You can never hit opponents with them...  No matter what.. unless there is nothing in the way, literally NOTHING in the way.. opponents can't be in tree's, they can't have friendly units between you and them, etc. etc.... Meaning they just get blitzed instantly and die as they're rushed...

What? Can you not see them? There's two units between the opponent and the crossbowmen. There isn't nothing. That's what's blocking the attack. I love crossbowmen. They have a few benefits:
1) Height. If you get them on walls or a cliff you can get some really nice shots and tear up your opponent.
2) Free attack: When you shoot with them, the opponent doesn't strike back. Now, if they get stuck in a prolonged melee- yeah not the greatest. Don't use them for that. Support them with swordsmen? They really whittle down the opponent hitting at full strength while your enemy has few and fewer non-crossbowed men to fight back with.

1) Many times even when on a height, they are blocked.

2) Needing nothing between you and an opponent defeats the purpose of them as archers, and or long range.. Those said units can easily just blitz your crossbowmen, and hack them to pieces. Why would you ever take crossbowman over archers, when archers can sit behind your front line, and get free attacks, and damage off, and stay safe in the process?

Rifles need direct line of sight as you may imagine, just like crossbows. Archers do less damage but can be in a safer position it's simply a trade off. I can assure you a crossbow salvo against enemies not in forest feel the burn.

Straight line guns and crossbows require line of sight, which is blocked by trees and units in the front line.

To overcome the Units blocking vision part, you need to have that line of sight unit be on a tile that's about two tiles higher than the units infront of them. You can do nothing about trees, though.

The Dedicated support units, after archers, are the Artillery units that come into play around medieval or early modern, as those don't need line of sight in order to be allowed to hit.

kryton24 wrote:

Rifles need direct line of sight as you may imagine, just like crossbows. Archers do less damage but can be in a safer position it's simply a trade off. I can assure you a crossbow salvo against enemies not in forest feel the burn.

Changlini wrote:

Straight line guns and crossbows require line of sight, which is blocked by trees and units in the front line.

To overcome the Units blocking vision part, you need to have that line of sight unit be on a tile that's about two tiles higher than the units infront of them. You can do nothing about trees, though.

The Dedicated support units, after archers, are the Artillery units that come into play around medieval or early modern, as those don't need line of sight in order to be allowed to hit.

Riflemen, etc. are fine because they don't get a melee penalty, and don't lose strength in melee. Crossbowmen do.

That's the real problem with Crossbowmen.. They have all the disadvantages of Archers with no compensation or benefit.

Javeliners have the same issues, and Gunpowders units to some extent but as they become the frontline its makes sense

Its particularly annoying for Javeliners as they are very vulnerable to close combat

For crossbowmen its a bit better, they can be very good on cliffs vs downhill but they can be hard to be used efficiently

Especially as if the line goes between two cells and one of them is occupied it count as blocked 

Good to know it wasn't a bug or something. I had the same issue and couldn't figure out how to get them to fire. I just sent them all to the back and brought up other units and just kept it melee. Now that I know they have horrible LOS drawbacks, I don't think I will be using them anymore. I will use archers but not build too many. Now if only I can figure out how to delete a unit I do not need anymore...

Kaixuan wrote:

Good to know it wasn't a bug or something. I had the same issue and couldn't figure out how to get them to fire. I just sent them all to the back and brought up other units and just kept it melee. Now that I know they have horrible LOS drawbacks, I don't think I will be using them anymore. I will use archers but not build too many. Now if only I can figure out how to delete a unit I do not need anymore...

When unit is inside a territory attached to a city: click the individual unit within the army, then select 'disband'.  This will make the unit disappear and add a Pop to the city (very useful early when you have extra scouts and need to populate a city).

Bridger wrote:

Kaixuan wrote:

Good to know it wasn't a bug or something. I had the same issue and couldn't figure out how to get them to fire. I just sent them all to the back and brought up other units and just kept it melee. Now that I know they have horrible LOS drawbacks, I don't think I will be using them anymore. I will use archers but not build too many. Now if only I can figure out how to delete a unit I do not need anymore...

When unit is inside a territory attached to a city: click the individual unit within the army, then select 'disband'.  This will make the unit disappear and add a Pop to the city (very useful early when you have extra scouts and need to populate a city).

Oh wow that's awesome. Thanks for telling me that!

Crossbows confounded me at first, but eventually I learned how to use them. They need to be deployed much more tactically than archers. Cliffs (not just hills) are your friend.

It is super annoying that they can't shoot past a single unit offset by a half hex, though. Visually it looks like they should be able to. Ditto shooting around obstacles such as fortifications.