Why do certain players think that some factions are underpowered?

**Karo** · 11-17-2007, 15:49

Originally Posted by Michaelis

I think this is absolutely insane. Sling shot better against armour than a metal arrowhead? Could you give me one good reason why? On second thoughts, don't bother - no matter what I hear, I guess if I'm ever to play EB again, I'll have to painstakingly go through all the slinger/archer units and edit that.

Stone or led bullets damage the armour or if your wearing mail it crushes your chest. But amour can keep arrows away.

**Watchman** · 11-17-2007, 18:10

Yeah. A decent comparision, I think, would be spear- or sword-thrust contra a solid blow from a mace.

...it wasn't all that unusual AFAIK for armourers and their customers to be in the opinion that it just wasn't worth the trouble, weight and expense to try to craft a harness that could reliably resist the latter.

**Michaelis** · 11-19-2007, 11:55

Originally Posted by Karo

Stone or led bullets damage the armour or if your wearing mail it crushes your chest. But amour can keep arrows away.

Sure, sure. This is why the English abandoned the bow sometime in the early Middle Ages and introduced a new type of ranged attack infantry - Brawny Slingers.

Dream on.

**Geoffrey S** · 11-19-2007, 12:15

Originally Posted by Michaelis

Sure, sure. This is why the English abandoned the bow sometime in the early Middle Ages and introduced a new type of ranged attack infantry - Brawny Slingers.

Dream on.

Longbows, and also composite bows and crossbows, offer a different set of advantages and are certainly not comparable with standard bows in use in EBs timeframe and in most of Western Europe throughout the Middle Ages. Technology changed and improved bows, and slings went out of fashion.

Stones could be slung with a higher velocity and with greater weight than arrows could be fired at the time. Try imagining having a half-kilo weight slung at you: whatever armour you're wearing, that's going to hurt.

Dream on, indeed.

**Spendios** · 11-19-2007, 12:35

Originally Posted by Michaelis

Sure, sure. This is why the English abandoned the bow sometime in the early Middle Ages and introduced a new type of ranged attack infantry - Brawny Slingers.

Dream on.

Some people have been nice to give you explanations, if you disagree with them you can express it without using arrogant and insulting tone.

**Kham** · 11-19-2007, 14:06

Originally Posted by Michaelis

Sure, sure. This is why the English abandoned the bow sometime in the early Middle Ages and introduced a new type of ranged attack infantry - Brawny Slingers.

Dream on.

I absolutely second Spendios.

And there have been several extensive threads about "Slingers overpowered" or "slingshot vs. arrows", which exhaustively discussed the issue, including links to experiments, citations from original texts and whatever else you like. So no need to hijack this post. And change it into the exact thing it tries to explain. Please use the search function instead.

**Intranetusa** · 11-19-2007, 14:47

the Cretan slingers are using a strong composite bow, so I don't understand when levy slingers get more kills than them... :/

**Danest** · 11-19-2007, 15:22

Many, many bows from this time are "weenies", much weaker than people are imagining. And most slings from this time are throwing the rock much, much faster (faster than the arrow, I believe) than most people are imagining as well... these aren't Bart Simpson's "Y" slingshot. If an arrow doesn't penetrate the armor, you barely feel it. If the rock doesn't penetrate the armor, you still feel the weight/speed of the impact. And unless the arrowhead was of very good metal, the pointy little tip might just bend or "squish" on impact against strong armor and still not be felt much, even if you could fire it with enough force.

**geala** · 11-19-2007, 15:43

This is not true. Many bows of the EB timeframe were of composite construction with sinews and horn reinforcements. The bows were roughly as strong as in the later times. A typical arrow of such a bow would weight 40 to 60 g. and travel with 45 to 55 m/s. A typical lead sling bullet would weight 30 to 60 g. and travel with 50 to 60 m/s. Do you really think that the difference in energy and terminal ballistics would be so great?

We had the slinger discussion before, as it was said in this thread already. Use the search function. In the case of slingers EB is wrong and right imho. Slingers were not better against armour. A little research can prove this.

But EB is a game and some compromises have to be accepted. There are a lot unit designs with small historical problems. Often this is due to the TW game design, no way to do it better. So, if slingers and archers would have the same performance in terminal ballistics (like in reality) it would be boring, wouldn't it? And the slingers of 1.0 are much better (because they are worse) than in 0.8x.

To the topic: the factions are very well designed. I don't see any problem with over-/underpowered factions. Some "problems" perhaps come from the historical background and it is a pleasure that there is a certain diversity in EB. A total balance would be nonsense.

**Tellos Athenaios** · 11-19-2007, 16:02

They wouldn't; I can assure you beforehand.

The bullet is mostly about the equation: m*delta(v)=F*delta(t)

(I do not have all the proper symbols such as the delta symbol on hand, so bear with me.)

The arrow on the other hand is much more about the equation: 0.5*m*v*v=F*s*cos(alpha);

In other words: delta(p)=S versus E(kinetic)=W.