Armored longbow men vs. Scots Guard

Frankly, I thought the longbow men were the best bowmen in Western Europe in the middle ages until maybe the invention of gun powder. But from some of the screenshots as well as the previews on the .com, the Scots Guard look more heavily armed and more bada** than the Armored English longbow men. Actually the longbow men are probably not even the best archers of the English, I heard there is some forest archer that have a lot higher missile attack. Longbow men are a big part of the English battle strategy. Did they tone down the longbow men in this game? Longbow men are not the only archers than can use stakes by the way. I think for the English alone, militia archers or some other cheap unit can use stakes too. In addition, longbow men can light fire on the arrows like some other cheaper English archers can.

I guess my point is: longbow men are not significantly better than the elite archers of other european factions; it is not better than Scots Guard, and heck they are not even the best English archers.

The sherwood foresters you speak of are more of an elite assassin type unit, with half the men of a normal unit, 2 hit points, and hide anywhere. IIRC, the armoured longbowman is the best normal archer unit for the English, and even if it's missile damage stat is similar to other arrow units, you have to remember that longbows are effective against armor and have further range.

Well, the Sherwood Foresters remind me of what King Arthur says of Camelot in Mony Python and the Holy Grail: "It's a silly place - let's not go there.". They are an elite fantasy unit and cannot really be compared with a historical one. I probably won't recruit any and suspect we won't see many in AI armies.

We don't know the stats of the armoured longbowmen[1] vs the Scots Guard. We do know the Scots Guard were a real elite unit guarding the French King. I suspect they were more than a match for a typical rank and file English archer unit. They were better armoured (a fair amount of plate) and more effective at melee (some had polearms). However, they were only one small unit whereas longbowmen could make up around half of a medieval English army. So in M2TW, I expect you will pay a lot more for the Scots Guard, draw upon a narrower recruitment pool and probably face stiffer build requirements. I suspect their missile attack will be similar to the best longbowmen.

I agree, I will not be happy if we see massed ranks for Sherwood Foresters crowding out the armoured longbowmen or if we see massed ranks of Scots Guards outshooting them. But I have confidence that won't happen. For example, people complained about arcani or gladiators in RTW but I don't think I ever used them, and I seldom fought them (never with arcani).

[1]BTW, I think the leaked Polish beta did not have armoured longbowmen - they had something like retainer longbowmen. It also looked like you could upgrade your units armour (e.g. from none to padded or mail to heavy mail), which will be a really nice feature.

A nitpicker would point out that proper composite bows trump *any* self-bows any day and thus just about all "Eastern" archers should be long-ranged and AP too...

Good thing I'm not one though. I'll make sure to mention if I see any such unwholesome people here.

Watchman,

Say rather "Composite Recurve" bows.... The composit construction of the eastern bows was only half the equation. Their unique recurve shape contributed a great deal to their deadliness. The recurve made the string speed on release gradually increase as the bow unflexed and the string wrapped around the recurved tips. (for a simple exampl of this phenominon just take a bit of string with a weight at the end and twirl it about your finger. As the string wraps around and its radius gets shorter the speed of the revolution gets faster) This allowed the composit recurve to have a higher peak draw weight without deforming the arrow (flex and warp) on release. In fact, until the advent of the modern compound bow they were the king. Add in the thumb ring mechanical release popularized by the Turks and its quite a deadle combo. One that I dont think is adequately modeled in the current MTW eastern horse archers....

Just thought some of you might be interested in that little tidbit :)

The archers of Gwent, Macclesfield, the forest of Dean and Cheshire were famed for their archery. The only real famous archers of scotland that i know of were from the Lothian and selkirk area and even then they would not have a chance against the training and numbers that England had

Originally Posted by Loki

Say rather "Composite Recurve" bows....

Fair enough, but pretty much since the end of the Chariot Age (when composite bows were still relatively straight) all the bows that are normally and without getting excessively pedantic termed "composite bows" were of the horn-wood-and-sinew recurve type in different versions...

As much as people talk about the awesomeness of the longbow, it was about the same quality weapon as an eastern composite bow.

What made the english longbowman feared was the superb training and large numbers. With the possible exception of mongols, there was probably no nation that had bowmen as well trained as the english.

Look this has nothing to do with anything but I want people to sign this

http://www.petitiononline.com/2908jt01/petition.html

its for the ME2 multiplayer campaign and i hope for atleast 40,000 people to

sign. so PLEASE spread the word im only 1 person but there have been over

1,000 signitures already and if there are around 40,000 they might think of doing

it so please sign it...
SPREAD THE WORD!!!!

With M2TW so close to release I doubt CA will bother putting in a multiplayer campaign.

Originally Posted by Silver Rusher

With M2TW so close to release I doubt CA will bother putting in a multiplayer campaign.

as said in another thread, they can't, said by a dev
besides it will be like this:
21 players:
1 turn costs 10 minutes = 210 minutes
on average every player attacks every turn = 21 battles
1 battle takes atleast 30 minutes
21 x 30 = 630 minutes
we have to wait for some time (toilet, dinner, etc) = 120 minutes

that makes it: 960 minutes; that's 16 hours for one turn. Yeah that means 8 hours sleeping, 16 hours gaming, no life

What you need to keep in mind is volume.
England spent a lot of time and money on creating archers.
Scotland and France were not known for volumes of archers......
They were Englands main battle plan

i do believe the scotsguard are somewhat better than these armoured longbowmen but since they are french guard i believe that they will have half the men, much like the sherwoods. however, if it came to scots guard v sherwoods, i'd put my money on the sherwoods.

As for what econ speaks of (retinue armoured longbowmen). they are a more elite version of the armoured longbowmen and also have slightly more armour, but what the true difference is i dont know. The funny thing is - regarding the polish illegal beta - the picture on totalwar.com looked like they put the retinue longbowmen as the picture and not the normal ones.