What’s the best way to take down an army of longbow men?
Siege/ Capped rams in front of a group of skirmishers. Rams soak arrow fire allowing the skirmishers (counter units) to longbows get into range. Make sure you have fletching, bodkin arrow and bracer researched for the skirms.
Indeed, rams soak archer fire, and if not skirms, heavy cavalry or onagers work great too. Bombard cannon + sufficient meat shield (e.g., paladins in staggered formation blitzing the longbows) do good.
However, in the bigger picture, you want to rush players earlier in the game to prevent them from accessing their late-game tech tree. For instance, you should be trying to prevent a Briton player from achieving the nightmare of massing 120 longbow in one position.
Assuming you are in a late-game scenario, though, again, a lot of civilizations have the tech to achieve the above combo OR you need to work as a team in a team game. For instance, if you had a Celt & Hun combo in a 2v2 vs Britons and somebody, a smart team would combine the Celt siege with the Hun cav to either deal with the Briton army directly or to change the point of attack to the Briton player’s economy.
A cheap way is a lot of skirmishers and also you can get some catapults if you have enough gold.
Skirmishers are the best and most cost efficient way. Yes rams have very high pierce armor, but their speed negates advantages. Skirmishers have high resistance to projectiles and cost no gold to produce making them spammable and a cost effective counter.
Skirms = cheap = mass
In most cases > @Joshua4missions said:
Skirmishers are the best and most cost efficient way. Yes rams have very high pierce armor, but their speed negates advantages. Skirmishers have high resistance to projectiles and cost no gold to produce making them spammable and a cost effective counter.
This is not true, rams are absolutely essential. If you watch any expert level Mayan war for example you will see just how important the siege rams are.
Knights.
Ceterus parabus, you have excess food generation (for cavalry) compared to his wood (on longbows). The knights double as a raiding unit to disrupt his economy (ideally gold and lumberjack lines) giving you a double advantage for your one unit counter that can then also stand up to the deathball mass. This allows you to come out ahead economically. Make sure you invest this presumptuous eco advantage and get the blacksmith upgrades in order of damage first unless they are taking sustained hits (like your knights are being hit by castle/towncenter/archer fire) whilst raiding in which case get the defensive line prioritised first over attack.
Britons also can’t get camels so you can run circles around them.
@ZeroEmpires said:
This is not true, rams are absolutely essential. If you watch any expert level Mayan war for example you will see just how important the siege rams are.
This is because neither side can get cavalry and have a foot soldier with cavalry-esque speed that is also an archer. So you see it in mongol warfare as well, and hun pov games to a lesser extent (mangudai, CA). But if you have a good knight line (not Saracen) then you need cavalry because it doubles to offset him economically with raiding…
Another great option is goth huskarls ^^
Play a game of the custom scenario: Castle Blood if you ever get the opportunity, you really learn the UU (Unique Unit) matchups at a meta/macro/micro grand-scale.