FACTION PREVIEW: The Kingdom of Jerusalem!

[bacchus731]

Wah wah wee wah!

Excellent preview.

About the longbows...

I remember seeing a documentary on TV about Longbows. According to this program, some of the best preserved English Longbows that we have to study today actually come from a shipwreck found in the Mediteranean dating back to the time of the crusades, indicating at least some Longbowmen were present in the Levant.

Unfortunately, I can't find the source, or recollect the program's name. The documentary was exming in particular how longbows could have been more recursive that is usually thought. But only the tips were, unlike the eastern style true recursive bows. They drew their evidence from this shipwreck, but also from pictures of the era depicting English Longbows with distinct recurved tips. This, they continue, has been consistenly oversighted by historians in the past. This oversight can be explained by the fact that English Longbow loose their recursive tips over time, which makes them appear as what we today describe as proper "longbows".

According to this documentary, English Longbows were recursive, although only the tips were, unlike the true eastern recursive bows where the whole legs exhibit the typical recursive "S" shape, and not just the tips. This would be a case of coevolution, although with some significant variations. But the subtle recursiveness in the English Longbows could explain the results they were getting, which was similar to results obtained up until that point only from eastern style recursive bows.

Sorry for digressing so much. As far as I'm concerened, I don't mind whether or not Longbows are in KoJ. I just wanted to throw some info around.

[Miraj]

Dunno if anyone noticed, but you can see a pair of cold blue eyes behind the helmets slits of the dismounted outremer knights. A nice touch by our man AlphaDelta. All full helmets/masks have actual faces behind them, which I don't think was the case with vanilla.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[teh.frickin.pope]

Actually I had noticed that, and got kinda creeped out by it.

[Shadibadoo]

Nice, great detail! Cant wait to destroy them!!

[Randarkmaan]

From what AlphaDelta has told me, historically crossbows were actually quite long range, accurate and very powerful. The only real weaknesses of the crossbow was that it was not as simple to make as a bow (thus I assume more expensive?) and most importantly they have a very long re-loading time exposing crossbow men to be caught off-guard and exposed during reloading.

That's true, but it's also true that they were usually used to fire at a flat trajectory, rather than an arced trajectory as one did with bows, hence they should have shorter range according to how they were used rather than how long range they had.

[Hounf of Culan]

Those eyes are an amazing detail! AD is my god.

Those guys with the helmets painted red look awesome, its so cool!

[Yoda Twin]

I noticed that when he presented them in the KOJ thread, didn't say anthing because i thought everyone knew it.

[B. Ward]

nice preview guys

[Randarkmaan]

The only real weaknesses of the crossbow was that it was not as simple to make as a bow (thus I assume more expensive?) and most importantly they have a very long re-loading time exposing crossbow men to be caught off-guard and exposed during reloading.

Crossbows are actually very simple to make, you just have to know how, me and a friend once made one. You just have to have the bow (which we already had), which may or may not be composite, it's not really hard to make a good bow, but it takes a long time and you need patience. Now when you have the bow you just have to make this "crossbow-mount" which is really easy to make, it's really just a sort of shaped wooden block, with a hole for the bow and a little notch (?) were you can put the string, also you need a trigger. And it does not take so long to reload, and its definately easier to use than a bow, I'm not a good archer, but I can git things quite good with a crossbow, as anyone could.

[Miraj]

Hmm interesting. Then why werent the crossbows mass produced and used to totally annihilate horse archers? Basically, what is their crucial weakness compared to a bow? (aside from trajectory)

Its just my intuition tells me that crossbows seem more complicated thus require more energy and thus labour costs to produce. But then again thats only my intuition.

[Randarkmaan]

Crossbows were very effective, and at the time it was the most popular weapon for professional soldiers. I said it was simple to make, but I said it took a long time, I'm not a bowyer and I don't know much about making the bows themselves, but if you want a good bow it can take up to one year to do so. Also before those steel crossbow things, and and heavy bolts, a crossbow is not better at piercing armour than an ordinary bow, truth be told at close range most armour at this time offered little protection against arrows, mail for an example worked well against cuts and slashes, but was piereced by thrusts (by spears and swords) and by arrows at closer ranges. And its when you got those later incredibly powerful crossbows that they were difficult to make and then they also took a long time to reload. The primary strength of the crossbows used at this time (12th century) was their ease of use "A lowly peasant could slay the most highborn king".

Hmm interesting. Then why werent the crossbows mass produced and used to totally annihilate horse archers? Basically, what is their crucial weakness compared to a bow? (aside from trajectory)

When you think about it, there weren't that many armies with mass produced bows either, there weren't a lot of armies with mass produced gear at all. Also I'd venture the guess that a skilled archer and especially lots of them, were a lot more dangerous than many skilled crossbowmen, just look at the English. And though its pretty much off-topic, the chinese did mass produce and issued crossbows to the majority of their soldiers under some dynasties.

I guess also the absence of this mass production and mass issuing of crossbowmen had to do with knightly prejudice against infantry and also the crossbow (in the 11th century it was attempted to ban the weapon). Also armies were not equipped from some state arsenals, truth be said they were more like gatherings of armed men (the knights, their retainers, mercenaries and occasionally levies and militia) rather than armies, everyone just brought their own weapons and armour.

In the Middle East the crossbow was never really popular except as a weapon in the navy, so that's probably why it wasn't used much there.

Besides its kind of hard to hit anything beyond fifty metres with a crossbow, which was more or less the range it was used at, when you know how to use a bow its easier to "arc" your arrows correctly to hit more distant targets than it is with a crossbow.

Its just my intuition tells me that crossbows seem more complicated thus require more energy and thus labour costs to produce. But then again thats only my intuition.

It may be relatively simple, but you still require the materials to make it, and you can't just make a bow out of any kind of wood, at least not a good one, also you require the tools to work these materials.

[Beka]

main reason why crossbows were not mass produce is that it took more time to reload. basically when reloading a crossbow archer could have already shot 5 times

[Randarkmaan]

You're thinking about the later more advanced crossbows, with the earlier crossbows this is not the case, though they do take longer to draw and then you have to place the bolt on the crossbow, but it shouldn't take more than 5 seconds or something, and if you want to hit anything you have to take the time to aim as well, so roughly 10 seconds (likely less) to loose a bolt, for comparison, English archers (during later times) had a rate of fire of 12 arrows a minute, that's 5 seconds between each arrow, faster than a crossbow, but not by much, and that wasn't really aimed fire, English archery depended less on marksmanship (I don't doubt the fact that these were excellent marksmen though) and more on just "bombarding" the enemy with a very large amount of arrows. Crossbowmen did not fire like this, they didn't fire off volleys or "bombard" the enemy, they were marksmen, probably another one of the reason they usually shot at shorter ranges and with as flat a trajectory as possible.

[Azraelthefallen]

By the way, in the book (the one I mentioned) Richard uses his archers to fire a massed barrage at the charging saracen cavalry, the thick rain of arrows rains down on them and brings down man and horse, then when they have got closer, and before the horsemen have truly realized what has happened, they are within the secure range of the crossbowmen who mercilessly cut down what is left of them.

Yeah it is as well in this book I've heard of him having long bows, lovely series, that in fact was what made me be interested in the east
But I think it would give the crusader army a bit more interesting touch...
Just thinking of making the sky black with air, oh and I think that you should should spawn the armies in a way so that more armies than just Richards can come to it's destination... an example could be Barbarossa and the possibility that he could have survived the journey...

[Ahiga]

Yeah it is as well in this book I've heard of him having long bows, lovely series, that in fact was what made me be interested in the east
But I think it would give the crusader army a bit more interesting touch...
Just thinking of making the sky black with air, oh and I think that you should should spawn the armies in a way so that more armies than just Richards can come to it's destination... an example could be Barbarossa and the possibility that he could have survived the journey...

The problem is that it'd give the Crusaders an unfair advantage. They already have some of the best charge cavalry in the game, along with probably some of the best spearmen west of the Fertile crescent. Almost every faction has some sort of weakness (Khwarezm for example lacks heavy spearmen. The Ghaznavids lack any shock heavy cavalry. The ghorids have no spearmen), though it is not blaring, and to give them longbowmen seems to tilt too much in their favor. What was once a historically accurate weakness of the Crusaders (That forced them to turn to mercenaries of the region with the bow, such as the maronites or Armenians) becomes an unhistorical strength.

I think that the KoJ do have an interesting touch, partly in the fact that they do not get everything they could ever want. Being weak (right now totally absent, because we haven't implemented turcopole bowmen) in archery makes me have to rethink my strategies, and realize that I'm in for a challenge. It makes me rely on crossbowmen I might otherwise ignore, and focus on getting my knights to defeat the nimble Saracen Horse Archers. That feels like it's more rewarding than having me recruit a few longbowmen, and bam, now I don't have to worry about Horse Archers.I've never been much a fan of doing that with a faction, as it makes you never need to play another, which is often a driving force in making people take a plunge with a new faction and end up enjoying it.

I respect your view on the longbow, I can understand it too - it's just if the KoJ gets them, I have to ask why other factions lack in other things, but not the KoJ. A faction with The best crossbowmen in the mod shouldn't get anything close to the best in archery. It'd be like Khwarezm (Who get one of the, if not the best superheavy cavalry) getting the second best spearmen too.

[Beka]

You're thinking about the later more advanced crossbows, with the earlier crossbows this is not the case, though they do take longer to draw and then you have to place the bolt on the crossbow, but it shouldn't take more than 5 seconds or something, and if you want to hit anything you have to take the time to aim as well, so roughly 10 seconds (likely less) to loose a bolt, for comparison, English archers (during later times) had a rate of fire of 12 arrows a minute, that's 5 seconds between each arrow, faster than a crossbow, but not by much, and that wasn't really aimed fire, English archery depended less on marksmanship (I don't doubt the fact that these were excellent marksmen though) and more on just "bombarding" the enemy with a very large amount of arrows. Crossbowmen did not fire like this, they didn't fire off volleys or "bombard" the enemy, they were marksmen, probably another one of the reason they usually shot at shorter ranges and with as flat a trajectory as possible.

I don't know about English archers but Georgian archer could make about 20 aimed shots per minute. wich is 1 shot in 3 seconds, and I am shure that muslim archers could do the same.

[Randarkmaan]

Well, 12 shots per minute is what a lot of sources say, so either the Englishmen couldn't achieve that rate of fire, or they didn't actually try to achieve such a high rate of fire. You also have to consider that these bows were very large and unwieldy and were not like composite bows which eased off as you drew them (like modern bows, first it's a pretty heavy draw, then it just "hinches off" and becomes a relatively light draw).

[Hansa]

Wah wah wee wah!

Excellent preview.

About the longbows...

I remember seeing a documentary on TV about Longbows. According to this program, some of the best preserved English Longbows that we have to study today actually come from a shipwreck found in the Mediteranean dating back to the time of the crusades, indicating at least some Longbowmen were present in the Levant.

Interesting. The recruiting of longbowmen in wales for the third crusade is in fact mentioned and well documented in medieval sources of the time, and often mentioned in secondary literature about crusade preaching of the third crusade.

If I remember correctly though, the medieval English longbow was made from a particular type of wood not growing in the Levant, hence having longbowmen as rarely recruitable crusaders is fine, while having them recruitable in any number illustrating a sort of training and creating of longbowmen in the Levant, will be ahistorical. This is my opinion anyways.

[Randarkmaan]

The wood they used was yew, which is mostly found in Northern Europe and is very good for making a large bow out of one piece. I don't think such longbowmen should be recruitable however, but they could appear with English crusaders (if they happen to show up).

[pansoiatr]

Excellent and good documented review.It seems that playing as jerusalem will be a challenge.The units are all very well made.
I really hope the mod will be released during august.(i can take some time off work then)
Keep up the good work.Bravo!!