Longbows are no good

[Sonny WiFiHr]

Pavise Xbows are better.2/3 rate fire with beter att/def stats.
I attack 1 PXbow Milanese with 2 longbow and my general save the longbowman from total destruction.
My englis troops act like they are from stone age not blodbath medieval.
Stonebow English good at harasing chicken

[Lord Condormanius]

This has not been my experience at all. If you get a bunch of longbowmen (3 or 4) in your army and concentrate their fire, they cut infantry and cavalry (from a distance) to ribbons.

[Sonny WiFiHr]

I'm not talkig about sitting ducks.I'm talkig abut distruption in the force.LB fire much faster (historicly) pierce almost like Xbow.But now they are slow have same range as Xbows and they have less damage.This is not a shock troop as should be.Need some balancing.

[todorp]

I'm not talkig about sitting ducks.I'm talkig abut distruption in the force.LB fire much faster (historicly) pierce almost like Xbow.But now they are slow have same range as Xbows and they have less damage.This is not a shock troop as should be.Need some balancing.

Absolutely! LB has to have 3 times higher rate of fire, when in MTW2 bows have the same rate of fire as crossbows :(. How it can be adjusted?

[Lord_hazard]

I'm not talkig about sitting ducks.I'm talkig abut distruption in the force.LB fire much faster (historicly) pierce almost like Xbow.But now they are slow have same range as Xbows and they have less damage.This is not a shock troop as should be.Need some balancing.

Totally agree the english longbowmen arent nearly powerfull enough. In rl they had the huge advantage of range, they dont in this game, and rate of fire, again taken away in this game.
The english longbowmen were the the most powerfull ranged units in the world until the rifled gun arrived, just simply just took to long to train to be as cost effective as crossbows and gunpowder units of that time.
The longbowmen needs to be upgraded to match history.
And elite units like the scots guard needs to be number limited or removed as they were never used in any great numbers.

[pevergreen]

Pavise Xbows are better.2/3 rate fire with beter att/def stats.
I attack 1 PXbow Milanese with 2 longbow and my general save the longbowman from total destruction.
My englis troops act like they are from stone age not blodbath medieval.
Stonebow English good at harasing chicken

First of all, proper sentance structure is always a nice change.

Longbows are incredibly powerful. But so are Crossbows. Remember citizens with a few hours crossbow training could kill a knight who had trained for his entire life.

Look at the armour difference for Close Combat. Milanese have the best pavise crossbowmen for a start, wearing chainmail.
Longbowmen are archers, not meant for combat, wearing leather...not even padded. Retinue Longbowmen can handle themselves, but skirmishers/archers arent meant to fight. they are meant to shoot. Pavise Crossbowmen are meant to win any archer fights, they have armour and HUGE SHIELD on their back.

[sabremookie]

Pavise Xbows are better.2/3 rate fire with beter att/def stats.
I attack 1 PXbow Milanese with 2 longbow and my general save the longbowman from total destruction.
My englis troops act like they are from stone age not blodbath medieval.
Stonebow English good at harasing chicken

I agree with you entirely, the balance between pavise x-bows and longbows seems incorrect.

[ScrapTower]

Its the rate of fire that is imba... The pav xbows should die slower, but also fire much slower them longbows...

[sabremookie]

Its the rate of fire that is imba... The pav xbows should die slower, but also fire much slower them longbows...

Yes, that is exactly the problem, and we are not sure yet if it can be modded easily :(

[Sonny WiFiHr]

Guy archers (Sherwood) can beat pavise. If you like fantasy side of the game.I will test them against panzer elephants.

[Sonny WiFiHr]

Correction. Guy archers (Sherwood) can't beat pavise.

[BigTex]

Guy archers (Sherwood) can beat pavise. If you like fantasy side of the game.I will test them against panzer elephants.

As a scarry side note to this. Apparently CA intended to put rocket armed elephants in the game. The unit is in the export_descr_unit.txt file but apparently never made it into the game, bless their hearts.

Never ran into problems with the Longbows. Of course pavasive armed crossbowmen should always win against another archer unit, they have a massive shield. But the longbows are generally cheaper, and far easier to train en-mass. They can also use wooden stakes, something that shouldnt be under valued. Their fully capable of going toe to toe with other heavier armored units due to their armor piercing mallots. They might not be the best 1 to 1 infantry but their support value for an army is something to be awed by. As england you can easily pump out dozens of these units, while even milan has trouble producing a couple pavasive genonese crossbowmen each year.

[ScrapTower]

The Retinue Longbowsmen have swords. The next longbows below them use mallets.

[Kralizec]

I assume crossbows still fire in a straight arc like in MTW original, yes?

That was one considerable advantage (IMO) of longbows in MTW. To use crossbows you always had to put them in fornt of your other troops*. Longbows could be positioned safely behind a wall of spears.

(*the exception would be if you're defending from a steep hill)

[Daveybaby]

Actually, crossbows now seem able to fire in an arc over other units heads. Dont know if this affects their performance any worse than it does for longbows though.

[dopp]

I prefer the more reasonable estimate found in John Keegan's commentary on Agincourt that trained archers could volley fire one shot every ten seconds, as opposed to how fast it is physically possible to fire the bow. Compare this to 15 seconds for a musket, 15 seconds for a "light" crossbow (drawn back with a claw rather than a windlass) and 5 seconds for a modern bolt-action rifle. Remember also that they only have about 24 arrows apiece (30 in M2TW) so they cannot waste them firing all once. At least part of the longbow's (or any other missile weapon's) effectiveness is the delivery of well-timed volleys to break enemy morale, so they must wait and fire all at once. This cuts their RoF dramatically. Ingame the longbows I use have a RoF almost twice that of the crossbowmen, so I really don't see the problem.

Not all crossbow units are equal. There are steel_crossbow_bolt and normal crossbow_bolt. Pavise and all other professional crossbowmen (Aventuriers, Peasant Crossbows, Genoese) have steel ones and their range is 160, same as all longbowmen. All militia and cavalry crossbows are 120, along with arquebusiers. Muskets pwn them all with 180 range.

Crossbows will fire directly if there is a clear line of fire, indirectly if not. Not sure if it matters. Gunners just stand there blankly if a single tree blocks their vision.

[GFX707]

Stonebow English good at harasing chicken

LOL, I am glad I read this thread for that last line alone.

[Reapz]

Originally posted by Sonny WiFiHr
Longbows are no good

Oh yes they are

[stev666]

I find that far from being "no good" longbows do take a bit more skill to use effecitvly. Which in a way sort of emulates how they were in life as in reality longbows did take more skill to use. Not only that they can be invaluable in sieges with the flaming arrow ability, many's the time my towers have failed to take out a ram and left it to me to get the job done. Sherwood archers for example even as oddly balanced ( strange that their melee is higher than their missle attack, alot higher in fact) as they are can quickly decimate enemy forces if used well.

[pike master]

i wasnt trying to make the exact claim about the velocity being 280 i was just trying to estimate because a freind of mine has a 2000 dollar compound bow that chrons out at 340 but his is top of line.

i am glad to get the input on that so we have a pretty accurate estimate on the actual power of the arrow and not just the pull weight which at 124 ft lbs is still average to high power for a .22 lr.

i can tell sextus is very knowledgable in archery because i knew and now know he is into chroning them and you cant argue with facts. as i said i was just guessing on that 280 fps.

my specialty is high powered rifles not much on archery. and thinking on it somemore i would be close to certian that firearms probably shot around the 600 fps mark and the lead shot weight is a guess but i figure since the bores varied but a lot of em were around an inch. maybe someone might know how much the lead balls weighed for arquebuses?

[pike master]

just did some checking up on some arquebus reference sites and turns out the bullet weights are not as high as i expected nor the bore sizes. they were more like .5 to .75 caliber and the velocity instead of being only 600 ranged from 800 fps for a .75 cal to 1500 fps for a .50 cal.

but i still dont know exact bullet weights but one site mentioned it at 3/4 ounce so if we take the lower velocity of 800*800*330grains/450240 we get an energy of 470 ft lbs but i dont know what cal the 3/4 ounce slug went to.i do know that 50 cal bullets these days usually average about 300 grains for an automatic pistol. so a ball would probably be lighter than a bullet.

so 3/4 of an ounce would probably have been for the .75 caliber.

[Carl]

I'd also point out that regardless of how flat a trajectory a bulet would have had at 100M, the lack of rifiling in fact made any kind of accurrate shooting impossibbile and i'm lead to belive that 100M was the limit of effective volley fire.

[Orda Khan]

I never argue physics, once the calculations begin I start off on a reverie. However, 280 fps for a longbow or any traditional set up is expecting a lot

......Orda

[CBR]

An arquebus would be of around 15mm and bullet weight of 20 grams. Muskets could be monsters of 20+mm and 50+ gram bullets but they did vary in caliber and generally fell below 20mm by the start of the 17th century IIRC. Muzzle velocites would have been 350 m/s and I have seen some tests showing 500+ IIRC. The recoil described even when using heavy weapons suggests pretty high velocities for muskets. The handguns of early/mid 15th century would have had 200+ m/s.


CBR