Where would the real disadvantage be...

[Aper]

Ok, horse archers are real badasses, but remember that after Charrae the Roman Empire got the initiative on the Parthians in all the war they fought... and the legions never lost a field battle against cavalry-based armies again until the collapse of the political system in the III century... that means strategies and tactics against the HA+Kats combination actually existed, and that the Romans adopted them (even if some cavalry-fans think different...).
Arrian vs. the Alans, Belisarius in the battle of Sura-Callinico and others Imperial commanders resisted or won using a defensive tactic and a "fortress-like" formation: armored infantry make a shield/spear wall to protect lots of good missile troops.
The problem for a western army is exactly to find lots of good missile troops..

[artaxerxes]

and the legions never lost a battle against cavalry-based armies again...

I seem to recall a certain Mark Anthony's unsuccesfull invasion of Parthia - which was so disastrouous that it actually sorta decided the coming war between Octavian and Mark Anthony as well, since his casulties were irreparable. And it did include battles, such as two Roman legions left with the siege weapons while Anthony moved ahead, whereafter Parthians crushed the legions and siege weapons. Except for that battle however, I'll prolly have to admit that the remainder of the Roman losses mostly came from being unable to take cities (having no siege weapons) and then having to retreat.

What of the Sassanid-Roman wars - the Shapurs defeated tons of Roman emperors, they must have won a battle now and then ;)

[beatoangelico]

at Adrianople too the gothic heavy cavalry did contribute quite a lot to valens' defeat...

[craziii]

don't get why you guys are talking about how fast the arrows are spend. if 120 arrows can kill just 5 of the enemy soldiers, the HA has done it's job. that is 5 deaths for the enemy vs non for the HA army.

did romans ever get any foreign archers in their army that matched or out ranged the parthian HA composite bows?

[artaxerxes]

[QUOTE=craziii]don't get why you guys are talking about how fast the arrows are spend. if 120 arrows can kill just 5 of the enemy soldiers, the HA has done it's job. that is 5 deaths for the enemy vs non for the HA army.
QUOTE]

well, if you don't have anything BESIDES HA's, it might be a problem if you're unable to kill more than 5 out of an enemy army of 8,000... ;) Of course, in a desert where you can retreat for weeks in all directions, guerilla warfare killing 5 out of 8,000 each day might work. But if the 8,000 are beseiging Ctesiphon and all you can do is kill 5 of them, you might wish you'd bothered to bring a few more arrows? :P ;)
Since nobody's questioned my Cambridge Ancient History-based assumption that Surena revolutionized HA warfare by making it possible for them to bring extra arrows along, I think the HA's will have been far less impressibe before that - fx Alexander thought none too highly of them, as the ones he encountered always ran out of arrows before making any serious impact (again I'm more or less quoting Cambridge Ancient History). I myself haven't been able to use HA's in EB properly - I seem to find they run out of arrows VERY early, whereas my Persian Archer/Spearmen shoot for thrice as long and seem to fight better in melee as well (this may however be due to my mishandling and lack of experience with light cavalry). Besides I'm Seleucid, so I'm not even MEANT to be able to use HA's properly

[beatoangelico]

actually HAs in EB are extremely strong...40 arrows while a standard persian archer has 25

[Korlon]

Yep, they rain destruction on all they touch! They're disastrous in the hands of a green commander and utterly devastating to an experienced one.

[craziii]

arta: that is 1 single HA, what in the world makes you think 1 entire HA army will only have 120 arrows? geez. that is 1 single HA killing 5. read AQD's post, it's #14.

[Nirvanish]

I wish I could remember the name of the show but within the last few months I watched a show on the history channel which described the style of hun horse archers. There was a professional archer who on horseback shot much in the same way as on the video Bovi presented but he carried extra arrows in such a way that after he would fire he simply grabbed the end of an arrow pulled back and fired another. If I find a link I will surely post it on here.

[artaxerxes]

arta: that is 1 single HA, what in the world makes you think 1 entire HA army will only have 120 arrows? geez. that is 1 single HA killing 5. read AQD's post, it's #14.

ok sorry. I read HA, didn't realize it meant a single one. But still the point's the same: thinking you asked why the number of arrows mattered, I answered: because it is a problem running out of arrows before the enemy has been weakened or vanquished. Obviously I realized that an entire HA army having 120 arrows would be completely stupid, but the number's not important - the number of arrows having to be larger than the number of enemies IS. If you have 2 million arrows and 2 million and one enemies, that's a problem as well. I'm not trying to argue for the weakness of HA's, having admitted that I have little experience with them and merely remarking that they are weak in MY hands. I merely tried to answer why the abundance of arrows or lack thereof could be of critical importance in a battle, as it turned out to be, to the HA's advantage, at the battle of Carrhae. Sorry. I mentioned the Cambridge Ancient History (can' t remember the number of the volume, but it's the one with Carrhae, and it's the chapter about Carrhae) as a source for Alexander being unimpressed by HA's because of their running out of arrows. Unless this source is made invalid by newer research, I don't see the problem in stating that HA's before Surena had that weakness - one must presume that Crassus still thought they had it, or he was just... well...


EDIT: I've FINALLY understood your post, and apologize for the misunderstanding. When you asked "how fast they were spent", I thought you meant "how quickly they run out of arrows" i.e. "how many they have" - and therfore ensued the entire debate between us. I now see that you meant "how fast they shoot them" and this of course is an entirely different matter. I can now fully understand the relevance of your question and must even agree to it: what does it matter how quickly they shoot if they can stay out of range of melee anyway :)
I apologize for the misunderstanding and hope you can see that it was entirely accidental

[Aper]

@ artaxerxes

50000 HA in their own territory vs : 2 legions with the impediment of massive siege weapons (300 wagons) and the supplies of the entire army, without their commander.. this was a brilliant move of the parthian general, who lead the attack personally, but tactically this battle means nothing, IMHO.

Against the Sassanids.. well, I don't know every battle, but in most of the wars of the ERE age the romans had to fight at the same time germans, persians and usurpers: no surprise they lost sometime, more surprising they won all this enemies in the end..

Again, most of the defeats of the Romans was caused by the stubborness of Belisarius and other "cavalry-general" who refused to use infantry in battle, even if , when employed properly, often perfomed well. Persians were masters in cavalry-based war, it's quite natural roman mounted (when not supported) suffered defeats against them..

cheers

And please, PLEASE, stop quoting the battle of Adrianople as a proof of the superiority of the cavalry: it's simply a legend. Period.
The roman defeat was caused by: idiocy of the general. troops exhausted. hasty attack of some stupids who started the battle before the army was in a proper formation. numerical inferiority of the romans, because the emperor didn't wait for the reinforcements: he didn't want to divide the glory with his fellow of the west. gothic cavalry simply arrived on the battlefield later, and saw a tempting flank to charge: romans didn't have reserves (read before why), and they lose. Add some dumb historians searching for a simbolic battle to start middle-ages and... Voilà! The Legend of Adrianople!

[Cartaphilus]

That's it.

Read about the "disastrous" parthic campaign of the Divus Julianus, aka the Apostate. Until he arrived to the enemy capital, the romans performed quite good.

But in the end some bad decisions and the death of Julianus made that the campaign failed. But the new agreement between the new emperor and the parthic king was no calimitous to the romans, as it would have been.

[The Persian Cataphract]

*laughs at many of the ludicrous entries in this thread*

Some of you have a very simplistic, rock-paper-scissor approach to assessing military weaknesses, and others have a loose grasp of understanding the capacity of a proper quiver and a gorytos (Between Scythian and Parthian types). The rivalry between foot-archery and mounted archery is complex enough to bring completeness to at least a handful of reports, and none of them were inherently better than another. There is a likewise rivalry between heavy cavalry and light cavalry, where a number of times the light cavalry emerged victorious (Enough to profoundly influence playing rules in DBA and DBM).

Out of common courtesy, I won't mention any names, but I warmly advise you to read up on your scholastics. Real-life warfare is anything but a Vanilla RTW fare.

[AqD]

*laughs at many of the ludicrous entries in this thread*

Some of you have a very simplistic, rock-paper-scissor approach to assessing military weaknesses, and others have a loose grasp of understanding the capacity of a proper quiver and a gorytos (Between Scythian and Parthian types). The rivalry between foot-archery and mounted archery is complex enough to bring completeness to at least a handful of reports, and none of them were inherently better than another. There is a likewise rivalry between heavy cavalry and light cavalry, where a number of times the light cavalry emerged victorious (Enough to profoundly influence playing rules in DBA and DBM).

Out of common courtesy, I won't mention any names, but I warmly advise you to read up on your scholastics. Real-life warfare is anything but a Vanilla RTW fare.

Hmm. If you know something we don't, why not just tell us here??

[The Persian Cataphract]

It's a matter of insight and understanding, not the amount of knowledge. Most people not only find history to be a most boring topic, but they pathologically think they are going to find the "quick fix" magical answer to one of the most complex matters ever to be conceived by us human beings. For an example, let us take these aforementioned horse-archers and try to chart their weaknesses. Let us get the scope of their continued use within general militaria, from the age of the Cimmerians and early Scythians, to the age of the late Tatars.

Their function in the battle-field was more or less the same throughout the ages, yet they must have continuously surpassed their own short-comings throughtout the generations through different tactical adaptations and different strategical paradigms. It easily gets esoteric, which is a far cry from "heavy cavalry beats light horse and spears beats horse and blades beats spears". These are all over-simplifications, and if one cannot understand the basics of the real life tactical flexibility of a military element, there is no point for me to ramble on about it either.