Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition’s Update 185872 arrived on 22 September 2026 alongside The Viking Sagas, and for twelve existing European civilizations it did something blunt: the Archery Range stopped producing Cavalry Archers and started producing Mounted Crossbowmen. The patch notes sum the new regional unit up in a single line — “Mounted Archer with powerful but slow attack” — and hand three of those civilizations Cranequins, a technology that adds +1 range and +2 attack against Infantry. Every other civilization in the twelve got the unit and the swap, and nothing more.
What changed: Update 185872 replaced the Cavalry Archer with the Mounted Crossbowman for twelve existing European civilizations, and added the Cranequins technology for three of them. Why it matters: The swap is not cosmetic. The wiki’s civilization data shows the same unit arriving at 45 hit points for some of the twelve and 65 or more for others, with a new Franks unique technology cutting its gold cost by 40%. Who should care: Ranked players picking a European civilization this season, and anyone weighing whether The Viking Sagas changes the civs they already own.
What Update 185872 actually changed
The Age DE Team published Update 185872 on 22 September 2026 in the same beat as The Viking Sagas, the expansion that added the Danes, Saxons and Varangians to the roster — the DLC’s own contents are covered here. Three regional units ship with the patch: the Varangian Guard, the Longship (a renamed Longboat, now available to Vikings, Danes, Saxons and Varangians), and the Mounted Crossbowman. The update also brings a Scandinavian architecture set shared by Danes, Varangians and Vikings, new Greek voice lines for the Byzantines, an AI and pathfinding rework, and a new random map called Arabian Desert.
The exact wording of the swap carries more weight than its length suggests. “Mounted Crossbowmen are added to the game,” the notes read, “replacing Cavalry Archers for most European civilizations, which can also be upgraded with the new Cranequins technology!” That is a replacement inside an existing technology tree, not a new option bolted onto one. Cranequins is described in the same section: “Mounted Crossbowmen +1 range; +2 attack vs. Infantry.” The wiki’s upgrade tables agree, listing Cranequins in both the attack and the range rows for the line.
The twelve civilizations that swapped
The patch notes name all twelve one at a time, and the phrasing is consistent enough to build a table from. Seven of them are written as gaining “(Heavy) Mounted Crossbowmen” — shorthand for the base unit plus its Imperial Age upgrade. Five are written as gaining only “Mounted Crossbowmen”.
| Civilization | Heavy Mounted Crossbowman | Cranequins | Wiki marker |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bohemians | No | No | — |
| Britons | Yes | Yes | + |
| Burgundians | No | No | — |
| Celts | Yes | No | — |
| Franks | Yes | Yes | + |
| Italians | No | No | x |
| Poles | Yes | No | x |
| Portuguese | No | No | x+ |
| Sicilians | Yes | Yes | + |
| Spanish | Yes | No | x |
| Teutons | Yes | No | — |
| Vikings | No | No | — |
The wiki’s availability chart annotates its own list with two markers. The x means the civilization gets Bloodlines, Husbandry and Thumb Ring, and can therefore fully upgrade its Mounted Crossbowmen in the Castle Age. The + means the civilization has a civilization bonus, team bonus or unique technology that lifts the unit’s combat strength. Among the twelve, four carry the x — Italians, Poles, Portuguese and Spanish — and four carry the plus — Britons, Franks, Portuguese and Sicilians. Portuguese, marked x+, is the only one of the twelve carrying both.
Note what the table does not say. All twelve swapped out of Cavalry Archers, but the patch does not take the Cavalry Archer line away from the civilizations that never had the Mounted Crossbowman. The Chinese get a different treatment in the same update: they keep Cavalry Archers and lose the Heavy Cavalry Archer upgrade instead.
The unit, by the numbers
The wiki’s statistics block for the Mounted Crossbowman is specific. It is a Castle Age unit trained at the Archery Range for 40 wood and 65 gold, over 40 seconds. It has 45 hit points, 7 pierce attack with a +1 bonus against Spearmen, 4 range, 80% accuracy, 2 melee armour, 1.25 speed and a reload time of 2.5. The Heavy Mounted Crossbowman upgrade costs 1,000 food and 650 gold and takes 50 seconds.
Two notes in the same block shape how the unit plays. The tactics section is one sentence — it has “higher attack, but lower Rate of Fire, when compared to its generic counterpart”. And no civilization with the Mounted Crossbowman line has Parthian Tactics, which the wiki observes would otherwise benefit the unit the way it benefits the Cavalry Archer line, with Cranequins taking its place as the line’s own improvement.
The wiki’s Castle Age comparison table is where the twelve start to separate. Wood cost is a flat 40 across the board, but gold cost, hit points and speed are not.
| Civilization | Gold cost | Hit points | Speed | Reload time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bohemians | 65 | 45 | 1.375 | 2.5 |
| Britons | 65 | 45 | 1.375 | 2.5 |
| Burgundians | 65 | 45 | 1.375 | 2.5 |
| Celts | 65 | 45 | 1.375 | 2.5 |
| Franks | 39 | 54 | 1.375 | 2.5 |
| Portuguese | 52 | 65 | 1.375 | 2.25 |
| Sicilians | 65 | 65 | 1.375 | 2.5 |
| Teutons | 65 | 65 | 1.25 | 2.5 |
| Vikings | 65 | 45 | 1.25 | 2.5 |
| Generic — and, per the wiki, Italians, Poles and Spanish | 65 | 65 | 1.375 | 2.25 |
The wiki’s Technologies table supplies the arithmetic behind those columns: Bloodlines adds 20 hit points (30 for the Varangians), so the base 45 becomes 65, and the Franks’ +20% civilization bonus turns 45 into 54. Only Teutons and Vikings sit at 1.25 speed where every other entry in that table reads 1.375 — the gap Husbandry’s +10% movement speed closes — and the wiki goes as far as calling the Teuton and Viking Mounted Crossbowman line the slowest horse-riding unit in the game.
Which civs actually profit
Sorting the twelve by what the sources give them produces a rough ladder. Each tier below is built only from the patch notes and the wiki’s own tables.
| Tier | Civilizations | What the sources give them |
|---|---|---|
| A | Franks | Ordonnance Companies cuts Mounted Crossbowman gold cost by 40% (39 gold in the wiki table), plus +20% hit points, Cranequins and the Heavy upgrade |
| B | Britons, Sicilians, Portuguese | Cranequins for Britons and Sicilians; +10% creation speed for Britons; −40% bonus damage taken for Sicilians; Portuguese are the only swapped civ the wiki marks x+ |
| C | Celts, Italians, Poles, Spanish | The Heavy upgrade (Celts) and/or full Castle-Age tech per the x marker, with no combat bonus of their own on the unit |
| D | Teutons | +1/+2 melee armour in Castle and Imperial Age, at 1.25 speed |
| E | Bohemians, Burgundians, Vikings | The base swap, at base 45 hit points |
The Franks are the clearest winner and the reason is a single line in the patch notes. Ordonnance Companies is a new Castle Age unique technology costing 400 food and 250 gold over 40 seconds, and its effect is that “Mounted Crossbowmen cost -40% gold”. The wiki prices the result at 39 gold against the generic 65. The same patch removes the Franks’ Bearded Axe unique technology and increases Throwing Axeman range from 3 to 5, Elite 4 to 6 — so the Franks trade one ranged identity for another rather than stacking both.
Tier B holds the two civilizations that bought the technology. Britons and Sicilians get Cranequins and the Heavy upgrade, and the wiki’s bonus tables add a little more: Britons research Thumb Ring and Cranequins 10% faster and build the unit 10% faster, while Sicilians resist 40% of bonus damage. Portuguese are the quieter entry — the only swapped civilization with both the full Castle-Age technology set and a bonus of its own, a 20% gold discount that the wiki prices at 52 gold, plus a team bonus that researches technologies benefiting the Mounted Crossbowman 25% faster.
Tier C is the full-tech, no-frills group. Italians, Poles and Spanish are marked x, so they can complete the line’s Castle Age technologies, and the wiki names them among the civilizations with “generic” Mounted Crossbowmen. Their civilization bonuses touch the unit sideways rather than directly: the Italians’ cheaper Ballistics and Chemistry, the Poles’ Bloodlines at half food cost, the Spanish getting blacksmith technologies free with a 20-gold refund on each, and, for the Celts, a bonus that lets Mounted Crossbowmen convert herdable animals even with enemy units next to them.
Tier D is the Teutons, and it is the tier the community thread argues about most. The wiki lists Teutons at +1/+2 melee armour in the Castle and Imperial Age, and the patch notes rewrite their civilization bonus from “Stable and Barracks units +1/+2 melee armor” to “Infantry and Mounted Units +1/+2 melee armor” so the armour reaches the new unit at all. That armour arrives attached to the slowest version of the unit in the game. One detail worth flagging: the wiki’s availability chart does not give the Teutons a plus marker even though its own civilization-bonuses table credits them with the armour bonus and its team-bonus table credits them with conversion resistance.
Tier E is the plain swap. Bohemians, Burgundians and Vikings gain the Mounted Crossbowman and lose the Cavalry Archer, and the wiki’s comparison table puts all three on the unit’s base 45 hit points. For the Vikings the swap comes inside a larger rework: the same patch gives them Varangian Guards, takes away Gambesons, removes the Chieftains gold generation when Infantry defeat Villagers, Trade Units and Monks, and moves them from Elite Cannon Galleons to Catapult Galleons.
What the community is saying
The official forum thread for the balance patch is a useful temperature check, with the caveat that everything in it is player opinion rather than a developer claim. The harshest read comes from a user arguing that Teuton Mounted Crossbowmen “don’t work well enough to justify there high cost”, that they “fall off heavy in imp”, and that the armour bonus “is off set by there lack of husbandry”. Another regular makes the case that the Poles and Celts got the wrong deal, writing that “Poles probably don’t appreciate switching to mounted crossbows” and that “Celts should prefer MC over cav archers, not that they’ll go for either much”. Not every response is sour — one calls the Mounted Crossbowman “the only good addition” in the patch — and at least one poster simply asks for the unit to get +1 attack.
What to watch next
Two things decide whether the swap reads as a buff or a sideways move. The first is whether the Imperial Age upgrade cost — 1,000 food and 650 gold, per the wiki — keeps the line out of late-game play for the five civilizations that cannot upgrade it at all. The second is the Cavalry Archer’s survival elsewhere: the Chinese lose only the Heavy upgrade, and the wiki suggests that Chinese and Berber retention of the Cavalry Archer rather than the Mounted Crossbowman may reflect a historical preference for mounted archery over crossbowmen — a suggestion the wiki leaves as a suggestion. For a look at how the other Age of Empires title handled a comparable balance pass, see the Age of Empires IV Patch 15.3.8338 write-up.
Next read
- Age of Empires II Viking Sagas: Varangians and the Jarl — the DLC that brought the Mounted Crossbowman’s regional unit family with it.
- AoE4 Patch 15.3.8338: 13 Civilizations and Crucible — how World’s Edge balances a much larger civilization roster in the sequel.