Where would the real disadvantage be...

[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.

[Korlon]

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.

I believe I saw that as well. That guy was crazy accurate and fast at the same time.

[Nirvanish]

I believe I saw that as well. That guy was crazy accurate and fast at the same time.

Lately I've been quite frustrated because I cannot find the names of many shows that I have seen on the history/discovery channel. I looked for atleast 2 hours last night for the video mentioned and the host but could not find either. I remember watching it and empathizing with legionaries who had to fight horse archers, thats one fight I would not want to be in.

[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