Crossbowman

“Each shot stuns the enemy.”

Stats
Level 79:

Damage caused - 378

Upgrade cost to next level - 462.35k

Notes:
According to his numbers and his double attack, (which we will refer to as a “volley”) it would SEEM like Crossbowman is a decently strong unit who could hold a place on the tower for a long while.

However, Crossbowman is the best example of when a unit’s mechanics and lack of synergy with other units causes their battle influence to be much less than what their stats and abilities would suggest.

Crossbowman likely suffers more than any other unit when it comes to “wasted” or “lost” attacks. (When a unit launches an attack but the target dies from other sources before being hit.*)

His arrows are single target and travel extremely slowly; additionally, “multi-attack” is actually just a single target volley, attacking one enemy unit twice. It SEEMS like this would synergize with his nuke-potential. However, if the first arrow kills his target, the second will be wasted. Additionally, though arrow#1 in the volley may not kill the target your other units could still do so before arrow#2 lands.

Further along these lines, the arrows travel so slowly he’ll have likely launched a second or even third volley at that same target before the first hits. But his attack is basically a nuke and standard enemy units won’t survive 2~3 of his volleys (= 4~6 arrows), so any attacks launched before the kill-shot lands would be wasted.

- - -

And this is just the basics of how his mechanics lead to wasted potential, leading us to what ultimately leaves him suffering from a lack of influence:

He isn’t the only unit on your tower.

Aside from shooting himself in the foot. . . His arrows are so slow that by the time ANY of his attacks would have hit the target they are often already dead from the onslaught of everyone else’s attacks.

Early game crossbowman sees some continued value against bosses and castles. Unfortunately, his value quickly drops as other units with better mechanics and that synergies join the roster.

* A real-life projectile would strike any object in its path of trajectory. However, Towerlands does not have a complex physics engine as seen in games like Fortnite. In-game projectiles like the crossbowman’s arrows will simply vanish upon reaching the location of a unit that has already died. (There are some potential exceptions to this, notably Shrapnel and Cannon, where a unit/module’s projectiles seem to strike a location, rather than individual units.)