Can The Sergeant Crossbowman COMPETE With The Legionary? Bannerlord Range Troop Units Guide

This is a 1.8. Bannerlord in Depth Analysis of the Ranged troop known as Sergeant Crossbowman.
This video is part of a Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord Playlist where we analyze each unit not only based on their equipment but also on statistics taken after intensive testings.
The Data will be trimmed down and showcased both throughout the video and at the end to allow the viewer to know as much as possible about the unit in question.
A score will also be provided at the end based on Lyon’s opinion, this score shouldn’t be taken as hard evidence, as different playstyles may impact the way viewers evaluate units.
In this here video we are going to talk about the Imperial Sergeant Crossbowman.
A unit that for a long time as been the best ranged option for the empire, but that has seen that position challenged after patch 1.8.
Relevant videos
PALATINE: • How BUFFED was the Pal...
LEGIONARY: • How NERFED was the Leg...
SHARPSHOOTER: • How OVERRATED Is The S...
Units Guide Playlist: • How BAD is The Wildlin...
And remember, criticism and constructive feedback are always appreciated.

[@savic101]

Great vid as always, love all the graphs and other stuff

[@Jasta85]

I do kind of wish they brought back the morale penalty from having troops from too many different cultures in warband, it pushed you to make a choice between factions whereas now you can just load up on the the best troops from every faction and it gets a bit boring. I have to force myself to not just load up on Fian Champions or Kahn's guard when starting a new play through because there's nothing stopping me. There are some troops I don't think I've ever actually used before because they were just worse than what I could get from the faction next door. This troop is one of them.

[@LyonExodus]

i think the problem is even deeper than that. Morale as a whole is a placeholder more than anything. it sounds like it's important yet a single perk at 75 leadership completely negates the penalty of low morale on your troops. the feature itself works well, in the sense than it is dynamic in battles and outside of it. But there isn't really much else to morale other than your troops will flee the battle if it gets too low, or they will leave your army if you also can't pay or feed them. Maybe making the mechanic having an impact on troop DMG and defense is the way to go in the future. Penalty for the attackers when attacking an enemy fortification and bonus for the defenders in a defensive war or battle.

[@ChristianAuditore14]

Morale is meaningless in bannerlord and in warband you would lose troops just by moving around the map after a while if you didn't fight

[@mortache]

Crossbows do have more captain perks compared to bows though, so I wish you did tests with those now that we can assign captains

[@LyonExodus]

they have the ignore armor ones, and some accuracy, reload speed ones. on top of my head i can remember just 2 or 3 that actually improved the damage directly (engineering included). and the skill itself doesn't scale the dmg which is a big downside. Obviously the other problem is related to the low amount of ammo they have. Believe me, i tried on 1.7. to run a full Sergeant crossbowman captain and i wasn't having good results. i had to split the numbers of ranged troops between the sergeants and the pre 1.8. Palatines to get something going. Crossbows need a lot of help that is currently missing.

[@mortache]

@@LyonExodus Yeah I wish the skill scaled the damage instead of fire rate, or at least there was bigger quivers for higher tier troops. Doesn't make sense that archers can carry two huge baskets of arrows but crossbow men can only carry one pocket full of them

[@demoulius1529]

Enemy: *gets shot at* Omg lets close the distance to them! Sergeant: Cowabunga it is!

[@blazezz1101]

Crossbow units are always in a weird spot in Mount and Blade games. Players are expecting a low ammo but high damage per shot ranged unit but Taleworlds made them more like a hybrid melee-ranged unit. I think in Bannerlord the issues with crossbow units come down to damage being non-scalable from skills unlike archers and how armor deals with ranged damage. IMO they should either buff the armor of crossbow units to be slightly higher than archers or make armor works less effectively against crossbow shots.

[@LyonExodus]

well historically crossbows were preferred over bows or longbows for the only reason that training was very cheap and easy. the weapon itself was not as good nor as cheap as a bow. so Crossbow units tended to be mostly of mercenary nature and what we would consider 1 crossbowman was in general 2 or 3 dudes working together. that's the reason of the high pay. So from that standpoint a crossbow should not have higher DMG than a bow, altough this is a game and if you want them to fit that role they currently don't do enough DMG. And armor wise both crossbow units have not enough armor to be really competitive against infantry units. They perform basically like a T4 with a low shooting potential. But when you melee ability is worse than the Veteran Bowman i think you have a problem.

[@Deathelement53]

Crossbows if we wanted them to be realistic should be objectively worse shooting units than bows in every way but armor. Butthey should be much much cheaper and easier to train

[@TheNEOverse]

I think crossbowmen in BL should just be dudes that can be acquired as early as T2, and only go so far compared to actual archers, however should lack in maximum potency. They should be spammable and quite strong since you can get lots of them, but never the best ranged unit.

[@HistoricalWeapons]

@@LyonExodushistorically speaking crossbows can be more powerful since we are limited to your back muscles. But the problem is a lot of testing is done with steel crossbows which are at the end of crossbow history where it was more a hunting weapon. The military crossbows were using composite or wood prods that were much more efficient and delivers much more joules than bows

[@LyonExodus]

@@HistoricalWeapons sure steel crossbows were great, wooden ones not so much as far as i can tell. Considering the game only has wooden crossbows it makes sense that highly skilled bowman and longbowmen are more effective, main reasons to use crossbowmen in this day and age was the way cheaper training and ammo. They were really good defensive weapons for sure, but on the field i am certain most generals would have rather preferred an average formation of bowman to one of crossbowmen. Not really the most historically knowledgeable out there but that's what i have heard.

[@flochthedestroyer1907]

Amazing vídeo. The vlandian sharpshooter and the imperial crossbowmen are by far the most overrated troops in the game.

[@LyonExodus]

oh boy they are overblown. every month a random website just lists the Sharpshooter in a top 10 list and they claim things such as "They are as good as any other infantrymen in melee" which is not really true at all. Crossbows used to be great pre 1.8. but never truly OP in any way. And the 1.8. nerfs to accuracy can definitely be felt.

[@giacomomeluzzi280]

Idk what changed since this video, but at least according to Strat's melee testing in the latest branch they hold their own against every high tier infantry (except for the Legionary) even when set to hold fire. They're pretty dang good at softening up the enemy and then joining the shield wall, or you can even use them as the main shield wall while using shock infantry.

[@agroplode9680]

I watched this video twice, hoping that maybe crossbowmen will win.

[@arnoldasrakulevicius1540]

please ! We need full release version retesting of shield troops

[@latifyagzhancakr9202]

Each cultures caravan guards please

[@zada0579]

These guys and the Sharpshooters are overrated by a long shot especially now that Palatine Guards have 2 quivers compare to their 1 bag of bolts, but they are decent in Melee what i like to do with them is change their grouping from archers to Infantry and mixed them up with the Legionary and Imperal Infantry and ngl that's a pretty good combo Nice Video btw keep it up

[@ricwalker6600]

so in short, palantine guard for the army and Sergeants for the garrison.

[@BS-we3qe]

When considering defending a siege, where defenders can refill ammo, would sergeant have more kd than palatine guard?

[@LyonExodus]

good question. In that scenario it all comes down to DPS, and the Palatines, or any other T5 archer would outperform the Sergeants in that case. The Sergeants will fair better at fighting attackers up on the walls but if the attackers got there it generally isn't looking good for the defenders. in the opposite scenario. On attack, a crossbow is generally better because of that double threat bonus. But don't underestimate a well trained archer formation capability of picking enemies off the walls.

[@takuoku2546]

how god id a mercenery crossbow compared to the serrgent crossbow

[@LyonExodus]

probably much worse, i can't test them the same way since they don't exist in custom battles but they have the same crossbow (i think) and way worse melee gear. When i tested them a while back they weren't good, but a crossbowman that was surprisingly good was the T4 Vlandian militia. unfortunately now that all milita got nerfed they are no longer the second best archer in the game.

[@BaskinTimi]

wait how the fuck khuzait marksman shoots better than aserai master archer?

[@LyonExodus]

i think it's due to the better armor. since for shooting efficiency i had to use archers Vs archers and the size was 150 vs 850. that's what it takes to get some useful data on archers, with lower numbers they just kill anything in sight. so the Marksman having more armor helped with that. Using something like a Falxman didn't work since they just charged the archers. so i had to use that method. that's why the stats of the archers are kinda weird in comparison to the other troops, it's very hard to get the numbers in normal tests.

[@The_Custos]

Khuzait marksmen can take mid level crossbow bolts and good bows very well.

[@davidstern5012]

Short answer: Yesnt

[@owmyeyeseverythingissobright]

Kettelord

[@abzer030]

Hey man love your stuff but this title was clickbait

[@LyonExodus]

did you not see the "nope" in there?

[@LyonExodus]

Also it's the second worst performing video of the recent period so hardly clickbait. If anything it's the opposite as people don't watch it.

[@LyonExodus]

also is it clickbait if there is an open question. an answer (altough small) and the numbers from previous videos? And the question in the TN is also answered in the video? i think you have to change your definition of clickbait, as clickbait is something that leads people to watch something with a TN or title that doesn't answer or talk about the title and questions in the TN. This video doesn't do any of that. it answers the question, talks about the unit, shows graphs. so yeah, if this is your definition of clickbait you have to research the real definition and correct use of the term

[@liviubostan7229]

How the fck does the Iron Roundkettle over Mail grant 34 but Roundkettle over Mail 42? TW get your shit together. The iron one has straps on it for greater defence. Neither of the helmets should have lower than 42 head armour.

[@liviubostan7229]

Oh yea the Serges also had the Legionary Reinforced Studded Harness for 16 body armour. But it got destroyed with nerfs for some reason. Putting the Legionary to 55 Body from 64 and Sergs from 40 to 31

[@mortache]

I think the "iron" means the other one is better steel?

[@noctusfury6918]

With how they nerfed crossbows further in the newer patches, it further weakens Vlandia in particular. It's like TW has a vendetta against that faction and want to make all of their units as mediocre as possible. Either that, or Derthert is a cheapskate and it's severely affecting the effectiveness of the army. Which is now making me want to take over Vlandia in order to save the people from Derthert's Scrooge Syndrome. 😭

[@erwannthietart3602]

tbf making Vlandia weaker is fine, they usually wins against Battania anyways and snowballs from there

[@OPFlyFisher304]

Comment

[@MetalthinkerYT]

Dafuq is unit x

[@LyonExodus]

The Marksman. I used to hid them since it was a series and i was eventually going to cover all the units anyway. Now instead, i simply do a longer video updating the stats and equipment over a given class or scenario.

[@ChristianAuditore14]

Crossbowmen are garbage in bannerlord but in warband they were the best