Longbows are no good

[pike master]

i wasnt trying to make the exact claim about the velocity being 280 i was just trying to estimate because a freind of mine has a 2000 dollar compound bow that chrons out at 340 but his is top of line.

i am glad to get the input on that so we have a pretty accurate estimate on the actual power of the arrow and not just the pull weight which at 124 ft lbs is still average to high power for a .22 lr.

i can tell sextus is very knowledgable in archery because i knew and now know he is into chroning them and you cant argue with facts. as i said i was just guessing on that 280 fps.

my specialty is high powered rifles not much on archery. and thinking on it somemore i would be close to certian that firearms probably shot around the 600 fps mark and the lead shot weight is a guess but i figure since the bores varied but a lot of em were around an inch. maybe someone might know how much the lead balls weighed for arquebuses?

[pike master]

just did some checking up on some arquebus reference sites and turns out the bullet weights are not as high as i expected nor the bore sizes. they were more like .5 to .75 caliber and the velocity instead of being only 600 ranged from 800 fps for a .75 cal to 1500 fps for a .50 cal.

but i still dont know exact bullet weights but one site mentioned it at 3/4 ounce so if we take the lower velocity of 800*800*330grains/450240 we get an energy of 470 ft lbs but i dont know what cal the 3/4 ounce slug went to.i do know that 50 cal bullets these days usually average about 300 grains for an automatic pistol. so a ball would probably be lighter than a bullet.

so 3/4 of an ounce would probably have been for the .75 caliber.

[Carl]

I'd also point out that regardless of how flat a trajectory a bulet would have had at 100M, the lack of rifiling in fact made any kind of accurrate shooting impossibbile and i'm lead to belive that 100M was the limit of effective volley fire.

[Orda Khan]

I never argue physics, once the calculations begin I start off on a reverie. However, 280 fps for a longbow or any traditional set up is expecting a lot

......Orda

[CBR]

An arquebus would be of around 15mm and bullet weight of 20 grams. Muskets could be monsters of 20+mm and 50+ gram bullets but they did vary in caliber and generally fell below 20mm by the start of the 17th century IIRC. Muzzle velocites would have been 350 m/s and I have seen some tests showing 500+ IIRC. The recoil described even when using heavy weapons suggests pretty high velocities for muskets. The handguns of early/mid 15th century would have had 200+ m/s.


CBR

[CBR]

However, 280 fps for a longbow or any traditional set up is expecting a lot

......Orda
The heavy draw weight Turkish bows using extremely light flight arrows would most likely come near 400 fps. With such velocities its possible to do these insane 8-900 yard shots.


CBR

[pike master]

based on the stats cbr gave that would place the projectile at 310 grains compared to my 330 grains.

velocity would be 1155 fps for the arquebus which would give it roughly about 780 ft lbs. thats pretty powerful.

[Lord Fluffy]

The heavy draw weight Turkish bows using extremely light flight arrows would most likely come near 400 fps. With such velocities its possible to do these insane 8-900 yard shots.


CBR


Oh if you're talking about flight archery, they use overdraws to shoot ridiculously short arrows, they can go all the way out to a mile.

They did a test on the accuracy of civil war era muskets. Even from up close that thing is not very accurate at all. I'd say the human sized target was no more than 20m away. It took the "firearm expert" 4 or 5 shots to hit it. I forgot what show it was on, but I guess fired in mass and at a large densely packed formation, somebody is bound to get hit.

[dopp]

Which is why they had riflemen for the marksmanship. The musket was for the sheer firepower. Armies actually resisted rifled weapons for many centuries because it would complicate the drill procedure and reduce the rate of fire. Incidentally, the command for firing volleys was not 'aim' but simply 'level', with a sergeant sometimes using a halberd to make sure everyone's barrel was in line. It's doubtful whether musketeers bothered to aim at all. That's what the skirmishers with the rifles were for. Nevertheless, musket volleys were extremely devastating and could put entire formations to flight in an instant.

[Doug-Thompson]

Small detail here:

The invention of the Mine' ball shortly before the U.S. Civil War made reloading a rifle just as fast as reloading a musket. It was before that invention that rifled bullets had to be literally hammered down the barrel with a metal ramrod, making them slow to reload. Riflemen in the 18th century and early 19th would often load a rifle round and then switch to smooth musketballs after the initial volley. The Mine' ball had an expandable base. It slipped down the barrel as easily as a musketball. When the gun fired, the base expanded and the lead "bit" into the rifling in the barrel, giving a tight fit and the rifling effect.

Anyway, back to MTW2.

[dopp]

Of course, the muskets in M2TW are not the later muskets that equipped the armies of Napleon and so on, but much heavier weapons fired from a stock.

[Frankmuddy]

I think the number you are looking for is 12. 20 = an arrow every three seconds. That is seriously fast. Not only is it fast but it would drain the poor archer very fast as well.

It's fast, but not impossible. Keep in mind that you're shooting clout, you've been doing this every sunday for your entire adult life, And your only concern for accuracy is not hitting the guy directly in front of you.

[dopp]

It's not impossible, but unlikely to be as fast as on a shooting range since you need to conserve energy and ammo, you're timing your volley with everyone else, and you're in a tense battle situation.

[JCoyote]

They did a test on the accuracy of civil war era muskets. Even from up close that thing is not very accurate at all. I'd say the human sized target was no more than 20m away. It took the "firearm expert" 4 or 5 shots to hit it. I forgot what show it was on, but I guess fired in mass and at a large densely packed formation, somebody is bound to get hit.

In the US Civil War most weapons were about .58 caliber and rifled. They fired mine' balls. At 12 years old, I fired a replica Cook & Brother carbine, .58 caliber using Mine' ball. The target was a tree branch about 5" diameter, about 50 yards away. We were hunting mistletoe (a holiday shooting tradition). I hit that branch not more than a few millimeters off dead center. That was the first time I ever fired that weapon as well... And that's not a full rifle, that was a shorter carbine. I know people with original Civil War rifles who still use them for hunting every year with Mine' ball. No accuracy issues there either.

Anyway, not only were earlier medieval/renaissance era matchlocks heavier than later muskets, they also had tighter bore-to-ball fitting. Like later early rifles, many had the shot hammered down into the bore. This translated into superior range and accuracy over the US Revolution era muskets... but slower firing speed. Given the relatively poor accuracy of most conscript shooters, along with the hesitance of humans in killing other humans. reduced range and accuracy was considered ok to sacrifice for faster speed. There weren't sights on many military weapons... they fired on formations, not individuals. The looser bore fitting also aided in mass production of muskets and ammunition allowing some margin in production. By that time there were steps up in lock mechanisms and priming, manufacturing, etc but accuracy of the common firearm had decreased in many cases. More specialized arms, and private arms, like early rifles and the sort, were superior in accuracy though.

Anyway, as for the energy figures I've seen posted, you have to remember the severe difference in penetration ability between hardened pointed steel and a soft round lead ball. Energy isn't all of the equation, you have to drive a soft piece of lead much, MUCH faster to penetrate hard metal objects. Hence some of the velocity disparity. Small differences in hardness make large differences in penetration. We had a damaged car door off of a Suzuki Samurai, and we tested a few pistols on it. We had a .380 ACP firing FMJ, 9mm firing FMJ, .38 Special firing RN lead +P, and a 10mm firing JHP. The only one that didn't penetrate the door was the .38 special. The slower, significantly lower energy and velocity bur similar caliber .380 did most of the time. The 9mm did all the time, in spite of being a slight bit lower in power than the .38. Of course the 10mm plowed through every single time as well as anything placed behind the door. The point being, the copper cladding on an FMJ makes the round somewhat harder than plain lead, and the hardness made the difference going through even low quality sheet metal. On a side note, firing a modern .38 Special to stop a charging late medieval plate covered knight is ill advised. :laugh4:

That all being said, the early firearms DID have better armor penetration, and superior horse killing power.

Anyway, weapon system advances do not always translate into direct battlefield advantages. And urbanization IS a big deal for longbows. Unless you can conjure quality yew staves out of thin air, you can't make longbows without decent tracts of forest. Importing yew from the continent is not logistically sound and gets expensive. Longbows wear out, and keeping a longbowman in training with the things takes more yew... A firearm, even the early ones, lasts as long as it is decently cared for and someone doesn't pack too much or too tight powder in it.

As for industry, my reference wasn't to assembly lines per se, but to act like production didn't happen back then is silly. Even samurai swords, those wonderful pieces of custom craftsmanship, were often the result of work from a half dozen or more people. The blade, tsuba, fittings, etc were all usually different artisans, and the final polishing and sharpening was often a specialist as well. The same holds true for early firearms... while you might have a gunsmith set up production and teach each stage what to do (why they were so well paid) production could involve lots of people. People making barrels, other people making locks, and yet more people making stocks. While not a production line as we currently understand it, it offers many of the benefits and was a form of early industrialization. Production was rarely a matter of just one guy sitting around going through all the stages. Even small shops had apprentices doing grunt work.

And the english were fielding firearms and longbows together for quite a long time. Better part of a century. That speaks to each having separate advantages on the battlefield. In such cases where systems acted as contemporaries for long periods of time, it usually isn't there merits of vices versus each other that led to the abandonment of one or the other, but instead factors outside their direct comparison.

[Lord_hazard]

It's fast, but not impossible. Keep in mind that you're shooting clout, you've been doing this every sunday for your entire adult life, And your only concern for accuracy is not hitting the guy directly in front of you.

Good point, they were prob the equivalent of elite soldiers today, in regards of training.

[fenir]

Maybe because it took them 200 years to do so? Or that in order to do so required calling upon English interests in France to bolster their army? Even then they relied heavily upon loyal Welsh troops from mid Wales. And finally more castles than any other country in order to keep the Welsh in place. All this for a nation of fairly easy going people.


........Orda


No sorry Orda,
before Edward finally had enough of the northern wales, as Wales had been England since roman times, various Lords who had sworen fealty would go raiding(by defination, English Lords), where by the princes, as they are so styled themselves in the 1200's, and Edward allowed them to keep the title in 1278AD treaty, were allowed to live under treaty most of the time.
Even King Henry III smacked north Wales because they would raid other areas. Generally just causing trouble, but they where not independant, and hadn't been since well before King Stephen's time. They lived under treaty by their overlord the King.
You cannot Conquer what is already yours.

Easy Going people? yeah who would go killing stealing and raping :) Real easy going.
More castles than what nation? that would be Luxemburg and germany per sq km. Or even per population.

Wales even in Stephen, and William the I times, was England, and a province of Such, just as (Wessux and Anglia and Mercia) as is it's offical status today.

There was not any relying on Loyal welsh troops as you put it, they used mainly marcher lord troops, and royal army(the northern one). Mostly troops from the then Royal Marcher of Cheshire.
Hence the famous Edwardian Castles are only in the north west of Wales.
The last Rising in Wales was English lords in 1400's or late 1300's.
But Wales has been no different to any other area, every now and again, people disagreed and would resort to arms.


Edward being impressed By Welch Archers? No
England Already was using the Longbow, the Welch campign made them famous.
Edward took Longbowman from Surrey with him in the VIII Crusade 1271AD, and his father used longbowman before him in Battle of Lewes ~1264AD against Montfort, who also used them.

ARCHERY LAW OF ENGLAND......1252AD (BEFORE EDWARD was born).
All Men age between 15 to 60, must train, and equip themselves for service of the King....oh dear? thats before!!! Edward, heck thats before his father.

A musket even up to the 1800's is a useless weapon over 60 meters, surely someone thought to think, well i wonder why they marched in a line close packed and fire there weapons at point blank.
Does make one question doesn't it.



PS: OFFICALLY the two most powerful bows in the World are the longbow and African elephant bow. Both of which top 220lb (900n).
The average power for bows of all designs is about 50 pounds (220 newtons) at 28 inches (70 cm) of draw.


LONGBOW.... there are three main head types for the longbow.
short bodkin ........used against armnour plate <---- this is the one that killed all the French nobles (In plate Armour) at crecy with the English losing only 50 odd men. The Longbow stopped an enitre attack before it started.
Long bodkin........Against chainmail
swallowtails........used against horses.

Longbowman, where also trained swords man, because after the battle of Crecy 1364...the French King Decreed that every Longbowman Caught with have his Two Fingers cut off.....hence even today, we give the Fingers to someone we don't like.
They where trained in a Butt.
where by military training armed and unarmed, and command training was given.

....Ready your Bows...
....Nock...fit Arrow
....Mark....like aiming
....Draw... pull bow back
....Loose...FIRE!

[Kruniac]

Battle Report - Me (England) - 6 Units of Yeomen Archers, 3 Units of Dismounted Feudal Knights, 1 ** Star General

vs

France - 4 Units of Dismounted Feudal Knights, 4 Units of Mounted Feudal Knights, 3 Units Peasant Archers - 1 * Star General

Situation - Longbows up front, Knights behind. General in the very back. SLIGHT high ground advantage, being on a long slope. Woodland area, situated across a clearing the enemy would have to go through.

Final Result - English casualities 0, French losses TOTAL

..Longbows rock. Especially with the HORRIBLE AI that causes the enemy to "retreat" from missile fire, only to resume charging after losing 50% of the ground the covered.

Medium/Medium Difficulty - No routs, except for the VERY last few kills

[Orda Khan]

No sorry Orda,
before Edward finally had enough of the northern wales, as Wales had been England since roman times, various Lords who had sworen fealty would go raiding(by defination, English Lords), where by the princes, as they are so styled themselves in the 1200's, and Edward allowed them to keep the title in 1278AD treaty, were allowed to live under treaty most of the time.
Even King Henry III smacked north Wales because they would raid other areas. Generally just causing trouble, but they where not independant, and hadn't been since well before King Stephen's time. They lived under treaty by their overlord the King.
You cannot Conquer what is already yours.

Easy Going people? yeah who would go killing stealing and raping :) Real easy going.
More castles than what nation? that would be Luxemburg and germany per sq km. Or even per population.

Wales even in Stephen, and William the I times, was England, and a province of Such, just as (Wessux and Anglia and Mercia) as is it's offical status today.

There was not any relying on Loyal welsh troops as you put it, they used mainly marcher lord troops, and royal army(the northern one). Mostly troops from the then Royal Marcher of Cheshire.
Hence the famous Edwardian Castles are only in the north west of Wales.
The last Rising in Wales was English lords in 1400's or late 1300's.
But Wales has been no different to any other area, every now and again, people disagreed and would resort to arms.


Edward being impressed By Welch Archers? No
England Already was using the Longbow, the Welch campign made them famous.
Edward took Longbowman from Surrey with him in the VIII Crusade 1271AD, and his father used longbowman before him in Battle of Lewes ~1264AD against Montfort, who also used them.

ARCHERY LAW OF ENGLAND......1252AD (BEFORE EDWARD was born).
All Men age between 15 to 60, must train, and equip themselves for service of the King....oh dear? thats before!!! Edward, heck thats before his father.

Very concise... The fact still remains that the Welsh, as I stated, were very easy going; something that remains true today, always willing to do someone else's bidding. Raiding was carried out by many people in many countries considered 'vassals', however it does not usually take 200 years to sort out a small problem.
Did these raids occur simply because they were a bad lot or was it something provoked? Such as treatment by the so called Marcher Lords?
Sure Germany and Luxembourg have many castles but I think they were built by themselves.

The troops from Brycheiniog never joined Edward? He never received reinforcement from France?
And then finally in 15thC the last rising was by an English Lord? Owain Glyndwr...or more correctly Owain Glyndyfrdwr was an Englishman? I think not

........Orda

[Orda Khan]

There is a world of difference between flight arrows and war arrows. Those crazy distances from Turkish bows are achieved by use of an arrow guide and arrows that resemble darts. Likewise, modern equipment like compounds and recurves can not be used for comparison, they are completely different and the technology did not exist in Mediaeval times. Same thing applies to carbon arrows.
Similarly, because a bow of a certain poundage has been made we should not assume that it is practical to use or even that a stronger one couldn't be made tomorrow. I am sure it would be possible to make a Turkish bow of 250lbs but its use would be totally impractical

.....Orda

[dopp]

What would be a reasonable distance for war-arrows? Some historians suggest 200-250 yards for longbows, quite a bit shorter than the opt-quoted 300 yards.

[CBR]

200-250 yards using the heavy quarter pounders, depending on draw weight of course but 250 yards would be with a 150+ pound draw weight.


CBR

[dopp]

Oh, sorry Carl, didn't see your reply to my post for quite a while. I'll do my best to explain my argument. If you're still interested, that is; it's kind of long and doesn't really say anything special. I think part of the problem was that I was trying to answer a general concept rather than specific people and everyone sort of thought I was targetting them specifically.

Firstly, I am quite aware that many people posting in this thread are somewhat more modest and reasonable in their estimation of the weapon's capabilities. My post was primarily directed at the picture of the longbow that has been built up by the 'pro longbow posts' throughout this thread. Much earlier in the thread people were arguing that longbows pierced plate armor better than crossbows and firearms at 300 yards. Later on people started saying that longbows were extremely accurate (they could be, of course, but that was not the way they were used) and that every longbowman was a trained sharpshooter. And of course, people are still claiming 20 arrows per minute was the norm and that even higher rates of fire were common, despite the small amount of ammo carried by individual archers. The end result is a superweapon, superior to even our current weapon systems because it is deadly accurate; assault rifles and submachineguns were developed and are used on the principle that marksmanship is relatively unimportant, and that infantry should lay down curtains of fire that will kill anything that approaches within range, sort of like what musketeers did, but better.

So, my argument runs, such a powerful weapon really ought to have made its presence felt in military circles of the day and spurred a revolution in military tactics. It already does enjoy a formidable reputation, of course. The change from mail to plate armor was in part due to the longbow, and the entire French strategy in the Hundred Years War was greatly affected by their encounters with the longbow-heavy English armies (although the longbow was only part of the reason for their success). But we would expect something a little more from such a deadly weapon, unless of course it wasn't quite as dangerous as people make it out to be, as compared to say firearms, an invention that is sometimes considered one of the most dangerous and revolutionary (in a very literal sense) in military history.

So, what do we expect of such lethal firepower? I would argue that we would see classic responses to immense firepower. We would expect to see skirmish formations and trench warfare. We would also expect to see wholesale adoption of the new weapon. We don't. We do see some adaptations in response to the longbow. For example, increased use of plate armor, which would suggest it could provide at least reasonable protection from arrows. The very fact that the knights could make it into melee range of the English line at Agincourt suggests that the armor did its work most of the time. We see longbows adopted by the French (the famous 'mounted archers' of the Reforms). We see longbowmen as valuable mercenaries throughout Europe. But we don't see much else, and the longbow gradually fades from history with the coming of the new firearm tactics, even though the myth suggests that it was vastly superior to anything up to the modern rifle.

The next part of the argument addresses the usual response to the demise of the longbow; namely the claim that longbowmen were elite and not easily replaced, compared to musketeers who came a dime a dozen, men were REAL men in those days and not so later on, urbanization cut down all the trees, everyone was mesmerized by the shiny new guns. In other words, the 'longbow corps' was a military anomally that required very specific conditions under which to flourish, the removal of which ensured their extinction despite their military effectiveness. This argument is often bizarrely accompanied by the claim that longbowmen would have massacred entire brigades of musketeers easily, with some mention of Napoleon's musings on reinstating the corps thrown in to further complicate the issue.

First of all, I conceded that the longbow corps was diminishing rapidly, in part due to military disasters in France at the end of the HYW that killed off large numbers of trained archers. The urbanization claim is a little harder to swallow without more details, since 'urbanization' in the 16th century is not the same as the massive growth of cities in the 19th, where farmers and peasants flocked to the cities in droves. Societies after the 16th century remained essentially rural despite the reviving city life; it takes the Industrial Revolution to really shift the emphasis away from the country to the city. The claim that yew wood was getting scarcer is a little better, but I fail to see how 'urbanization' is the cause of it. I also fail to see how good quality yew wood can be rarer and more expensive than say good iron, or good horse stock. Countries would go to great lengths to secure such military supplies, through trade or outright conquest of the sources. I am astounded that England failed to secure better sources if it was running out. Perhaps there was an international embargo on yew exports to England due to fear of the longbow corps, a sort of like a ban on nuclear materials today? Conspiracy theorists will have a field day.

Secondly, I made the claim that even if the longbow corps was much reduced in size, it would have persisted as a specialist unit until the modern age if it was that much better than the new firearms, unless of course the pool of potential longbowmen had suffered complete and utter extinction in the Late Middle Ages. I brought up the example of the mounted knight, historically much more expensive and difficult to maintain than any longbowman, and noted how long the heavy cavalry persisted in the musketeer and then the rifleman army, even though it was no longer the pre-eminent arm (but still very useful and formidable). Armies are not adverse to using weapons that are a little more difficult to obtain or use than standard-issue weapons. Rifles, slower to reload and harder to make than muskets, were assigned to skirmishers, sharpshooters and other specialist troop types in support of the musketeers. Would not a brigade of longbowmen, a 'Queen Victoria's Own Longbows' perhaps, have found an honored place in the British army if it was so marvellously effective? Where were the longbows among the Royal Artillery, if the weapon laid down so deadly a barrage? TBH I'm not sure I get your point either, Carl; you claim that longbowmen and even crossbowmen are far deadlier than the best musketeers. All the more reason to keep them in action. Smaller available numbers just means they take on a supporting role as elites and specialists rather than line infantry. That didn't happen. They stuck around for a bit, while guns were still being perfected, but once the improved matchlock (the one that didn't take literally forever to reload), effective mass-production and standardized loading drill became widespread they faded away into history. Now, if you argue that the longbowman was effectively a superman and that nobody of that caliber existed after the Middle Ages in large enough numbers to form even a single battalion of sharpshooters, then a little more evidence is needed to support that claim.

Finally (whew), my observation about the innate conservativism of armies is a serious one. Armies already heavily committed to a particular weapon or way of warfare will only switch over reluctantly, as it involves extensive retraining and rearming of the troops. It gets even worse with a feudal army, as it is much harder to ensure 'standardized' equipment is adopted throughout such an army than in a state army. Weapon guilds will pull strings to protect their way of life; nobles and generals with vested interests in the old ways will band together to oppose the 'New Turks' proposing change. Armies today are actually much more open to innovation than most, in part because of the rapid technological changes over the last century. In short, any new system of warfare (I am not suggesting that the musket was vastly better than the longbow either, but I am suggesting that the whole tactical system revolving around gunpowder was at least marginally superior) really needed to prove itself in order to be adopted, usually by badly beating up armies that used the older system. In any case, the historical record suggests that, far from being mesmerized by gunpowder, the kings of England actually tried to cling to the old ways by re-issuing requirements for archery practice among the population. I might even turn your argument about longbows persisting as part of the English gunpowder army on its head and suggest that it is an example of conservativism ensuring the (temporary and ultimately doomed) persistance of the outdated longbow corps, rather than over-progressivism killing off the deadliest weapon in history.

Edit: In the interest of fairness, I should probably point out that some armies did retain a few archers as supporting troops, suggesting that they were still deadly, if a little dated, weapons. Some depictions of the 18th century Imperial Qing army (China) show small numbers of archers (composite bows?) alongside the massed ranks of musketeers.

[AussieGiant]

Hell of a post dopp :book:

While I'm not going to address everything, I would like to point out that by addressing the "extremists" longbow fan boys, you rule out most of the points you made because I agree with it. I'd say I am pro-bow :2thumbsup: but in a more rational sense.

Given the effective aimed range of a flintlock musket is 50 yards, and any hit over 100 yards would be less than a knock out blow to people wearing coats, the demise of the longbow is due to "other" factors. These "other" factors are both economic and strategic, and both issues I have stated in my previous posts.

To me that is the only explanation as to why they faded from view because as a weapon it is not until the mid 1800's that percussion muzzle loaders started reaching the same effective range and hitting ability as longbows.

I agree that they are solely based around the English because of inherent characteristics to that place and time. However many nations copied it and/or hired mercenaries due to the advantage you had in medieval warfare because of them.

Anyway, one specific point you raised which I believe was mine and I'll restate it.

Put a thousand Redcoats using flintlock muskets in a 3 deep line 500 metres away. Line up a thousand Longbowmen 3 deep also.

Flat ground. Nice day, the bird are chirping. Your "Superior" unit can now start marching at the Bowmen. At the 300 metre mark up goes the first 1000 arrows. Between that point and the 60 to 75 metre mark I have no idea how many arrows are let loose. Suffice to say "a shed load". As the redcoats get close the trajectory gets flatter the hit's get more leathal. By the time the Redcoats get to 50 yards or so, stop, take aim, and unload their FIRST volley I'm sure there are far fewer than the thousand that began.

At this point "The English" redcoats begin their world class speed and pump out 4 shots a minute. This is better than any other standing army of the Napoleonic period.

To me, the idea of a musket ball at 50 yards or an arrow at 50 yards seems rather academic. Considering after the first volley of musket fire YOU CAN'T see anything anyway, if becomes a "rate of fire" issue.

One of the main reasons the English won the Napoleonic wars was their ability to pump out enough fire power (not aimed) that it stopped the French Columns from punching through the lines.

All I'm saying is that it would seem clear who the winner would be. I'm also say thing that for "other" reasons this never happened and that is a fact. I'm not disputing it. But, you can't deny the characteristics of the weapons we are talking about and the bow is a clear winner.

[Microwavegerbil]

Wow this thread has gone completely off track. When did it become longbows vs guns? This is silly, the bottom line (and point to this thread, mind you) is that longbows were a powerful force in the English army, and that with the crossbowmen having such a high RoF, the longbows are not at the appropriate power level.

[JCoyote]

Wow this thread has gone completely off track. When did it become longbows vs guns? This is silly, the bottom line (and point to this thread, mind you) is that longbows were a powerful force in the English army, and that with the crossbowmen having such a high RoF, the longbows are not at the appropriate power level.

Well excuse us for having fun! :laugh4:

[pike master]

i think it is very relevant to get the longbow in perspective to other weapons.

ive read an article that when arquebusiers and musketeers from that time period were told to actually aim at an individual target. a good shot with a smoothbore could hit a man sized target nearly 100 percent of the time at 50 yards and at a horsemen sized target 50 to 60 percent of the time at 100 yards.

in volley they had a 75 percent chance of hitting a formation sized target 75 percent of the time at 100 yds and 87 percent of time against a horse formation at 100 yds.

the only armor that could effectively stop arquebus projectiles would have been high quality armor known as pistol proof.

and smoothbores were actually used to hunt with although i imagine the distances would have been quite short.

and with the stats we have shown in the past posts even if the ball is stopped the trauma would be extensive and would take someone out of the battle and may even lead to an agonizing death later on.

[AussieGiant]

Hi mad cat mech,

Are you talking about marksmen or general characteristics.

The muzzle loading weapons I am talking about is the Brown Bess Musket.

Volley fire was normally optimal at the 50 yard mark. Going out to the 100 yard mark with vastly reduced effectiveness and hitting power at that range. This weapon was in use for about 100 years by the English army from around the early 1700's all the way until the early 1800's.

I'd have a hard time thinking an arquebusiers from a hundred years early would be more effective...if that is what you are saying.

That's not saying marksmen could not achive better results...but they were marksmen not general tactics at the time.

I can't comment about the percentage hits at various ranges but even skimishers (marksmen for the most part, and certainly meant to be better than the average user) using this weapon operated between the 50 and 100 yard mark.

In the end, you have to compensate 4 shot a minute to 10 to 15 shots a minute with the bow. At those ranges I would expect a slight casualty advantage to the musket...but not at 4 to 5 times the fire rate.

Anyway...I'm done :)

I'm still of the opinion that economics and changing non military factors were the background issues that lead to the demise of the Longbow over gunpowder weapons.

[dopp]

This thread has been off-topic for quite a while, actually, because at least two other threads have been started dealing quite strictly with the game mechanics. It does affect the game though, when you start to try and get longbows up to an 'appropriate' power level based on dubious historical claims and unbalance everything else as a result.

Okay, in a nutshell and in a little simpler English, I argued that if longbows were so good and all, why didn't they stay around more? I also made some observations about how the 'ooh but they were getting really rare' argument was rather insufficient to explain the demise of such a supposedly-deadly weapon. So, telling me how they would pwn musketeers and all doesn't really answer the question; in fact it strengthens my argument considerably (thanks). The social and economic argument for the disapperance of the longbowman is totally unconvincing (based on current arguments, at least).

So yes, I am denying the effectiveness of the longbow, actually, compared to gunpowder weapons. It may be good, but not that good. Calculations of how many arrows were fired at Agincourt vs the number of French dead, plus the fact that the arrows actually failed to stop the French charge and most of the killing took place in melee, indicate that longbow lethality and effectiveness might possibly be less than that of musketeers (bold claim, I know), who did manage to stop most attacks with a single devastating volley (or two). It's hard to explain the results otherwise.

Sorry, I could give a better explanation if I could actually *find* the post you're referring to AussieGiant, but I can't seem to locate it.

Anyway, this isn't really aimed at any of you sensible types, just a few thoughts based on military history rather than a technical discussion. I do handle various bows, crossbows and firearms occasionally, but nothing that will exceed the experience of some of the posters here.

[AussieGiant]

Fair enough Dopp.

It has certianly been a good discussion and your style is easy to read and understand. I certainly don't think it was a wonder weapon in any sense of the word.

See in another thread somewhere :2thumbsup:

Cheers
AG

[diotavelli]

Why did muskets replace longbows? Because training Englishmen to use the longbow was a massive undertaking. Football and other sports were banned for a time because the country needed all able-bodied men trained to use the longbow. It took time, money and organisation - if any of these were missing, the longbowmen sent overseas would be ineffective and England's most potent weapon nullified.

Then firearms came along. Not as effective as the longbow in the hands of an expert. But, and this is crucial, gunmen could be trained in a fraction of the time it took to train a competent longbowman. At short ranges, firearms were as effective as (or even more than) longbows, even in the hands of a novice.

[crpcarrot]

correct me if i'm worng but wasn't the english decree to practice archery restricted to sundays. it wasnt as if the king told all the peasants to drop thie farming and shoot arrows all day. i think the the assumption that all longbowmen were highly trained archeres who could hit a moving target at 300 yeards through a slit in his armour is the first myth that need to be adressed.

[Lord Fluffy]

In the US Civil War most weapons were about .58 caliber and rifled. They fired mine' balls. At 12 years old, I fired a replica Cook & Brother carbine, .58 caliber using Mine' ball. The target was a tree branch about 5" diameter, about 50 yards away. We were hunting mistletoe (a holiday shooting tradition). I hit that branch not more than a few millimeters off dead center. That was the first time I ever fired that weapon as well... And that's not a full rifle, that was a shorter carbine. I know people with original Civil War rifles who still use them for hunting every year with Mine' ball. No accuracy issues there either.

.

The show was trying to compare the accuracy of rifle vs musket. So while I did say civil war era, it was a musket that was produced during that era. After that shot he did produce a rifle and shoot at the same target, hitting the target in the eye or some such.

People like new toys. I think gunfire shocked and awed the medieval battleground, not through sheer killing power but just through fear. This is probably one of the reason people dropped the longbow for it. The other reasons could be, guns are easier to use, when it hits it has been shown it has more punch than longbows and I'm sure there are many more reasons that contributes to the demise of the longbow.

But if they were to meet face to face, a unit of gun slingers of those days would probably be slaughtered by longbowmen just by the fact that the gunmen were unarmored and outdistanced.

@crpcarrot: "A" longbowman can't do that, but there must be one of those hits when you have 70,000 shots fired, by 7000 longbowmen. The SCA here at the range sometimes put up a moving target with a bullseye on it. Have 10 archers shoot at it at once from 20m. Sometimes one of the arrow would land in the bullseye. But it's just that, a lucky shot. When you shoot that many arrows you're bound to land quite a few lucky shots, that's sometimes enough to change the tide of battle.

[Oleander Ardens]

Just some historic background:

A large bow of yew is stone-age technology. It is a fine device and was used all over Europe to shoot game and occasionally people. Dear Ötzi or the Iceman was under 1.60 but had a 1.85 bowstaff with him, and working to make a bow out of it as he had lost his. Seemed a smart move by him but he got an arrow into his back before he could finish it.

Before organized warfare and massed formations became to dominate european warfare a large hunting bow was perhaps the main weapon. Raiding, skirmishing, ambushing was quite successful if done by competent shooters. But once men fight in larger formations with shields and spears and are determined to charge and kill it becomes impossible to stop them just with arrows. The bow was used less and less and got replaced by some javelines, which better suited the european shockwarfare.

After the rise of the Celts" you have big trouble to find arrowheads, and not just because they were now made of iron. Older Fürstengräber or burials of nobles in the east are full of Scythian arrowheads, the ones in the west have decent amounts of western arrowheads but after 500BC you won't hardly find arrowheads...

After 200AD the various Germanic tribes increasingly use increasingly stonger bows, perhaps to counter Roman shootingpower and eastern steppetribes. The imperial roman army used archers and slingers often in large numbers, creating hails of bullets and arrows and the Germanic tribes may have wanted to counter it. The Allemanns bury their dead with bows.

The Franks around 700 think it is a smart move to equip every footsoldier with a yew bow and 12 arrows - at least that's the way the want it. The nobility uses often composite bows, especially on horseback. The Vikings use heavy bows on land and foot, both of yew and horn preferring the latter as it is far more efficient.

So far so good.

[JCoyote]

Bur here's the catch Sextus: those era of muskets were not as accurate as many matchlock era weapons. The earlier weapons, with the bullet literally hammered into the bore to fit (a reason for using soft lead), had much tighter groupings.

A lot of people are basing this on the performance of the Brown Bess musket, which while later was NOT the pinnacle of smoothbore accuracy. There is a flawed implicit assumption that "if it was later, it must have been more accurate". That's wrong.

Earlier, tight fitting matchlocks were known to be capable of hitting man sized targets as far as 200 yards.

I did not mistype that. 200 yards. At individual people. With a smoothbore and a hammered in ball. At that point, even with marginal superiority it gets easy to see why economics could easily push longbows out of favor. BTW dopp, there are records England was importing very large amounts of yew at tremendous expense towards the end of scale use of longbows. Somewhere between deforestation and/or bad environmental policy, they just didn't have enough yew in England. Your argument for them being maintained as a small force is problematic because... well.. they DID. For a long time, almost 100 years, both weapons were side by side. It wasn't some "Hey this is better in all ways lets junk the old stuff" move. So they obviously had some reason to want to keep them around in England long after they were making plenty of matchlocks.

However, the later Brown Bess was made to a higher degree of standardization. This also went hand-in-hand with a looser fitting ball, to speed loading. It both made troops faster in firing and made it easier to make large amounts of ammunition and weapons that all work together; if something was made just off by a little it didn't matter because they weren't supposed to fit tight with the ammo. Civil War era muskets also followed this pattern. The Brown Bess had many technical advantages over matchlocks in usage and manufacturing, but accuracy was not its advantage.

Also, madcat, the statement about if it didn't go through the armor it still hurt them? That's just silly. Somewhere in there is lack of understanding of how rigid armor works. The projectile either breaks the armor and goes through, or it doesn't. This isn't like contemporary soft kevlar body armor where if I shoot it with my 10mm it will flex so far into the body it will cause blunt tissue trauma. When rigid armor stops something, it does so completely. When it doesn't, it fails and the projectile penetrates the wearer. There isn't really a halfway on this. If the projectile doesn't penetrate, the energy from it gets spread out across the plate and through the plate's mass and transfers into the wearer across its surface. Current rigid trauma plates stop much more energy than the weapons of those days, and the weaers might get knocked over, but usually are not. Only is their footing was bad. If the bullet had enough energy to knock you over, the same would have happened to the shooter. So no, hitting bulletproof armor of the era wouldn't have done damage anyway, especially considering how many people of the age wore padded garments under the armor.

[pike master]

if the ball does not penetrate plate armor it dents it thus doing the same damage as flexible body armor.

i know this was some time later but the colonists fighting the british at lexington and concorde were using more primitive weapons then what the british had yet scored more hits and casualties because they aimed.

however it is true that more freebore from a small musket ball versus barrel diameter eases loading but decreases accuracy and im sure that british using mass production use the same sized ball for their muskets so they would have the extra freebore for rapid rate of fire but decreased accuracy where the colonists probably cast their own balls to fit their bores tighter for better aimed shots for hunting. most militia and colonists did not have rifles as would be assumed and in the war of 1812 we still see smoothbores being used and this only changed near the beginning of the american civil war. but units like the green mountian boys and other special militia units used kentucky rifles(pennsylvania rifles blah blah blah) to great effect.

and rifling can even be traced all the way back to leonardo da vinci who it is claimed had developed a wheellock rifle that was used by a sharpshooter to kill an enemy general at several hundred paces.

i know this is later era stuff but it does lend credence to well aimed smoothbore fire versus unaimed. arqubuses were used in shooting contest against crossbows and actually took home the trophy half the time.

i firmly believe the longbow is more accurate in skilled hands but to dismiss an early smoothbore as being something that couldnt hit a formation 50 yds away only 10 percent of the time is inaccurate.

from what i could tell regardless of the stats i have taken a lot casualties coming under longbow fire in the game especially from sherwood foresters so even though the numbers suggest that missile power is weak im seeing pretty devestating missile fire and im pretty sure they are cranking out 10 shots a minute but i have never timed it.

muskets and arquebuses i think are reloading to quickly in the game.crossbowmen are pretty accurate though.

[Lord Fluffy]

It's funny in my current Spanish campaign I had turtled hoping the AI would build up like crazy. The English had destroyed the French and attacked me. I've destroyed their French territories now and moving up to the island. Funny thing is I have not encountered a single longbow unit. There was that one peasant archer unit back in Angers but that was all, the rest had been DEKs and swordsmen.

[JCoyote]

if the ball does not penetrate plate armor it dents it thus doing the same damage as flexible body armor.

"Acceptable" deformation under soft body armor is about 1 3/4 inches by US standards. (That's also to an underlying medium somewhat more resistant than flesh.) This is the level of flex of soft armor that is considered to not cause significant injury. Metal would have to be left with a dent of similar depth to do similar blunt trauma, and deeper to do serious injury. 1.73 inches is a pretty deep dent... most rigid armor would simply be pierced instead of bending that far. As for all the energy, as I mentioned before it gets spread over the area wearing the armor... much greater than the area shouldering the firing weapon. Also, some of it goes into warping the metal... which is to a certain level desirable, it's a great way to soak up energy. The better helicopter crash seats force a die over a metal tube of different shape... soaks up energy in a crash. (Of course, there's so much then it's still often not enough if it fell too far.)

[dopp]

It's funny in my current Spanish campaign I had turtled hoping the AI would build up like crazy. The English had destroyed the French and attacked me. I've destroyed their French territories now and moving up to the island. Funny thing is I have not encountered a single longbow unit. There was that one peasant archer unit back in Angers but that was all, the rest had been DEKs and swordsmen.

Actually my experience is that they stick with archer militia for the most part, then switch over to arquebusiers. Longbows are limited to one or two per army. So they do use bows, just not longbows in sufficient quantities.

@Sextus: He was probably demonstrating one of the few smoothbore muskets still in use during the Civil War.

Effective musket range was limited to 200 yards, beyond which the ball is usually no longer lethal, but might still knock a man over or otherwise wound him (called 'spent' balls). Of course, the main body of a unit usually held fire until 50 yards for maximum effect, while skirmishers could keep up sniping fire from the flanks at longer ranges. This was why generals could still gallop around pretty safely as long as they stood outside 200 yards. At close range, however, you get consistent reports of multiple men being killed or wounded by a single musketball. Would you like to see M2TW arquebusiers with the body piercing property?

[dopp]

Your argument for them being maintained as a small force is problematic because... well.. they DID. For a long time, almost 100 years, both weapons were side by side. It wasn't some "Hey this is better in all ways lets junk the old stuff" move. So they obviously had some reason to want to keep them around in England long after they were making plenty of matchlocks.

Yes, they did, but the problem is, they still disappeared as combat units eventually, which should not have happened if they had a decisive advantage over the newer weapons. So, we might conclude that they remained fairly competitive for a while, but at an ever-increasing disadvantage as the new technology developed, until at last it became better to simply do away with them altogether (even if they remained slightly better weapons). Its persistance might have had something to do with the fact that firearm manufacture for military use is and was very tightly controlled by the state due to its potential for sparking revolution (which is why the musket is the hero of the later 'Atlantic Revolutions', when the system of control finally failed). At the time of the English Civil War in mid 1600s, muskets were in short supply and many soldiers either had to shoulder pikes or use older weapons like longbows until the shortage could be corrected. So much for the mass production of muskets.

[JCoyote]

As I mentioned, large amounts of yew being imported at very large expense. On the books. It might not seem like much to support an army, but when you have to support the people from training in childhood? To maybe produce a handful of elite archers? It's not easy. And the smaller the number practicing, the less elite the best became, simply because the best were being picked from a smaller pool.

And civil wars are HARDLY an indicator of weapons availability. Study a few. Look at Bosnia-Herzagovina. There was obviously no particular shortage of AK's in the region, at very reasonable prices, and even still... PPSh submachine guns, turn of the century revolvers, WW1 bolt actions, all saw service. The Russian invasion of Afghanistan saw rebels going so far as using wheel locks... along with AK's, old bolt actions, and US supplied Stinger missiles. In Yemen, some of their better military units had recently acquired AUG assault rifles. After being pinned down at 800+ yards by obsolete WW1 era bolt actions, they traded in the AUGs for "outdated" G3's.

Those are civil and insurgent warfare that I can think of off the top of my head. None of them existed in a particular "absence" of weapons in the region. It has more to do with how civil and guerilla actions draw in so many people... so many MORE than the usual army of the particular nation when you add up the two sides... that existing stocks of weapons inherently become spread too thin.

And you miss the issue that if they were just pulling out any old thing during that civil war, longbows wouldn't have been one of them, the users take too much time to train. They are inherently not "surge friendly" for militaries.

[dopp]

Yeomen from the countryside being forced to use longbows due to shortage of muskets, also on the books (admittedly, this is an extreme case, since most of them were given pikes if muskets were not available). The recruiting officers were furious. Mind you, these are men showing up to be inducted into the 'regular' army (ie, one raised by officers of the crown or Parliament, as England didn't have much of a standing army at the time), not some guerrilla fighters from the mountains joining up as auxiliaries. The English Civil War is also known for the huge difficulties in recruitment, as it was essentially a power struggle between rival court factions (one of which was admittedly more 'progressive' than the other), rather than a popular uprising. Recruiters were constantly coming up short as it seems people really didn't want to get involved.

No, I think lumping civil wars into a single category is a fallacy. England was an established power, with arsenals, gun factories and so on. It had just finished a military campaign against the Scots (which was part of the reason for the Civil War), so it was at least partly mobilized already. If it's short of muskets (they were also badly short of cannon, especially the heavier siege pieces), then muskets were probably not as widespread as you claim. Which is understandable, as I have pointed out, when you consider the state control over the manufacture of the weapons. Civil War armies were kind of small by our standards, but they fought pitched battles in the 'proper' fashion. Bosnians and Afghans were using weapons that were often not even produced locally, fighting 'low-intensity' insurgent actions for the most part, where choice of weaponry is less important. Just because they're all 'civil wars' doesn't mean they are then automatically fit subjects for military comparison.

Now, yew becoming scarce would mean that longbows can no longer form the bulk of armies, just like trained archers becoming scarce. I understand that. But, unless you would like to argue that yew is now extinct in Northern Europe, and that the archer was a figure of such stature that none today can hope to match him, it does not explain the complete disappearance of the weapon adequately. The concept of the musket, as the embodiment of crude, industrialized, faceless killing, triumphing over the 'noble' weapons of the past, which were wielded by REAL MEN, is a beautiful fantasy, akin to the fantasy of bulletproof monks. But a fantasy it remains.

And anyway, longbowmen training from childhood is all well and good, but it pales in comparison with true elites like the Janissaries, the Mamluks, or the Mongols, or even the average European knight, all of which survived in some form or other until the 19th century. Longbowmen may not have been as elite (gasp, blasphemy) as they are made out to be.

[pike master]

im seeing a pattern here.ok expert longbowmen trained all their lives to build up strength, skill blah blah blah. but there are huge numbers of archers in the armies of the hundred years war.

at the first of the war it was pretty expensive for edward iii to send over a few hundred men at arms and a thousand bowmen i guess maybe because he wasnt making a proffit from pillaging that early in the war. maybe these smaller groups of longbowmen who were very skilled in their trade and seemed just as valuable as the men at arms accompanying them are representative of the reknowned longbowmen while the thousands represented at crecy contained a front rank or core of elite longbowmen supported by a larger group of welsh bowmen or conscript bowmen.

its just a theory though.

[JCoyote]

"Recruitment was a problem" is a very relative concept in an internal struggle. Recruitment is a problem in ALL internal struggles, in point of fact it's often through recruitment they are won. All sides in nearly all internal conflicts feel frustrated by shortage of troops or unwillingness to enlist. It's part of such warfare; recruiter frustration is part and parcel of the fact that they feel like everyone should automatically agree with them. A better reasoning would be the total numbers of soldiers the nation held available before and a generation after the conflict. Recruiters were frustrated that ANYONE would turn them down when obviously every good englishman should support the cause. :laugh4: But numerical comparisons of total soldiers during compared to other eras, and as a percentage of population, is better.

Writing off recent conflicts as "low intensity" doesn't change the fact that all examples happened in regions of the world where there are literally hundreds of thousands of AK variants available. "Low intensity" doesn't mean it's a handful of people fighting, it can easily exceed the total numbers of fighters on old battlefields. The numbers aren't inherently lower, they are just decentralized. The Bosnia situation saw their own arms made in country as well, everything from SMG's to AMR's. Still, you'd see fighters with everything from 7mm Mausers to AK's to M16's to Steyr precision rifles worth US$1800+.

There are still extant longbowmen today holding that old tradition, even in Scotland. Their use as military has disappeared, but they were maintained at a small level to the present. (Though granted, for the last 150 years at least it is certainly for cultural reasons.) So there is a hole there; they were maintained for a LONG time as small elite units. I don't see many records of their usage, but then again, with the transportation of the age, unless facing invasion Britain was unlikely to use them. Also, an "elite" unit, created from a shrinking pool of potential recruits, will continually lose capability compared to the past.

There is a similar issue with shotguns in US service. Shot loadings were used in the Revolutionary War. Shotguns were widely used during the Civil War among cavalry units. They were then abandoned because of short range. After seeing trench warfare, Pershing had his soldiers issued shotguns. After, they were abandoned in favor of longer range field/maneuver warfare. The Supreme Court even declared that the 2nd Amendment didn't apply to shotguns because they "weren't military weapons". And in WW2, the Marines ended up acquiring them for use in the Pacific islands. They were abandoned again... and brought back into service in Vietnam for narrow tunnels and general jungle warfare. They were predictably abandoned again... and now we see the US standardizing and acquiring various shotguns once more for current conflicts. See a trend? Conservative and practical though soldiers themselves may be, they don't decide policy. Someone else does that. Useful weapons get abandoned, only to be "rediscovered". In the case of shotguns, so repeatedly it's a running gag. In peacetime, armament is decided based on a "theory" of warfare, and it's quite common on the battlefield to see the theory fail and weapons returned to service or new versions created. When a weapon is abandoned based on that, in many cases it can be picked up again. Tomahawks are seeing something similar happen; present in all US wars before WW1, then rediscovered in Vietnam and used presently. But, when longbows A) require long training and B) decent numbers of users, once dropped for more than a generation they just weren't that easy to pick up again for use at scale.

What I've been saying is, the longbow had unique qualities not directly matched by firearms and that is why they were maintained so long. It wasn't a matter of a single dimensional issue. The British maintained longbows alongside firearms for quite a long time. And while people want to think they were both ranged weapons so one "beat" the other, this is an apples and oranges comparison. In service they found use for them beside firearms, until it finally became to cost prohibitive for the extra ability they brought. The longbow though had nothing that quite took its place in warfare until the mortar was improved. You'll even see commanders of later armies wishing they had a bunch of longbows on the field... usually in special cases, to do things like rain arrows into fortifications and trenchworks. But after mortars developed into their more modern incarnation, a lot of that disappears.
The mortar was the replacement for the longbow in the end... it just wasn't worth much until almost the 20th century, when both fuses and firing rate improved... and a dozen men could accomplish things that would have taken hundredsd of longbowmen in the past.

[pike master]

i checked out the orighinal post never had before. so it was saying two longbow units couldnt take down a pavise crossbow unit.

the pavise crossbow unit in this game uses the arbalest because if you play much mp you learn quick which weapons shoot further than others. the arbalest is an extremely powerful weapon for the time. i dont know how common they actually were or how often they were used but they probably had the highest penetration capability of any weapon we have discussed.

the crossbowman has the large wooden shield to protect him while he is reloading.

the reason they lost at crecy was because phillip rushed them to the front without giving them time to get there pavises. without the pavises they didnt have much of chance at engaging a foe with an uphill advantage with a higher rate of fire.we dont even know if they used arbalest it seems things are greyed out as to when arbalest were involved at one time or another.

but in the game the pavise xbowmen are using arbalest so if a unit of them beats two units of longbowmen i dont see the problem. sure they cant match the rate of fire but unless the longbowmen charge down the hill and attack there is not much they can do about that shield. i would say accuracy between a longbow and arbalest are comparable one might be more accurate then the other. we have people using longbows but i dont recall hearing of anyone shooting arbalest these days but people do shoot crossbows and when the proper bolts are used not just shortened arrows the accuracy can be impressive because i used to own one and i had to shoot 20 yds or above or i would ruin my bolts by landing my shots on top of each other and costing me money.

what the guy should have done if wanted to win with two longbowmen would have been to engage the crossbowmen at two different angles that would have neutralized the shield. its basically a comparison to a guy out in the open top of a humvee blasting away with a 50 cal versus a man with a single shot 50 cal hiding behind some rubble it could go either way but one man is going to run out of ammo before the other.

i guess the musket stuff got off track from the op. but if you arnt satisfied with longbowmen in the game and think they should have devestating missile damage , tough as nails with 9 lives well maybe 2 will be enough with a lot of melee capablility there are the sherwood foresters.maybe someone can mod them into 60man units.

there is just no way i can see to get around that pavise shield unless you take them out of the game. as far as arqs versus longbowmen in the game i would give the nod to the longbowmen but the musketeers are a little to much like civil war era muskets than primitive matchlocks. but in the game musketeers right now are doing the most damage but i understand that ca is supposed to tone them down a little.

give the longbows more ap and damage? ok but it still wont have an effect on that pavise shield. even muskets arent going through the pavise which is why they are the only units you can use in mp that can counter musketeers.

[econ21]

i checked out the orighinal post never had before. so it was saying two longbow units couldnt take down a pavise crossbow unit.

Don't take the OP as gospel. Reapz's tests shows a longbow and pavise crossbow to be pretty evenly matched:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=74553

Based on this, I would say the longbows are too good. The pavise should count for more, IMO.

Using fire arrows to fry the pavise may be even more unbalancing (from a historical point of view).

[JCoyote]

I agree, a pavise should be worth more in a fight.

I just think it's silly having the thing tied to their backs. I'd rather go the other direction, and have the pavises be larger and rolled up on wheels. They could be treated like siege equipment... the crossbowmen would be stuck to slow speeds with them, but could "drop" them and move out as regular crossbows.

[silverster]

heres something to try out

in custom battles, get yourself ONE unit of musketeers, and get the enemy a unit of th ebest longbowman you can get, sherwood or retinue, i dont care.

line up your musketeers in LOOSE formation, with formation 2 man deep.

and watch the longbowman get absoulty slaughtered....



In loose formation, bowmans will loose whatever accruracy they have while the gunmens do not.

whhat i do complain through is that after the 1.1 patch, where were no skirmishing left, ther enermy just march right up and charge at you.... that doesnt make sense because the enemy crossbowmens done even have time to finish 2 volleys before they were shooting at their own men.

and that makes no sense if you are gonna use musketeers because you'll just get stacked by enemy infantry (how a unit of peasants have the valor to charge at my musketeer who are shoooting them at point blank is anyone's guess:furious3: :furious3: )

[Carl]

All right to answer Dopp, (thanks for the comeback):

First I'll say where I think the longbow really stood in history:

Poundage of draw was probably higher than the 80LB most modern reconstructions are, but lower than the 150-200LB the nuclear Longbows fan Group claims:smash:. My guess would be the 110-120LB range. Draw length and draw weight consistency are probably similar for modern reconstructions. Orda is probably a better man to ask regarding arrow weights, so i won't touch that. Accuracy would be the same as any other bow under the same circumstances. Unarmed area denial at parabolic arc range and aimed fire at direct fire range. But I wouldn't expect them to be putting arrows through Visor slits just by aiming at them. They aren't elves you know :laugh4:. Killing power was also likely low. Whilst most contemporary things I've read indicate that a Parabolic Arrow COULD go through plate Armour, the arrows didn't necessarily kill, and the King I mentioned actually was ready for battle again a Month later if I remember correctly. What the wounds would do is force many enemy soldiers to simply withdraw, unable to continue fighting due to wounds. Fire rate would probably have been 10-12 a minute for rapid firing, with 6-8 a minute being the more normal fire rate IMHO. Elite regiments might have bettered these figures by 2-4 volleys a minute more.

Now Why did the Longbow go out of common usage:

A number of things IMHO:

1. The early Musket users would have been armored. This means that the Longbows ability to disable/kill large numbers of them would be much less than if they where shooting at Napoleonic Musket wielders. It would also have prevented the use of lightweight long distance arrows as they would have been unable to penetrate the Armour of the early Muskets. Later Napoleonic Troops would have suffered terribly under such bombardment, and would have been unprotected against lighter flight arrows.

2. Lethality would have played another big part. Longbows could clearly disable a LOT of men thanks to better range and fire rate and their ability to still go through plate. However many of the men hit by Longbows would be back a few months down the line. Someone who was hit by a musket would probably be dead or so disabled he would be unable to flee. Even if he avoided capture and survived the injuries, they would probably be of such a nature that they would hamper his fighting ability and it would take longer to recover from. In effect the Longbow made it easier to win a individual battle, (because fewer enemies made it to melee), but the muskets would make it easier to win the war (because although more men reached melee, those that didn't wouldn't be back to trouble you again though so you have to fight less battles. On the other hand, because more men reached melee you would lose more men per battle yourself and find it harder to win when outnumbered.

3. It's quite clear from what others have said that early Muskets where longer ranged than later ones whilst probably being less than Longbows. This reduces the effectiveness disparity enormously.

Here's my theory on Musket development: The initial Muskets come out, the only difference between them and Longbowmen is the missile weapon. Same Armour and melee. They partially replace Longbows. Armour then gets a notch up and muskets get cut down to about 100 yards effective range due to being unable to penetrate it at longer ranges. Longbows would take a hit too, although their use of steel rather than soft lead would help lower the impact. So they now decide to develop an easier to produce musket with a higher rate of fire and a max range of no more than the effective 100 yards. This is the Napoleonic Musket. Suddenly their are a lot more muskets around and everyone has them if possible so the advantage of the Longbow is starting to slip. It's now outnumbered and the effective range disparity is smaller, giving them fewer extra volleys, fire rate is also much closer. The Longbow simply fades away at this point. Once thats gone their no need for Armour ass it has no effect at the new musket ranges and theirs no need to have it vs. arrows so it gets dropped. We now have a Napoleonic soldier in effect, minus the bayonet. The loss of Armour now allowed an explosion in numbers of muskets also.

SO, I believe my point still stands, had Longbows still been present in big number at the time of the Napoleonic war they could have done immense damage, they just got phased out because Musketeers wearing advanced plate where nearly as effective, (not quite, but close enough and easier to train) as longbows. Later unarmored musket-men would have been easy meat IMO.


Why didn't others adopt the Longbow though? four reasons. Pride, Difficulty, Chivalry, and Religions. Whilst not everyone adhered to the code of Chivalry as individuals, as a whole the Knights of the time felt it was VERY important and would never have stooped to breaking it by being dishonorable and using missile weapons. The Large reason for it being such a big things though was religion. If you fought Chivalrously and thus honorably, you where more likely to go to heaven, which was a being incentive. (And if you didn't fight honorably you might be sent to hell as punishment). This means few rulers would have been willing to risk the backlash from their Knights to try switching to Longbows, (the knights might not mind fighting alongside those wielding missile weapons, but a decision like that would probably have been even worse than being made to use them in their eyes). Pride of course is well known as a problem, British, French, and American alike have been guilty of ignoring better weaponry throughout both world wars just because it isn't home grown. This would have been doubly worse in the middle ages I expect. Lastly the practicalities of switching the peasants to Longbowmen would have been immensely difficult to do.

Sorry for taking so long to answer. Was on a campaign all yesterday, I just left the net running in the background.

[dopp]

That's actually quite good, except for one minor problem. Completely unarmored British Regulars with muskets often faced foreign armies with pretty sophisticated bows and decent archers (especially the Eastern ones that had retained composite bows of some sort or other in their armies) and still beat them while suffering fairly minor losses. Still doesn't quite work, although you make good points. Bows did go up against firearms, often with disastrous results. And of course it's hard to claim that there were more muskets than bows in those cases, as the Europeans were almost always outnumbered in their empire-building wars.

[Stlaind]

Some thing else to consider on that is European armies had a tendancy to love artillery.

Nothing quite makes people keep their heads down than fire from big guns at a higher elevation.

[pike master]

thats true that the english lost a battle against the french because the french had artillery superiority. cant remember what the battle was called but artillery had a greater effect on crossbowmen and longbowmen than the arqs and muskets and may have been a big factor in their demise.

but back to the pavise i do know from mp which i know isnt a discussion topic here but shows good comparisons because you dont come across good ai armies in campaign. but they do seem to have the advantage one on one against longbowmen. of course there are different grades of pavise xbow as well as with longbowmen with increasing missile damage for the most expensive units.

but the big problem is the flaming arrows being too destructive against infantry plus they are nearing the accuracy of unlit which is not balanced.

but it could be possible that longbowmen are dishing out more than they take because of their rate of fire against x bow pavise.

[sir bob a lot]

yes but i find out in the game that yoman longbows are better than longbows {i have 6 units of y/longbowmen }that 360 longbows firing fire arrows that a lots tho thing about it:viking: and they range is longer ? than longbows but it the same thing ?
if im rigth was a longbow fire rate was more 3 to 1 crossbow bolt:help:

:duel: why cant english have pikemen?

[dopp]

Yeoman longbows have higher missile and melee attack and better morale.


[ :duel: why cant english have pikemen?

Do you really WANT those confused dysfunctionals clogging up your recruitment scrolls?

[silverster]

^^^ Pikemen dont work properly in this game, because even if you are in 1490 or something, AI wil still charge wt you with armored swordman. and to be honest I dont know how to use them. if they get hit mby any type of infantry (par Peasants) they're gone....

back to topic, How do you shoot a longbow accrurately anyway? Range is pretty much all guess work and luck, however good you are. I just dont see how the shear range of the longbow arrows are an advantage? How effective would a volly of longbow againest musketeers in loose formation? where the gun is bascially aim and shoot (similar to X-bow), the bows relies on their density of arrows to do damage.

[Moah]

Get the Pike Fix. They are devastating with pikes, but rubbish with swords. The problem is they switch to swords the moment another unit comes into contact.

With the Pike fix they have no swords and keep fighting with Pike. They are still vulnerable to missiles and flank but are untouchable head on. Slaughter 2h, cavalry, s&s, spearmen, anything.

Some people argue they are too good with fix (despite missile/flank vulnerabilities) and playing the scots I have sympathy. My cities produce the only inf (although I do have a soft spot for those cheap, poorly armoured and suicidal Highland Nobles. Especially their pre-battle abuse animation!) I could possibly need, meaning castles are just for archers and cavalry (mainly hospitallers as my knight options are pretty poor).

However as I am playing Scotland I'm not unfixing until next campaign!

Patched Pikes Rock.

[JCoyote]

@ silver: It's really a matter of training, probability, and sheer numbers.

That's another part of why longbowmen and archers in general are relatively expensive to train. They have to do it so long they have a "feel" for where the arrow will land. It involves an eye for range and a feel for the proper angle and draw. And archers can compensate somewhat for falling short or long in their estimation. This is why I referred to "bracketing" fire, something done by artillery. Archers have enough firing speed to make it practical.

The archer isn't aiming at a person. They are aiming at a formation. All each individual archer is trying to do is get his arrow to drop into that formation somewhere... anywhere. It's when you put hundreds of them together all doing that that probability, numbers, and rate of fire start adding up. The concept is fundamentally more like a mortar... if enough arrows are landing in the area, somebody will get hurt.

(The musket issue is dependent on era; matchlocks might not be so bad if they had individual sights. Later era colonial sightless muskets would be pretty pathetic in looser formations.)

[sir bob a lot]

"How do you shoot a longbow accrurately anyway? Range is pretty much all guess work and luck, however good you are. I just dont see how the shear range of the longbow arrows are an advantage? How effective would a volly of longbow "

i use my longbows in bloxs pretty must let them fire away
but if woods are near them, use the woods to couer them ,
aka fire over the woods or place them on hills
let start with guessing the range :idea2:

1 u start with crossbows you use them 1st the get to know how far thay go
ie at the start off the game u hire "m/crossbow " 3 or 5 battles
2 then u train p-Archers get to know there range but use the crossbows as back up
3 then you train longbows do the same to them as with the p-archers

but this time you put the p-archers in font as your longbows is long range than ur archers by the time thy come to get your p-archers the longbow got them and your p-archers run any way but the longbow started to fire
like this

p/a p/a

l/b l/b
l/b l/b
you do the same to y-longbows to

but the units you dont need put in forts as thy have exp to be { better hit } who is outside knoking at your door :wall:

[Stoicblitzer]

:laugh4: :laugh4: who needs archers? just take all cav and rush!!

[Lord Fluffy]

@Silvester:

When the battle opens, usually one longbowman will shoot one arrow to range the enemy. Then, if you have an army of people all drawing the same weight bow and all having pretty much the same body size. All you got to do is raise your bow at approximately the same angle as that other guy and loose. One arrow will land 3 meters behind the first arrow and another will land 3 meters in front, doesn't really matter if you're shooting at a formation covering 20 meters from front to rear.

Just like clout shooting nowadays. Now these are people who shoots for fun, and only practice 2 or 3 times a week. Yet 8 people can put 48 arrows all neatly inside a circle that is 12' in radius at about 185m away.

[sir bob a lot]

@Silvester:
yes that did happen at the 100 years war{ cav rush}:book:
but the f-i-sh :oops: {not nameing names} use mian mec-heavy cav they were armored to head to toe and the hoses was to,
The armor was heat chirted heated up then cooled then heat up agen it made it harder ! the metal went blue it realy cool to look at :laugh4:

the longbow arrows were not going though the armor so thy rushed the longbows and they routed !

The english lost all there longbows had to figth hand to hand but won the battle anyway!!!

did you know the 1st air rad was not in the ww2 or ww1 but at medieval time !
a hint" let go fly a kite"

[Carl]

did you know the 1st air rad was not in the ww2 or ww1 but at medieval time !
a hint" let go fly a kite

Somwhere, I can't remeber where for sure, (was it jerusalem in one of the crusades?), they used Kits to drop Gunpowder bombs on a besiged settelment.

[sir bob a lot]

yes that rigth i seen it in a museum {plane museum} thy fly the kite over the settelment then drop the {gunpower bombs} like a hand grader
some time it didnt work he he

[pike master]

japanese did that in world war 2 sent balloons with bombs across the pacific to land in the west coast usa. i think it was the 70s or 80s a family of picnicers stumbled upon one laying dormant and it exploded killing some of them.

[r johnson]

Hear hear! One of my bugbears too! The English only developed any sort of longbow culture after Edward 1 conquered Wales.

Of course I'm a scot. It's easier to admit our armies were slaughtered by the Welsh than the English.....And Culloden was the lowland scots beating our own. Flodden Field was purely because James IV refused to let his artillery open fire out of chivalry!!! Falkirk was the Welsh archers and the treachery of scottish nobles (cavalry)...Prestonpans was..erm...eh..a bug! Yes that's it. The AI was broken!

The Northern Eastern Welsh I think you mean, Wales has never been united as a single state, it has always been small waring tribes that the English picked off one after the other. Cardiff is more English than London but we won't get into politics. It's very easy for me to talk about English victories against the Scots, King Athelstan V King Malcolm was by far my favourite. You should keep in mind the southern Scots are decended from English! Your not 100% Scottish like we're not 100% English

[Horatius]

That's actually quite good, except for one minor problem. Completely unarmored British Regulars with muskets often faced foreign armies with pretty sophisticated bows and decent archers (especially the Eastern ones that had retained composite bows of some sort or other in their armies) and still beat them while suffering fairly minor losses. Still doesn't quite work, although you make good points. Bows did go up against firearms, often with disastrous results. And of course it's hard to claim that there were more muskets than bows in those cases, as the Europeans were almost always outnumbered in their empire-building wars.

You are overestimating equiptment when there was a variety of factors.

1. Superior command structures, the British Sergeants happen to have been overall the best during colonial times.

2. Better commanders, fuedal armies which is essentially what Europeans crushed in their empire building wars are not especially known for their good commanders.

3. Better soldiers, British regulars had some of the best training in europe, they could fire at least 3 shots for everyone one shot fired by French or Spanish regulars.

4. Artillery was involved as well. The French won the Hundred Years War partly because of superior cannon, and for using them as field artillery instead of as just siege engines, and this brings me to my next point.

The Great Longbowmen trained their enitre lives in the art of archery with Longbows, they had the life time training in common with Knights, however to be effective the Longbowmen had to be close together and firing in volleys at around the same place, and because they are great at killing but not perfect at it to avoid a cavalry charge they may need to puts stakes in the ground. Now this is all well and good in and age when the bombard is essentially a siege engine, but when there are very effective field artillery pieces around the outranged Longbowmen will get killed by a few blasts or need to disperse and become worthless. Out of formation a Longbowmen may get a lucky shot and perhaps even down a knight, but overall he is not very significant to the battle. Yes it is true that he could draw sword, but that isn't exactly when you want with a longbowmen is it? That might be why the Longbow was not kept on as a weapon for only a single elite troop supporting the muskets, since afterall the costs of getting a good enough longbowmen, wiegh that against them either dying or being made worthless every battle, just what is the point? Especially considering that musketeers scattered by artillery fire could theoretically join with another line or column for the battle, still be effective, and then return to their original officers when they could. Despite it's advantage the Longbow was made obsolete.