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Arralen said:
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Saber Cherry said:
Dominions II does not seem to match either of these weapons to (what I understand to be) their historic roles, considering that
a) in Dominions II crossbows are longer range and more expensive than shortbows, instead of shorter range and cheaper, and
b) in Dominions II longbows are incapable of harming heavily armored units, while in real life they can, and
c) in Dominions II crossbows kill heavily armored units at their maximum range. In real life crossbows do much less damage at their max range than arrows; probably not enough to pierce heavy armor, and
d) in Dominions II, a longbow usually kills a lightly armored unit in one hit. This would be very rare in real life.
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So why don't you fix it?
a) make them range=20, acc=+5
b) obviously, you need "armor piercing" and not to low damage
c) see a) ..
d) so you basically say that hitting a man through heavy armor is more likely to kill him than hitting an unarmored man? Think again ... never heard about shrapnel from armor piercing arrows 
Actually, the only good defense against a longbow is a thick, wooden shield, which will take much of an arrows momentum away by friction, as the shaft passes through it.
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a) The battlefield in Dominions II is so short, compared to real life, that range 20 weapons with 1 shot per 2 rounds would only get one shot on light units, and zero to one shots on cavalry... immensely weakening crossbows. Furthermore, xbowmen would invariably rush forward at the beginning of combat unitl something was in range, getting themselves killed... and real life xbowmen would never do such a dumb thing. I think crossbows were normally used from above (towers, walls, hills) rather than from ground level, which is impossible in Doms II. At any rate, I think range 20 xbows would be useless weapons. What I
did do was drop the range by 3 (10%) and reduce the pricing of some xbowmen.
b) Exactly, which is why I gave longbows ap.
c) Again, I don't want to nerf xbows to the point of uselessness, or make xbowmen run suicidally out into the battlefield to get into range.
d) No... what I mean is, a 14 damage longbow (Dominions II) generally kills a light unit (leather cuirass only) in one hit by dealing 11+ damage, which is unrealistic. Modded longbows (9 ap) generally do not kill ANYTHING in one hit, since they only do 8+ damage to even units with a leather cuirass only, which is more realistic. On the other hand, while less likely to kill light units than original longbows, they are also more likely to wound heavy units, by virtue of the ap damage. Therefore, the mod makes them more realistic against light and heavy units than before.
I'm trying to adjust the units and weapons to reach a certain goal... but, for example, I'm not entirely certain that crossbows, shortbows, and longbows were even contemporary. You can't balance flintlocks versus Steyr AUGs, no matter how hard you try, because one has no role when the other is available. And furthermore, I can't really put each weapon into its correct role if the battlefield is too small to model that role, or lacks elevation required by a role, or if the engine does not model the degrees of armor-piercing or ability to wound without killing that are vital to accurately represent a weapon. If a damage cap was allowed on weapons (5 damage for all arrows and bolts, for example, with a 10% chance of a critical hit that ignores this restriction), it would make the situation a lot easier...
The simple answer to your question is, I'm trying to fix them, but I'm not sure it's possible... I don't think that Illwinter's stats, my current stats, or your proposed stats are particularly good solutions, but maybe one of them is better than the other two, and approaching a good solution.