Medieval Missile Troops

[Rhyfelwyr]

I've been wondering about how to make all kinds of missile troops in M2TW more realistic. Not just in their appearance and names etc, but in how they performs and what roles they each play.

For example, javelineers. They were popular in large, flat areas such as Ireland, but also in much rougher regions such as the Basque region of Spain. So what types of terrain should skirmishers gain a bonus in? Also, each jevelinman in M2TW has I think 8 javelins, is this not a little much? I thought they would just throw a couple of javelins at the enemy then retreat behind the front ranks of the heavier troops.

Archers are another issue. Would they historically have inflicted very few casualities, like MTW, or fairly heavy casualties, like M2TW? Also, would their function just be to let of a few arrows before the enemy hit the front line? Or would they expected to sustain fire for hours on end?

Just interested as I am planning to do a little tweaking to unit stats.

[SwordsMaster]

Well, in warfare, even more than any other profession, what is not useful, is not used, and seeing as archers survived for some hundreds of years, I'd say there were quite effective...

[CBR]

Even the casualty rate of MTW is higher than what we can guestimate from historical sources. But the Total War battle engines generally allow units to take much higher higher losses before routing, so missile units need to deal out more damage to compensate.

There is also no real disruption and confusion from taking missile fire so missile units primary effect is purely the direct one of killing soldiers, with the added morale penalty of course.

I'd say archers could be expected to empty a quiver/sheaf of arrows against an advancing infantry force. They never had ammo enough for hours of continuous shooting and using heavy warbows would tire them out quickly anyway.


CBR

[Furious Mental]

No doubt it varied from case to case, but I'd say archers must have been pretty effective given that even in late medieval Europe there were armies (English) that were mostly, even almost entirely archers (e.g. one contract army sent to France had 600 men-at-arms and 4,000 mounted archers). Of course, it helped that English soldiers had gotten very good at using the terrain and ad hoc fortifications to maximise the time they could fire on the enemy before melee ensued.

[Oleander Ardens]

1. Archers:

Depends. Very effective and deadly against very light armored and densely packed men or horses. Absolutly useless against platearmored footsoldiers which were able to march through a rain of arrows as it would be - rain.

Great disruptive effect against charging cavalry with unprotected horses - that's why steppe tribes started to protect their horses with heavy felt or linen since 500 BC.
Almost useless in killing heavy infantry in mail and with big shields.

The moral effect was significant and not just porportional to the damage they were able to inflict, especially when one lacked the ability to return in kind. Even the Spartans surrendered when light missile units, mostly peletasts surrounded them and pelted them from afar.

CBR points rightly out that the casuality rate must be higher in a TW game because among other factors it is unable to account for the confusion and the wounds suffered.


2. Javelineers:

Usually popular in areas with little other missile weapons, ideal for poor militas. Should be more effective against mail than an arrow but not particulary, especially when the distances are shortranged. Ireland was not an open country back tnan, but covered with forests afaik.


OA

[Rhyfelwyr]

So do you think it would be realistic to lower all troops morale so archers can still have a low attack value but cause more mental damage?

Also would increasing the gap in quality between armoured and unarmoured opponents help distinguish the damage done by archers to different troops? This could be balanced in melee by increasing defense skill (doesn't affect arrows in M2TW engine) of less armoured units, perhaps reflecting that they would be able to move more freely than heavily armoured troops when defending themselves?

Also can anyone here give opinions on javelin ammo and damage?

[CBR]

I doubt lowering the morale will give the effect you are after. If missile weapons is to have a big (relatively) effect then morale is set so low you will see way too many insta routs which quickly will make for a boring game.

I remember messing around with impact or mass(or whatever it was called) of missiles in RTW. To increase the chance of soldiers being thrown back when hit but not killed. I wanted units to become more disorganised but I cant remember if it really had an effect.

Ammo for javelins might be higher than what some soldiers had. But as long as javelin armed units are fast, very cheap and dont do that much damage then its pretty historical heh.

Ammo should IMO be seen more as an abstract value to extend the amount of time such units were fighting, as most if not all soldiers are throwing javelins, whereas in real life it would be only the guys at front doing it. So to prevent such units from delivering the whole payload within a blink of an eye you give them more ammo.


CBR

[The Stranger]

in medieval warfare around 1000-1200 archers in the west were not much used, it wasnt untill the english discovered the value of welsh longbowmen untill they started to use lots of bowmen. The value of these longbowmen lay not only in their great skill with the bow but also in the fact that they were rather excellent medium infantry.

I think archers carried like 10 arrows... Longbowmen fired rapidly and far, crossbowmen fired powerful bolts from a short distance (they had long range but short distance volleys packed anough punch to penetrate armour). IF you read accounts from muslims you can see that their volleys on the heavily armoured and densed packed frankish knights had little effect, so I against mail armoured soldiers arrows had little value, however against densely packed ill armoured soldiers like the scottish shiltroms they were invaluable. Where the knights failed to break the schiltroms, the longbowmen just teared them up. So as said before it depends entirely on the sitiuation, type of soldier and enemy. Also in wet places or on wet days where the string couldnt be kept dry archers were rather useless.

[Incongruous]

Well, mail was not invulnerable to bodkins. Perhaps plate (will this argument ever be agreed upon? ).
Quite a few of the archers which Muslim armies contained did use the composite bow, a weapon very capable of piercing mail. As with all infantry from the late 9th to late 13th centuries, archers were not utilized to their full capacity. In wet muddy conditions, the lightness of archers attire would enable them to "dance" around heavier opponents, they were good light infantry.

[The Stranger]

yeah good light infantry, welsh longbowmen were even excellent medium infantry... but that doesnt mean the bow was such a deadly weapon. I think we are forgetting an entire aspect of archerwarfare... The tactical side.

I mean, the muslims, magyars, turks, mongols and factions who fought in a similar way, used the swiftness of HA to pepper the enemy while staying out of the range of their charge (since the west at that time barely used archers) trying to lure the knights out of formation or into a charge. Because they were lighter and faster they'd easily outrun the enemy. The moment the knights turned, they would turn to and do it again. just as long until the knights were wearied out or hurt bad enough by arrow fire so that their heavy cavalry could finish the job. The christians responded to this by placing crossbowmen, possibly mounted, amongst the ranks of the knights, thus when the HA approached the crossbowmen would return fire, and because the HA were lightly armoured and their horses werent armoured at all the crossbowmen proved deadly. The muslims in the holy land were terrified by that weapon.

So the bow was also used very tactically, to lure the enemy out of formation and then run them down one by one (the knights strenght lay in a dense formation charge) or to wear them out. The christians countered by using longrange crossbow to take the HA out while the knights stayed put. It wasnt untill the introduction of large archer armies like that of the english at crecy and agincourt that the archer was used for their ability to kill large numbers... but this goes for the west mostly, because in the east the archer was a deadly warrior and archery a noble profession... but there the soldiers werent as heavily armed as their western counterparts.

[lars573]

Actually you might be overestimating the esteem the English held their archers. Granted there were laws in place to foster profiiency with the longbow. But that's simply cause it takes time to learn to use any bow, and a six foot bow with a larger draw weight even longer. They used them a lot because the longbowmen were commoners and came cheap. And the English crown around the time they use large numbers of longbows was broke. Like the campagin that Henry V went on that led to Agincourt. He had 4000 archers cause they only cost him 6 pence a day. Where as the men-at-arms cost a shilling or two a day.

[Watchman]

You could say that adept use of the longbow in a support role enabled the English to win wars "on the cheap", with far smaller numbers of the expensive men-at-arms and other heavy troops than would have otherwise been required. While the longbow could not cause much in the way of meaningful casualties against armoured troops, it could affect the way they maneuvered and distrupt their battle order - and was obviously lethal enough against lighter-equipped support troops.

That aside, the practical killing power of even the best bows (ie. composites) against decent armour was always somewhat lackluster. For example during the Middle Ages simple body defenses of mail were very popular in the Middle East, a region absolutely rotten with powerful composite bows since the Late Bronze Age (when chariot warriors decked themselves out in scale as a countermeasure) already; judging by the way much of the local cavalry made only limited use of shields, or went entirely without, that mail already provided a quite substantial defense from arrows and javelins, at least at longer ranges. Similarly the heavy infantry of the Crusader States, whose one chief duty was to act as a living wall against the arrows of their enemies, made extensive use of mail.

And you can bet yer arse there was no shortage of specialized arrowhead designs to use against different types of armour there.

On the same vein the Central Asian horse peoples had been decking out their aristocratic heavy cavalry (and their horses) in full scale armour already in the Antiquity, so that they could both out-shoot lighter opponents in archery matches by the virtue of pure resiliency and simply ride through arrow-storms in need be. These fellows, and their various derivatives about everywhere, seem to have regarded shields as very much unnecessary encumberance, which ought to say something of the stopping power of their harnesses.

Powerful bows were still lethally dangerous to all but the best-armoured men (ie. ones in good plate) at short ranges, but obviously there were not many tactical scenarios where archers could pour fire into heavy troops at such point-blank distances without repercussions (ie. being promptly engaged and, most likely, slaughtered, in close quarters); naval boarding actions being among the few, and indeed already in Viking naval battles advantageously placed missile troops had played an important role. The war galleys and later higher-sided ships had their raised "castles" just for the use of missile troops.

Throwing-spears packed a punch - enough for even light ones to be able to at least partially penetrate most shields - and were easy to use, but lacked range. While one often sees them mentioned in passing in the arsenals of most armies, it is clear that they were generally relegated to purely auxiliary roles (except perhaps in light-infantry use in "close" terrain) in just about all armies after the Migration Period - although in the fast-paced form of light cavalry warfare typical of the fighting in the Iberian peninsula they seem to have filled a niche similar to (if shorter ranged than) that of the composite bow in the East. But then Iberia was long a bit of an aberration in many ways anyway.

In any case, at an age where fast and powerful shock cavalry well acoutered with armour and large shields played a central role (in European warfare anyway), it is easy enough to see why dedicated javelin skirmishers would have played a bit of a second fiddle - should they get close enough to the enemy to actually have an effect, they were more likely than not also horrible exposed to a cavalry charge. As an auxiliary weapon the javelin nonetheless featured widely enough for example in the training regimen of knights and much heavy infantry, and had obvious applications for particularly irregular light infantry in regions of heavily forested or otherwise rugged terrain.

[Oleander Ardens]

There is little to add to Watchman's excellent post. I might throw in that many depictions in the east and west show arrows ending up in the eyes of enemy leaders - a rather common death or wound on the battlefields for heavily armored nobles.

[Watchman]

The face was always - and for that matter, remains - a bit of a problem. It's relatively exposed and difficult to armour, 'cause what you breathe and see with is located there as well and obviously obstructing them causes issues.

Even the late-Medieval visors, as thorough pieces of engineering as they were, didn't fully remove the problem. "Closed" helmets just plain restricted vision and air intake so much everyone opened the visor when not in immediate combat, with the due result of a number of random face wounds from long-range projectiles.

Mind you, I don't really know how exactly those mail veils many folks East used performed. The Russians at least were willing to use helmets with eye-covering mail fringes even on archers and otherwise face-covering mail veils go back to the Antiquity in the bow-toting Central Asia so presumably their interference with eyesight and ventilation wasn't crippling, but one gets the impression financial issues weren't the only reason these things weren't all that common.

[Innocentius]

I think archers carried like 10 arrows...

Ten arrows sounds like very few arrows, it also appears to be an odd number as arrows were carried in dozens. I don't know exactly how many arrows an English longbowman would have carried with him, but there was always a supply wagon with more arrows when he ran out (considering they could shoot 6 - 12+ arrows a minute).
My only real referance point as to how many arrows an archer would actually carry with him would be the requirement for medieval Swedish peasant militia to bring with him a (cross)bow and three dozen arrows. That was a minimum though, and the tactics used by peasant militia ambushing people is rather different from the en masse fire of the Anglo-Welsh archers.

Also, does anyone know if earlier archers (pre-longbowmen) actually fired en masse as they do in the game, or if the fire was less coordinated?

[Oleander Ardens]

Also, does anyone know if earlier archers (pre-longbowmen) actually fired en masse as they do in the game, or if the fire was less coordinated?

12 seems to have been the magic number for western archers equipped with warbows of yew since Oetzi walked over the Similaun glacier some 5000 years ago. At least he worked on 8-10 arrowshafts and carried two functional arrows before he was shot in the back by an archer and finished off.

During the bronze age 10-12 arrowheads are the most common number in alpine and middle-european tombs. Frankish archers/infantry were required to carry 12 arrows with them.

Thinking about it the sheer number of "scythian" arrows per capita, or at least scythian arrowheads par capita found all over the steppes of Eurasia is amazing. Shorter, thinner and thus lighter this arrows were clearly employed in massive barrages or in almost neverending and nervewhacking ranged attacks. Quite a novel tactical choice for most of their western and middle eastern enemies back then...

The triangular and bodkinlike design of a good deal of them might have been the natural consequence of their poor momentum and even worse penetration power, and their desire to increase the probabilty of a small wound against armored targets by giving up lethality against unarmored foes. Or the wish to increase velocity, an important factor of accuracy in a moving battle even at the cost of lethality. Hard to say what motivated them to adopt this arrowhead design...

Back to the topic: I increased the differences in armor and decreased the armorpiercing abilty of all missile weapons greatly in the old MTW, but increased the shooting speed and reaction of the missle troops. Archers and javelineers can fire on the move, which seems odd but makes everything more fluid and proper. I also reduced the arrows of the some archers, but increased also the melee stats of many, making them more hybridm as they were in history. I also increase partially the lethality and accuracy to make them deadlier against unarmored units.

[ixidor]

1. Archers:

Depends. Very effective and deadly against very light armored and densely packed men or horses. Absolutly useless against platearmored footsoldiers which were able to march through a rain of arrows as it would be - rain.

Great disruptive effect against charging cavalry with unprotected horses - that's why steppe tribes started to protect their horses with heavy felt or linen since 500 BC.
Almost useless in killing heavy infantry in mail and with big shields.

The moral effect was significant and not just porportional to the damage they were able to inflict, especially when one lacked the ability to return in kind. Even the Spartans surrendered when light missile units, mostly peletasts surrounded them and pelted them from afar.

CBR points rightly out that the casuality rate must be higher in a TW game because among other factors it is unable to account for the confusion and the wounds suffered.


2. Javelineers:

Usually popular in areas with little other missile weapons, ideal for poor militas. Should be more effective against mail than an arrow but not particulary, especially when the distances are shortranged. Ireland was not an open country back tnan, but covered with forests afaik.

Pretty much agree with everything you said, both in archers as in javelineers, and especially about the effect of the arrows in light and heavy troops.