Where would the real disadvantage be...

[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.

[Watchman]

...although, at least as far as the light nomadic-pattern HAs go, arguably the main reason for their continued use throughout the millenia was simply that whatever their real and numerous enough limitations, in certain parts of Eurasia where cavalry was the king anyway they were just plain readily and cheaply available. The common nomadic tribesman could be employed as a quite effective light cavalryman, scout, raider and skirmisher "off the shelf" without further ado.

Given the vital importance of light horse for what might be termed "campaign duties" (ie. scouting, foraging etc.) for any army, whatever their battlefield potential, this was obviously a detail any warlord could well appreciate.

(PS: What, no Almighty Moustache(tm) ? You're slipping, TPC. )

[Lysimachos]

If i remember correctly there even fought some cossacks with bows at the battle of Leipzig in 1813

[Watchman]

1813, Hell. You had Mongol irregulars with composite bows in the damn Boxer Rebellion and whatnot.

Not exactly fearsome battlefield presence obviously, but then nobody expected that either anyway.

[Lysimachos]

You had Mongol irregulars with composite bows in the damn Boxer Rebellion and whatnot.

Wow, i didn't knew that. But now, when you are talking about that, i come to the feeling that it would be probable to find evidence of horse archers in second world war or maybe some later african civil war or something...