muskets vs.longbows in MTW2

[Kalle]

longbowmen TOOK FOREVER TO TRAIN WHILE MUSKETS CAN BE GIVEN TO A BUNCH OF IDIOTS TAUGHT HOW TO LOAD AND FIRE IN MINUTES AND ARE COMBAT READY.

Statements such as these are made everywhere this topic is discussed and that is not a rare discussion either at this forum or at .com or wherever.

I would like you to point me to a firsthand source that says it take for ever to learn to shoot a bow and another that states that musqeteers become an effective battleweapon as soon as you hand the muskets out.

Thank you in advance.

Kalle

[Comrade Alexeo]

I'll quietly interject here, as I've used both a bow and a musket before...

Any idiot can figure out how to work a bow - you pull the string back and then let go of it!

Anyone who's ever tried this also knows that this proves almost impossible to do well when you put it to the test. You drop the arrow, it bounces off the string, you can't pull the string back because it requires too much pull, your arrow goes flying forty feet directly to your left or plops 6 inches in front of you...

If you've ever managed to pull off a bullseye, or at least get your arrow to fly in a vaguely straight manner with enough distance on it that you actually have to sorta look for it, then here's a balloon for you



None of you are going to get my balloon, though, because none of you have done it or will ever do it. Ever. I don't care what you say, because it's bull.

And that's with modern bows, too, not a longbow. That's like comparing a water pistol to a bazooka.

Longbowmen had to train for years to really have any actual skill with their weapons. They started as kids with little bows shooting at clumps of dirt, and as they grew up they started using the Big Daddy bows. Luckily for the English, for the most part skill was not required - sending big levies of peons against gradually diminishing groups of irreplacable French knights was good enough. So long as you got the swarm of arrows in the general vicinity of the enemy, well, that was good enough. That's not to say that some longbowmen were likely the match of any Eastern archer in terms of skill - I've heard that longbowmen in some sieges actually shot through the arrow slits of castle towers to hit the defensers - but the majority of them surely were not.

Longbowmen weren't so much uber-fighters as they were cost-effective ones; you could have bunches of the guys any time you needed them ready to deal some damage. But the time it takes to train people how to use them in a semi-organized fashion, and the time needed to create a good longbow - years in both cases - meant that something else would be still more preferable.

Enter crossbows. Once again, any idiot can figure this out - pull the trigger, place the bolt and wind it up, then pull the trigger - only this time there's less margin for error because a crossbow doesn't require as much arm strength. It's also easier to aim by its very nature, and so can be very accurate even in the hands of your typical villager.

So, why arquebuses and muskets? I mean, they have these complicated loading sequences with 40 zillion steps, they have a tendency to misfire or even explode, and they're wildly inaccurate?

BANG!

That's why. Never, ever, ever underestimate the psychological effect of a bunch of very loud objects pointed at you. Especially one's that have nice big flashes of flame and spew smoke. Especially in a very religious age.

There's a common misconception that a musket takes a long time to load, and they certainly do by the standards of, say, an M-16, and that the process is complicated, and it certainly is by the standards of, say, an AK-47. But you have to ignore these bits.

In just two drill sessions with my buddies who do Civil War (I'm an extra body ), in what amounts to a total of, oh, I dunno, 8 hours of drilling, I could already load a musket in my sleep. And yes, a percussion musket is vastly simpler than earlier flintlocks and matchlocks... so they take, oh, 12 hours. And, sure, they take a while to load, but once you get into the motions, its not so arduous; the wasted time generally comes from your officer not having given the command yet.

You have to get out of the mindset that casualties=morale loss. That's true in both the TW world and the real world, but it's vastly more true in the TW games, because, no matter how good the CA guys are (and good they are, I assure you), they can't fully replicate the mindset of a soldier, much less thousands of them. They have to approximate it to create a funner, more obvious sequence of events, because otherwise battles would just be mindless slogs.

Imagine it...

You're marching towards the enemy line with 50 of your buddies. Officers are shouting out orders, men are psyching themselves up for the battle, metal is clanking and feet are pounding, music is blaring in the background...

FWIT!

GAH!

Suddenly, 17 comrades collapse after being hit by the enemy arrows. But you're for the most part unaware. You can't see them, and you can just barely hear their muffled screams over everything else, and it's not enough to shake you from your battle rush as you move towards the enemy line...

BANG!

The enemy! Where the bloody hell is the enemy? They've disappeared into a cloud of smoke - smoke that smells like sulfur, like the very fires of Hell! Your ears are ringing from the deafening noise. You've gone from hearing everything to hearing nothing in an instant. In a literal flash, you've just lost your two primary senses, your awareness of the battle. Now what?


Gar, where was I? Hmm... the point I'm trying to make is this:

None of these weapons is ideal, either in M2TW or in the real world. Indeed, armies were constantly experimenting with the correct proportion of pikemen to crossbowmen to handgunners during this period; they knew that each had its own place, but they just weren't sure who took precedence.

The same applies to M2TW. Traditional archers and crossbowmen (if they can fire flaming arrows) are probably the best castle-defenders, if only because they can set things on fire. But once gunpowder rolls around, you'll find your castles growing more and more ineffective, so now you might want to fight the enemy in the field.

There's various combinations here:

1 general
10 pike units
3 longbow/archer units
3 gunner units
3 crossbowmen units

This combo gives you everything, but perhaps not enough of anything. You can engage well at any range, and have good protection thanks to your pikemen, but if the enemy has more ranged units your ranged units might not be able to kill enough of the enemy before they rip your pikemen to shreds...

Hmmm, let's try...

1 general
2 heavy cavalry units
8 pikemen units
3 longbow/archer units
3 gunner units
3 crossbowmen units

Now you have cavalry to protect from other cavalry and to run down enemy ranged units... or, perhaps, get blasted into oblivion since there's not enough of them...

Gar, one moment...

1 general
4 heavy cavalry units
6 pikemen units
3 longbow/archer units
3 gunner units
3 crossbowmen units

Aha! Now you can run down and crush the enemy ranged units! But wait - the enemy artillery is destroying your pikemen, and now they won't be able to stand up to the enemy infantry!

1 general
2 artillery units
4 heavy cavalry units
4 pikemen units
3 longbow/archer units
3 gunner units
3 crossbowmen units

Bye-bye enemy artillery! And goodbye victory, since now your army has become so diluted that it can't do anything except smile and wave at death!

Maybe if you fiddled around with your ranged units...?



Oh bah... this is ridiculous. If you figure it out, could you do me a favor?

Call Machiavelli. I'm sure he'd love to see what you think...