mention defending cities is already fairly easy

Using longbows to siege means you can get enemy's cities to 0 HP without receiving any damage at all

I agree it's the other way round.

Plus, you forgot to mention that one can position the CKN 1 hex away from the city and kite the enemy as they approach (firing at an enemy unit 3 hexes away from the city before moving into the city, which LBs cannot do). Given that the AI usually charges mindlessly with massed melee units, this negates the LB's +1 range in defense.
 
Longbows for sure. Go Honor if you want fast upgrades so much. But man oh man does the AI know exactly which bloody forest tile to leave unchopped making it impossible to capture the city in reasonable time.. Just recently I faield to take a city off William becuse of just 1 tile which made it possible for only 1 out of my 6+ lbows to fire upon it.

And I hate the fact that all the AIs beeline Chivalry and get knights. Several times I've ended up near Ghandi and tried to cbow into lbow rush him. Knights with Cover 1 and Medic 2 stall so much that the war drags until he gets gunpowder.

Oh yeah, gunpowder. I hate the fact that Deity AI can survive a lbow rush until it starts churning out fat gunpowder infantry. Here's a challenge: start near Washington and try to kill him before Minutemen and terrain put a stop to you pitiful domination efforts lol

You are writing entirely about the weaknesses of LBs. CKNs would never have any of these problems. Massed CKNs are dominant in forests (even able to hold their own against impis), are impervious to melee (even more so than LBs), and take down cities more quickly than LBs. Minutemen are pitiful when they have to take 8-16 CKN barrages for every melee engagement.
 
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