Would the REAL Archer Please Stand Up?

[Hazbones]

So I have been sifting through general threads and mods and have not yet seen anyone get the archer bow stats right to match with what I am reading in the history books.

From Osprey Books: Samurai 1550-1600
The superior range of the arquebus, over the bow, made it easy for the generals to make the transition to using the new weapon.

Then goes on to show a picture graph of the differences:

Arquebus:
Optimal Range- 50 meters
Effective Range- 200 m
Max Range- 500 m

Bow:
Optimal Range- 30 meters
Effective Range- 80 m
Max Range- 380 m

NOTE: These stats are from SAMURAI dutifully practicing for years.

According to Stephen Turnbull's research on Samurai Armies to 1649...
[Generalizing] In the first half of the 1500's the Ashigaru were nothing but peasants pulled from the fields and given arms to fight. The bow was already in decline by 1500 and the introduction of the gun in 1540's drastically sped up the disuse of the bow. The Samurai were issued (or they bought themselves) guns from 1540's when they were first introduced. They were seen as a status symbol as the gunner was placed at the front of the army's vanguard on the battlefield (an honorary position) so that the weapon could be discharged. Slowly the gun replaced the bow in the Samurai ranks as using a bow in battle made the samurai look backward (outdated) or so poor he could not afford to buy a gun. By the late 1500's few Samurai archers remained (one exception was the invasions of Korea).

It wasn't until the Oda around 1550 started arming Ashigaru with guns (teppo) and decimating rivals like the Takeda did the other daimyo see how easy it was to train and how quickly units could be raised. Some daimyo stuck with the bow out of principal thinking that the gun was not worthy of a Samurai however, these factions were the first to be destroyed by the gun totting armies.

In the mid 1500's the Ashigaru had finally proven to be an essential force on the battlefield using the traditional spear and in Oda's case the gun. Training stepped up and some ashigaru units could be relied upon to fight just as fierce as their Samurai units. The Oda's use of Ashigaru was quickly copied by some other daimyo not with guns but other weapons like the nagai-yari (long spear), naginata, bow, ect. as specialist units. This did not reduce the time spent training with the bow and until the Ashigaru were sufficiently trained, their effectiveness using the bow suffered when compared to a fully trained bow Samurai. The Ashigaru were being deployed into a mixed unit on the battlefield with the gun units in order to "keep up the fire" while the gunners were reloading. Good archers could fire up to 4 arrows in the time it took to fire 1 shot from a gun.

These specialist Ashigaru units were being praised by their generals and eventually were regarded as "Samuari" on the army registers (albeit the lowest possible rung on the Samurai ladder). Some individual Ashigaru were formally promoted into the Samurai class for their performance especially if they mastered the bow. By the late 1500's, the peasant Ashigaru was no longer considered a non-trained expendable body and the term "Ashigaru" now simply meant "foot soldier" not of Samuari class but still a step above peasant. The archer was now relegated to the "other" column on many of the historical army registers and so it is difficult to tell how many archers there actually were by 1600.

So, with that historical data in mind, we can see that the archer stats in vanilla are far too enhanced. Compared to the gun, the bow should be quite weak. The Samurai archer should be an early war unit and have the weapon stats as stated in the chart data above. Their numbers though should be alot smaller maybe around 20 men per company (and the number of companies limited to the number of retainers the daimyo has to lead them) as the time period progresses.

Alot of people think that the yumi (bow) can be just given to anyone and taught to use in just a few lessons. This is very wrong as the yumi is not shaped like a regular European bow, is fired off-centered with the arrow drawn over the head, not down the line of sight as a European bow. This takes alot of practice and even when mastered does not have a huge level of accuracy past 30 meters.

The Ashigaru archer should be a mid to late war unit with very poor stats initially (maybe 30% of what the fully trained samurai archer would be). The late war version of the Ashigaru archer can have similar but not quite the same stats as the samurai archer due to the fact that they still need years to get to that level of mastery. The unit sizes can be bigger than samurai archer ones but maybe the late war version could be smaller than the early version to represent the few Ashigaru that actually are able to master the weapon.

Firing rates for all archer units should be modded to fire at a rate of 3 or 4 shots per round of gunfire.

Please feel free to comment on this discussion in order to help our modder community members to get the REAL archers fixed in game.

[Morvay]

Let me just throw in some numbers from some historic sources.

Prussian army 1810, 200 shots fired at each distance, target 1,88m height, 31,4m width

Rifle 1780 mod.
75m, 149 hits
150m 64
225m 64
300m 42

Scharnhorst III, page 273
1000 shots fired at each distance at a cavalry target
musket
100 feet (ger. "Schritt"= 0,75m) 403 hits
300 feet 149 hits
400 feet 65 hits

A peloton trained in aiming would have up to the double amounts of hits, but remember that the numbers in the second example are against a cavalry target, accuracy would drop signifanct against infantry.

"Cromwells Army" from Firth an other sources state the maximum range of a musket at 600 feet, which would translate to around 450 metres.

In both examples they used modern muskets, who where lighter and had smaller calibre than those from the 16th century. The Japanese used the arquebuse who back than was the smaller brother of the musket, so the weight of the shot of modern musket and the arquebus might be similar.
The numbers however give no record about the lethality of the projectiles. Contemporary accounts state that thick clothing, especially winter uniforms or high quality officer uniforms, were quite good at absorbing the energy of a bullet, for example Leopold I, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau had 17 bullet hits in his tunic in his last battle and he survived uninjured. Taking into account that the japanese used a lot of iron, leather, cotton and silk in their armours (and more than one layer) , would lead to the assumption that the the lethality of the arquebus at long distances was little to none.
Let's just say your numbers a very optimistic, the arquebus was effective up to 100 metres and the closer you get the deadlier it will become, punching easily through light armor and bringing down unarmoured horses. Hitting anything over 100m is mostly pure luck, at least for a low trained markmans, your chances however improve if the enemey gives you a big, fleshy target (cavalry), the terrain is favoring your position, the ability to ambush the enemy, weather conditions, better training and so on.

Concerning bows it is alway difficult to get good data. I actually don't even have draw weights of a contemporary yumi, but I guess it would be around 130 pounds and upwards, which can pack quite some punch. For example I fired an arrow through half an inch of spruce at a distance of 30 metres with a draw weight of 60 pounds. I however don't understand the distinction between optimal and effective range, as the arrow is very aerodynamic it loses not that much energy when it travels in a straight line, it however drops slowly, just like the bullet. The draw weight of the bow is one of the important factors for its reach in a direct line of sight, but I wouldn't assume more than 100 meteres for that. The lethality depends partially on the draw weight but more importantly on the weight of the arrow. It has this in common with bullets, which leads to the old question what is better a heavy, slow projectile or a light, quick one.
Transfering energy is something of a weak spot for the arrow, a bullet changes its form because of the impact force enabling it to do more damage to the target, arrows can't achieve that and must resort to different shaped points to provoke internal bleedings, infections etc.
Anyway, maximum range depends on the bow but would be something between 250-400 metres if shot in a ballistic trajectory, at the beginning the arrow would lose energy due to the fact that it must work against gravity and would gain energy in its descend. The accuracy with this method isn't that high, but as you can more easily track the projectile it is possible to correct your firing angle. It is possible to do this with a gun, but back than it would have been very difficult and I never read of an army doing it, maybe some very experienced markmans did this to perform assassinations etc. So the bow has the better range than the gun.

Conclusion: I think Darth Mod does quite a good job with the balance of archers and guns. In the end not the weapons alone make the difference in a war, mostly the economic and social circumstances a fare more important. Both weapons can kill a man easily and there are too many factors to give a general answer and also the game only allows us to manipulate certain aspects, there might be something like balance but never authenticity.

[Hazbones]

With the numbers that Turnbull states for the bow ranges I would assume that he is talking about the Japanese Longbow (yumi) only and not including the smaller ashigaru shortbows.

"Optimal" in his book refers to the distance one could stand and hit a target 50% of the time.
"Effective" just means that is the longest distance one could "aim" and "hit" a target though not specifically a death shot.
"Max Range" is just the distance one could fling an arrow and hope it hits something in the area you were aiming.

Also with bows, I don't think the draw weights for a Japanese yumi was very much. Try to draw a bow over your head as the samurai did with this bow. How much do you think you could pull? I think this might have brought the range down in comparison with a British Longbow that is pulled at chest height.

[Condottiere SOG]

The draw of the yumi starts over the head...but at the point of release it is much like the English longbow.

[Silius Saurus]

There are multiple variables to consider. Arrows vs. armor, effective ranges for penetration vs. armor and lethality at range.

I watched something on telly the other day comparing a matchlock vs. a crossbow; they had very similar rates of fire and penetration. What was different was the matchlock was far more damaging to soft tissue, however. Devastating, really. Comparisons need to be drawn between Japanese arrowheads and similar ones in European bows to get a good picture of penetration and overall killing ability when compared to, say, the "bodkin" arrowhead which proved so devastating at Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt.

What about armor? The effectiveness of Japanese armor vs. arrows needs to be included in the discussion. Penetration vs. the various armor types also bears discussing, and we do know that there were evolutions in Japanese armor design.

There are numerous visual records of samurai with numerous arrows embedded in their armor until they resemble the spines of a porcupine, but some of that must be dramatic license on the part of the artists, to be sure, but it bears discussing.