[Anonymous Player]

I am relatively new to Age of Empires II, having just bought the Definitive Edition.

I have been playing as the Franks and have just completed the Joan of Arc campaigns.

My main focus has been on resource gathering and then quickly advancing to a Castle, Blacksmith and two Stables to get fully upgraded Paladins, which I have found to be quite effective.

For the campaigns I mostly used Paladins and Trebuchets, unless I was given Archers or Cannons.

I am wondering what the best ranged unit the Franks have to compete with Longbowmen is.

Should I experiment with Throwing Axemen, Crossbowmen, Bombard Cannons or Hand Cannoneers?

I am still just playing against the computer AI, but I am planning on trying some online games soon once I have a good set-up.

[TheConqueror753]

You don’t want to get in a shootout with Longbows, a good player of the Britons will just hit and run, you won’t be able to fight them.

Your best bet would be to go Paladin, and try and dive for them.

In terms of ranged units for Franks, you primarily want to use them as a means of countering enemy spearmen, in a way that they supplement your Knights.

You don’t want to use Crossbows if you can help it, Throwing Axes are really good against spears however, as are Hand Cannons.

Which option is best would depend on the specific situation.

Bombard Cannons are meant to be an anti building option, although they are also really good against siege (especially onagers), but they have to be microed usually for that (attacking ground, dodging enemy shots, that kind of thing).

[Celq124]

Rams paladin skirm push.

I say skirm because I think facing long bow man skirm is better alternative than axe man against halb.

[Dick__Dastardly]

As it turns out, the game does a decent job of simulating the [Battle of Agincourt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Agincourt).

In fact I’m sure the original devs had it on their mind.

The core Bretonic strat there is going to be longbows defended by a hedgehog of halberdiers, and it’s just plain difficult for many civs to address, because longbows — unlike most archers, have a freakishly long range, and it lets them snipe a lot of the “usual” archer counters from a long way away.

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I feel like the trick is “mass” — a single onager trying to come in and buckshot the longbows will never make it.

But several of them is enough that a few of them can survive get into range, and the “even trade” metric on those is just killing 3 archers. **IF** they get in range, they’ll slaughter the Briton archers like any others.

The “sticker shock” of having to kamikaze a few of them just to make the attack work scares a lot of people away, but it’s one of the best counters to their deathball.

​

Beyond that, it’s the usual counters — Frankish skirmishers aren’t great, but if you’ve blown a few big holes in their deathball of archers+halbs, skirmishers counter what’s left.

Throwing axemen struggle to get into range with Briton archers — *but if they magically can appear, within range*, then they actually trade quite well with them.

There are two ways to do this: one is to do what I described above — using onagers or something to create some heat that forces the archers to hold ground until the melee fighters are in range.

The second is an unorthodox take — use Rams or Siege towers as an armored “Bus” to rush the troops into fighting range of the archers.

Especially with a siege tower (being faster), you might not even lose the unit.

If they’re destroyed, the units inside get deployed right where the “vehicle” died without taking any damage.

[Tarsal26]

Ai campaigns are fun but quite different from online.

In campaigns the paladin is the best unit, 40 fully upgraded paladins can wipe out most fights.

Vs longbows you will just have to keep chasing, but elite skirmishers could also do.

If you are worried about losing your units with limited gold make some light cavalry to go with the paladins and keep them in front to soak damage and kill longbows.

Trebs and bombard cannons are good at taking out gates towers and castles.

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