[malthaussen]

Getting back to the OP's question, I wondered the same thing when I started playing the game. I figured both crossbows and longbows should be AP weapons. It appears, however, from information supplied in this thread, that if the idea is to represent RL weapons, neither should be AP. There doesn't seem to be any reason why one should be AP and the other not, unless it is for gaming reasons, and not simulation reasons. And since Dominions makes no pretence of being a simulation, that's probably all the reason needed.

I like the discussion of "blunt force trauma" and "kinetic energy transfer" and the like. I wonder what the reaction of your typical mediaeval knight would have been. Not only would he not understand the terms, he'd probably burn you at the stake for using them. Despite the efficacity or otherwise of various maces, hammers, flails, and ilk for defeating armor and causing damage to your opponent, all of these weapons remained pretty much auxiliary to the sword, whether the latter was more efficient or not. Should some of these weapons be AP and some not? Don't we first of all have to know what the designers intend by making weapons AP before we can answer that question?

Knights didn't fight knights if they could avoid it. A "good day" for your typical mounted thug, pace the chansons and their ilk, was to ride down and trample a bunch of hapless peasants, not engage in Irish Standdown with an opponent as well-armored and armed as yourself. This is why the pike caused such an uproar when it was first employed -- because for the first time, those hapless peasants could defeat the flower of chivalry. Yet I notice in the discussion above about weapons effectiveness, nobody talks about the pike, although it evolved into the standard battle arm for centuries. Should pikes be AP?

As for missile weapons, I see the progression this way: slings were good, cheap weapons that were effective at short ranges, but (as another poster points out) couldn't be used in masses and required a good bit of experience to be used effectively. Shortbows needed less experience, but were consequently not much more effective, if a bit longer-ranged. Longbowmen needed quite a lot of training, the weapon itself was expensive, but in mass it was very effective and long-ranged, so long as you had trained longbowmen. I recall one article I read somewhere-or-other (possibly S&T magazine) that speculates that a side effect of the Great Plague was to wipe out the pool of trained longbowmen for England and thus lose the Hundred Year's War for them. You can believe that one or not as you like. Crossbows didn't require as much training and were nearly as effective as longbows, which explains their vogue in the latter Middle Ages. Both kinds of bows were very good infantry killers, too, a fact that became more important as armies became more and more dominated by pikemen. What used to puzzle me was the vogue of gunpowder weapons once they were invented. Despite being expensive and unreliable, they became more and more popular as time went on. An arquebush or musket is no simpler to use than a crossbow (in fact, the latter is much simpler, not to mention tremendously more accurate), so why did firearms replace bows? Could it be that they were AP, and bows and crossbows not? A .75 cal bullet will punch through any armor without much problem, I should think. (Nevertheless, Benjamin Franklin proposed that the American army be armed with longbows, not muskets, since the former were not only much more accurate but had a much greater rate of fire. He ignored the fact that it is a lot easier to shoot a musket than a longbow)

Well, I suppose I've rambled enough here. Ultimately, I think there is only one real answer to the OP's question: crossbows are AP and longbows are not, because the designers wanted it that way.

-- Mal