Longbow(s)

[-42-]

If there is archeological evidence than I see no reason why not to include it, though I doubt the longbows there would be as effective as heralded.

[Cute Wolf]

So we may get a new unit "Proto-Welsh Longbowmen" whatever, as the local AOR of British Islands

Now seriously, if we gonna include longbowmen mechanic in EB 2, we should give some units "longbowmen" status, such as Hindus Pattiyodha and Kovakasi Netadzik, as they also got huge bow with them. But the question is simple, are that "big-bows" have armour piercing capability or not?

[A Very Super Market]

There is a reason why they were so large. Bamboo isn't very good bow material, but where in India would you find Yew?

[antisocialmunky]

All you would need a yew like wood with the same rigid to soft gradient. In lieu of that similar types of bows were built out of a lamination of of hard wood and bamboo - somewhat a hybrid in the shape of a longbow but with the construction similar to a composite bow. This site sells bows made with the traditional methods and gives a brief description of the construction method:

http://www.krackow.com/asia.html

Now, what's really interesting was when I looked at the Wikipedia article, it mentioned bows made out of Wootz Steel. Now they were starting to make steel at this point but I'm not certain what period those bows are from. I'd be very interested in hearing from an expert on those:

http://www.archeryhistory.com/longbo.../drawings1.jpg
Its #4.

[Khorak]

The longbow is an old weapon, but it only became famous because of the way in which England used it. The 'history of the longbow' as people tend to know it is not so much a history of the weapon itself, as a history of how the Hundred Years War started to bring back professional standing armies and the societal evolutions that had been occurring for this to even be possible. England was also blessed with a long period of excellent, sometimes even exceptional battlefield commanders, while the French had been blessed with an unending plethora of colossal idiots who, in the only explanation I can come up with to justify it, resented the dogged bravery of their own troops so much they couldn't bring themselves to do anything but get the poor ******** killed.

Frankly, the longbow is not truly that exceptional when taken entirely on its own, although the myth is not quite so epic as the katana lie. They're certainly no more 'armour piercing' than any other bow with a similar draw weight. No bow should be considered 'armour piercing' above and beyond whatever attack value they have already been assigned in the game. Powerful bows will have a higher attack value than weaker ones, it's that simple; none of them are any more explicitly 'armour piercing' than any other, since the piercing mechanics of how they remain effective against padded armour, maille, and any gaps in rigid armour is endemic to any bow by default with the only difference being, ta daaa, how fast and how big the arrow they're firing is (for the most part).

[-42-]

Here is a nice compormise, as the M2TW engine allows for multiple weapon skins, simply include an occasional longbow in the formation, odds are performance was not that much more exceptional than a standard hunting bow used by drafted hunters.

[Tuuvi]

I agree with what Khorack and -42- have said. The longbow is not necessarily more powerful and it's definitely not any more armor piercing than other bows; it is just a more efficient design. This means that a longer bow pulling 50 lbs. will shoot an arrow faster than a shorter one with an identical draw weight. I would also like to point out again that shorter bows can be made just as efficient with the right design elements, such as recurving the limbs.

If the Sweboz were given longbows like I suggested that wouldn't really mean that there stats would need to be changed, because they used hunting bows which would have had much lower draw weights than war bows. I just feel like that is the kind of bows the ancient Germans would have used based on the evidence I have found. If the EB team doesn't agree with me I completely understand; I'm no historian and I came up with the idea while in the middle of writing my original reply

[Chris1959]

I can never resist putting in two penneth when longbows come up.

IIRC weren't the neolithic bows of of a flat D crossection which makes them more powerful than the more standard type but more complex to make and therefore the sort of specialist kit a hunter would use.

I agree with "shadeswolf" in that the French etc were unwilling to arm a large section of the lower orders with a lethal weapon, when it gets to firearms this changes because the weapon and it's ammunition become so much more complex and expensive that only the state can provide and resupply them in significant numbers.

And finally before everything dissolves in to pull weights and penetration I believe the English victories of the 14th 15th century are not due to the longbow as a weapon itself but the whole army being a weapon sytem in itself a fine balance of the logbowmen and men at arms, the real killers being the semi-professional, war hardened dismounted men at arms who for a century had no peers in Europe. It would be quite interesting, if the figures exsisted, to see who inflicted the most fatalities at Crecy, Poitiers etc, my money is on the men at arms.

[antisocialmunky]

You'd probably be able to derive something out of the ransom statistics if oyu can get ahold of them.

[Chris1959]

Regarding ransoms IIRC in an old article in the SPI magazine Edward III actually turned a profit from the Crecy campaign!!!

[Tuuvi]

I can never resist putting in two penneth when longbows come up.

IIRC weren't the neolithic bows of of a flat D crossection which makes them more powerful than the more standard type but more complex to make and therefore the sort of specialist kit a hunter would use.

Many of them were, but flatbows have been found also. I could be wrong but I do not think that bows with a "D" cross section are harder to make than other bows, as a matter of fact D cross sections are and were pretty common. All that is meant by a "D cross section" is that the belly of the bow is round. I think (but I'm not sure) that the main factor determining how the bow is worked is the type of wood used, and if that's not true than I'm sure that wood type does play a large role in it. Yew bows are usually skinny and made with a D cross section; what allows them to be made that way is the high elasticity of the wood. White woods, which are not as elastic however, have to made wider and have flat cross sections. If a bow made out of a white wood such as hickory or ash were made the same way as a yew bow, it would be very prone to breakage and would not be able to achieve the same cast as the yew bow.

Also while I'm at it I would like to add a quote from The Traditional Bowyer's Bible Vol. II that I missed while skimming through it, I feel that if I would have quoted this before it would have helped my previous posts make more sense.

It is also important to note that all evidence says that the oldest bow artifacts (and lots of others since then) were as tall as the men who shot them. This is an important element in keeping string follow to a minimum. Unbacked shorter bows will show more string follow, on average. As string follow increases, cast per pound drops.

For those of you who don't know, string follow is when the limbs of the bow become permanently bent. All bows will develop some string follow after being shot several times, however the less string follow the better.

[B-Wing]

I don't know nearly enough about archery, modern or historical, to add anything factual on this matter, but I must say that Khorak's response (2nd paragraph) seems most realistic in regards to the martial properties of longbows. To sum it up, if units in the game do equip longbows (of European design), they ought to have relatively high attack ratings without armor piercing. Improved range over shorter bows may also be reasonable.

If it were up to me to implement them however I saw fit, with my extremely limited knowledge and understanding of the time period, I would expect longbowmen to be a medium-level (Tier 3 MIC, perhaps) regional unit available in small geographical pockets. This in contrast to having low-level factional archers armed with longbows as though they were simply the norm for any particular culture.

[Saxby]

Yeh longbows weren't as powerful as people imagine and i bet a lot of people would be supprised at their range (which wasn't as huge as some people seem to think). They were powerful weapons especially as the english were able to mass them (something continental armys coundnt do for some reason (social patterns maybe?).

However as mentioned above it was the generals who kicked the french at these battles not the longbows. If the generals had switched over i doubt you would see the english winning. As luck would have it England was blessed with good generals and more importantly a militarily competant king and royal family. It was the opposite in france at this time and their tactics seem compleltlly insane if you read up on them now.

So yeh popular culture has exagurated the longbow. Even generally competant authors have made it worse such as bernard cornwall whos grail series exagerate the longbowmans power and accuracy hugely. Sorry just realised this is a bit off topic with regards to EBII but i'll post it anyway.

[Macilrille]

A small note on the supposed downpour weakening Italian X-bows more than English longbows.
29th October at a historical congress in Cph on something else I chanced to learn that experiments with submerging X-bow strings in water for 24 hours before using them showed no difference in performance to dry ones. Likely the poor Genoese used that explanation as one of many to explain how the volleys of English arrows mowed them down while they could not reach the longbowmen placed on a hill with their own arrows.

IMO the explanation is more likely:
1. sheer volume of arrows, the longbow has a higher rate of fire by far.
2. better range from the hilltop.
3. The Genoese had not brought their pavises to hide behind.

Anyway, this hints at why the English archers were so effective, they were trained for a lifetime to mass-fire volleys and their sheer volume of fire was incredible. Further, they used the armour-piercing bodkin arrows, which earlier archers did not. Both these developments only happened after the Welsh bloodily demonstrated how scaringly effective longbows were.

Now, the army bog finds from Denmark has yielded longbows, but not many compared to the number of spears and even swords- only in one of them are there lots ow arrowpoints AFAIR, so perhaps massed archery with longbows did not play a large role in Germanic warfare.

Rather we can turn to the situation 1000 years later as decribed in our first medieval sources purpotedly telling of prehistory, Viking Age and their own Early middle age.

Now whether we see them as relating truthfully the stories of the Germanic Iron Age and Viking Age, or (as later artists depicting New Testament events did so with them wearing full plate etc), is not so important here. What the Sagas and Saxo relates is that archery was more comparable to current day snipers than mass weapons.

Let me present a piece of Olav Trygvessons Saga, written by Snorri.
At The Battle of Svold where Sven Tveskæg (Forkbeard), Olaf of Sweden and Erik Haakonsson, Norwegian earl in opposition to Olav Trygvesson confronted him in a battle and clears his warships one by one (clearing a ship in the Viking terminology means boarding and killing everything). No one can board the Royal ship; the famously huge "Ormen hin Lange" (The Long Wyrm/Dragon) as long as Einar Tambarskjelve shoots his huge bow "Tambar". From this high vantage point he can pick off everyone that tries until Erik Haakonsson gets his "Finnish" (Samii) archer to shoot back*.

Einar shot an arrow at Earl Eirik, which hit the tiller end just above the earl's head so hard that it entered the wood up to the arrow-shaft. The earl looked that way, and asked if they knew who had shot; and at the same moment another arrow flew between his hand and his side, and into the stuffing of the chief's stool, so that the barb stood far out on the other side. Then said the earl to a man called Fin, -- but some say he was of Fin (Laplander) race, and was a superior archer, -- "Shoot that tall man by the mast." Fin shot; and the arrow hit the middle of Einar's bow just at the moment that Einar was drawing it, and the bow was split in two parts. "What is that", cried King Olaf, "that broke with such a noise?" "Norway, king, from thy hands," cried Einar. "No! not quite so much as that," says the king; "take my bow, and shoot," flinging the bow to him. Einar took the bow, and drew it over the head of the arrow. "Too weak, too weak," said he, "for the bow of a mighty king!" and, throwing the bow aside, he took sword and shield, and fought valiantly.

It is, BTW, interesting to see how the 13th century struggles of Norway vs Denmark and Sweden is reflected in ethnocentric bias, just as the Danish ones against the Holy Roman Empire is in Saxo.
Anyway, there are many stories such at that in various King- and Family Sagas, Saxo, etc., Gunnar of Hlidarendi for example, holds off his attackers by archery and is a famous archer. So we can conclude that in as much as the written sources reflect the real situation and are not just emphasising the prowess of a few great men (which they also do), archery was more of a sniper-ish nature.
However, there is at least one instance where archers in more numerous nature is present, last battle of Harald Hildetand at Bråvalla where amongst other things, archers from Telemarken take down the hero Ubbe of Friesland.

That leaves us little to conclude upon really, and my tentative interpretation would be that massed archers could play a role, but that only specialists such as Finn, Ejnar, Palnatoke, Gunnar and the men of Telemarken (but not Olav Trygvesson) employ the warbow/longbow and has specialised training with it.

*interestingly enough the most famous and highest scoring sniper we know off is a Finn, Simo Häyä 522 kills in 96 days of The Winter War, and Saxo describes the Finns as using basically the same tactics in Viking times as they employed in 1939...

[Ludens]

However as mentioned above it was the generals who kicked the french at these battles not the longbows. If the generals had switched over i doubt you would see the english winning. As luck would have it England was blessed with good generals and more importantly a militarily competant king and royal family. It was the opposite in france at this time and their tactics seem compleltlly insane if you read up on them now.

Not to take anything away from the English generals, but they wouldn't have done well in command of a French army either. The English had something approaching a professional army: the nobility paid scutage tax rather than do feudal duty, and the king used the money to hire mercenaries. The French used the old feudal host. This meant that every unit was loyal to its own commanders rather than the king, which was a problem since the French nobility was very independent-minded. Every count fancied himself a general. Furthermore, because the noblemen only owed 40 days of service to the king, the campaign (and that included assembling and marching to the enemy) had to be done quickly or the crown would have to pay extra. As a result, large armies (more high nobility, more assembly time) were almost unmanageable: the French seem to have done better when their army was smaller.

[Macilrille]

You could also find a worse commander, for example, than Bertrand de Guescelin.

However, we are supposed to discuss antiquity and the possible use of LB there.

[antisocialmunky]

Not to take anything away from the English generals, but they wouldn't have done well in command of a French army either. The English had something approaching a professional army: the nobility paid scutage tax rather than do feudal duty, and the king used the money to hire mercenaries. The French used the old feudal host. This meant that every unit was loyal to its own commanders rather than the king, which was a problem since the French nobility was very independent-minded. Every count fancied himself a general. Furthermore, because the noblemen only owed 40 days of service to the king, the campaign (and that included assembling and marching to the enemy) had to be done quickly or the crown would have to pay extra. As a result, large armies (more high nobility, more assembly time) were almost unmanageable: the French seem to have done better when their army was smaller.

I agree.

In short, the French did most of the kicking of their own butts. Terribly... terribly... kicking their own butts.

[Watchman]

In short, the French did most of the kicking of their own butts. Terribly... terribly... kicking their own butts.

Err, no. That'd have required something on the order of a civil war (though the definition thereof gets a bit fuzzy in feudal realms), which for a change they *didn't* much engage in during the period.

Amply demonstrated the command-and-control problems of feudal armies (whose relation to force size more or less follows the square-cube law), though, most certainly.

Further, they used the armour-piercing bodkin arrows, which earlier archers did not.

No offense, but that's plain poppycock. As if people hadn't been devising specialised arrowheads for specific purposes since the freakin' Stone Age, and archers hadn't had to deal with heavy armour since the Late Bronze Age if not earlier.


Anyways, as to the age of the longbow, meh. It's just a large self-bow; Stone Age tech readily manufacturable by any culture which now was in the habit of making self-bows to begin with (and had ready access to suitable types of wood; in the absence of such somewhat different design approaches, such as the flatbow, were apparently necessary). A rather more relevant question would be if people had a *reason* to carry around bows of such - let's face the facts here - inconvenient size, or found smaller staves sufficient for their needs. Something the size of a longbow is pretty much "dedicated archer" stuff, too large and inconvenient for more multipurpose troops to haul around on the battlefield - for example I'm willing to bet the bows Medieval Swedish militiamen were required to muster with in addition to their close-combat gear weren't of longbow dimensions already due to such practical considerations, although archery itself was a pretty much universal skill in Scandinavia. That the local geography tended to make for comparatively short engagement distances and obstructed battlefields - what with all the forest around - would also presumably have discouraged wielding too many soldiers as dedicated archers in the first place; one gets the impression battlefield archery in the region was primarily the purview of light-infantry skirmishers and a secondary capability of the heavy infantry.

Which is really the important bit here; archers with often quite powerful bows were by no means uncommon in the heavily forested northern Europe, in particular the sparsely inhabited Baltic region where there was copious amounts of essentially empty wilderness for the common folk to hunt in. However, unlike the English started doing (and had been standard in the East for millenia) this archery was not used in massed formations dedicated above all to firepower and -support; this makes a rather considerable difference in the receiving end AFAIK. By what I've read of re-enactor experiments with the topic, even rather small bodies of archers delivering coordinated massed fire are *highly* distruptive to heavy-infantry formations...
The ancient Greeks would probably agree, given the degree to which they modified their infantry doctrine to cope with the positively ghastly weight of fire projected by massed Persian foot. (I've seen it observed in quite a few different sources that for close-order heavy infantry faced with massed archery, the best course of action is to - if tactically viable - open ranks and close in ASAP to minimise damage, distruption and "suppression".)

[athanaric]

Further, they used the armour-piercing bodkin arrows, which earlier archers did not. Both these developments only happened after the Welsh bloodily demonstrated how scaringly effective longbows were.

Maybe in the West. Finds indicate that the Kidarites/early Turks etc. used different kinds of arrows in different regions, depending on their enemies' preferred amount of armour. Western Turks used many bodkin type arrows, because they were up against the Persians, who placed emphasis on heavily armoured contingents.

[Watchman]

Again, hardly. Bow-toting Europeans were no fools, and understood perfectly well that you wanted different arrowheads for different purposes. This is as true for the designs used for hunting as for war. Case in point, the Viking arrowheads found around Dublin include several types very clearly designed primarily for armour penetration - indeed the spike-like "bodkin" types form a clear majority of the finds. Not dissimilarly many of the (few) Carolingian arrowheads discovered on the Continent are of a rhomboid shape - which isn't quite as dedicated "anti-armour" design as the "bodkin" types, but certainly far more so than the broadheads used for hunting (and sometimes, in war, against horses and unarmoured soldiers).

[athanaric]

Yeah, it seems that in most societies, your average bowmen would usually carry several types of arrows around. This feature is most distinctive in Nomad societies though.

[Watchman]

Make that "best known". I've seen the selections Viking Age Finnish hunters hauled around; there's everything there from the usual varieties of broadheads to chisel-like transverse-edged "cutters" to those weirdo Y-shaped "frog-crotch" sorts... and then a few whose function I could never quite figure out.

By the by, the cutting types with a transverse or somewhat angled edge go back to Stone Age...

[oudysseos]

A point that has seem to be missed is that the La Tene cultures of NW Europe, usually referred to as Celtic, did not seem to use bows much at all (in EBs time frame), and especially not for war. Slings and throwing spears were their missile weapons of choice. So proto-Welsh longbowmen ain't on the list, guys.

Another point that everyone always seems to overlook is that people don't choose technology solely (or even primarily) for materialistic or mechanistic reasons. What I mean is that all this hoo-hah about long bows being better than short bows blah blah blah is indicative that this is a discussion amongst statistics-minded video-gamers and not real people.

There is not an ultimate "best bow" that everyone in the world would have used if only they had the chance (and the same goes for swords, spears, armour and everything else). Weapons, like pottery and all other aspects of material culture, are deeply tied to the cultural identities of the peoples producing them, and are not always the most efficient or advanced technology available. The Japanese didn't use katanas because they are the best possible swords of all time, they used them because to do so was part of being Japanese. Sure, material considerations play a part- a culture poor in metal will not develop metal body armour, as in South America before Columbus, but in many cases a culture with adequate metal supplies will also not use body armour, for non-statistical reasons. Try and keep in mind that the Total War world is a very incomplete model, and the conclusions that you draw about war from playing the game might not be applicable to reality.

[Watchman]

...is indicative that this is a discussion amongst statistics-minded video-gamers and not real people.

Hey! Statistics-minded video-gamers are real people too, with real problems! (Wait...)

[antisocialmunky]

Amply demonstrated the command-and-control problems of feudal armies (whose relation to force size more or less follows the square-cube law), though, most certainly.

Still, it was more the French forces losing rather than the English forces winning that won those engagements.

[Watchman]

More like the French armies stumbling over themselves on account of being quite literally too large for their own good, but basically, yeah.

[satalexton]

I'm under the impression that the french won the 100 years war by zerging. Blighty Yeomen are not easy to replace when they're dead.

[Watchman]

No, not really. Blighty yeomen being way easier and cheaper to replace than fully armed and trained men-at-arms and similar quality close-combat troops, which was kind of a central reason in why there were so many of them in the English armies.

Thing is, Medieval warfare wasn't really about those big dramatic set-piece battles. The important thing was the control of the assorted fortified positions (which Europe had been very thoroughly filled with since the beginning of the Middle Ages), and winning major field battles only really assisted in that in A) letting you lay siege to them in the first place B) if you were lucky, the garrison had marched out to take part in that battle and been decimated. But for the most part the English had to deal with them the old-fashioned way, which is incidentally *the* major reason why territorial borders on the whole changed relatively little during the Middle Ages despite so much trying - those fortress networks were good at frustrating efforts at territorial conquest. (People wouldn't have spent so much money and effort bulding and maintaining the costly things if they weren't.)
Having to then also garrison what fortresses had been captured also obviously somewhat stretched the English manpower reserves...

Another thing that had a fairly important part in Medieval warfare was raiding and skirmishing by relatively small forces, and as already oft mentioned the French tended to do lot better there - much less C-and-C problems.

Finally, the French finally got their act together and reformed their military to a more reliably performing and manageable shape - the result being sometimes referred to as "Ordonnance French armies", after the royal ordinances involved in the reforms - and proceeded to evict the English from the Continent in a matter of decades. Getting serious about artillery on the side didn't hurt, either.

[Chris1959]

Plus the French got effective leaders just as the English lost theirs and plunged into political chaos themselves.

[Tuuvi]

Anyways, as to the age of the longbow, meh. It's just a large self-bow; Stone Age tech readily manufacturable by any culture which now was in the habit of making self-bows to begin with (and had ready access to suitable types of wood; in the absence of such somewhat different design approaches, such as the flatbow, were apparently necessary).

A rather more relevant question would be if people had a *reason* to carry around bows of such - let's face the facts here - inconvenient size, or found smaller staves sufficient for their needs.

I own a longbow and I haven't found the size to be too inconvenient. While they are taller than other bows, all wooden bows are skinny, thin and lightweight. Carrying around a longbow is pretty much like carrying around a walking stick.

A point that has seem to be missed is that the La Tene cultures of NW Europe, usually referred to as Celtic, did not seem to use bows much at all (in EBs time frame), and especially not for war. Slings and throwing spears were their missile weapons of choice. So proto-Welsh longbowmen ain't on the list, guys.

Another point that everyone always seems to overlook is that people don't choose technology solely (or even primarily) for materialistic or mechanistic reasons. What I mean is that all this hoo-hah about long bows being better than short bows blah blah blah is indicative that this is a discussion amongst statistics-minded video-gamers and not real people.

There is not an ultimate "best bow" that everyone in the world would have used if only they had the chance (and the same goes for swords, spears, armour and everything else). Weapons, like pottery and all other aspects of material culture, are deeply tied to the cultural identities of the peoples producing them, and are not always the most efficient or advanced technology available. The Japanese didn't use katanas because they are the best possible swords of all time, they used them because to do so was part of being Japanese. Sure, material considerations play a part- a culture poor in metal will not develop metal body armour, as in South America before Columbus, but in many cases a culture with adequate metal supplies will also not use body armour, for non-statistical reasons. Try and keep in mind that the Total War world is a very incomplete model, and the conclusions that you draw about war from playing the game might not be applicable to reality.

A lot of people seem to have misunderstood me, I apologize for that I agree that there is no such thing as the "best bow". The reason I stated that longbows are more efficient than short bows is because I felt that the proto-germans would not have gone to using shorter bows when they already had a good design. I did not take culture into consideration there so you may have a point. The bow artifacts I cited were thousands of years before EB's time frame. Also I have been into archery for about 7 years so I have some real-life experience. Please don't dismiss me as a "statistics minded video gamer".