Armed with the powerful recurve bow?

[String]

What does that mean? Greater range, better armor penetration? what?

I understand that in rainy conditions they are reduced in effectiveness tho.

[florin80]

That thing is part of the unit description afaik and not the ability list generated by the game(based on the unit real stats). So, it may not mean anything really...

[Darkarbiter]

That thing is part of the unit description afaik and not the ability list generated by the game(based on the unit real stats). So, it may not mean anything really...

lol reminded me of this EB post where I guy was like "so according to my calculations 2 armour points are awarded for a helmet... 1 for the wrist band).

The short answer is theres a lot of things to think about between realism (usually we're talking about ingame battle realism here) and the end product.

Top of the list would be:
-Hardcoded... I.E. just not enough options to tweak things
-Balance
-Mistakes
-Not actually fine tuned
-Differing opinions or lack of historical evidence

[khshayathiya]

The recurve bow, used in most of Asia in Hellenistic times and in parts of Europe is superior to the simple wooden bow by being capable of generating more energy on release of the string. The thing with it, though, is that ancient archers did not have access to recurve bows as large as the simple wooden bows. The advantage, therefore, is in wielding a smaller, less cumbersome weapon and not so much in a major range difference. However, depending on the type of arrow used, ancient archers (Parthians and Armenians is what I remember from the top of my head - others had comparable capabilities) could and did penetrate armour (and that was proven against good quality armour of post-Marian legionaries).

[Orthanner]

I should add to this that actually there was a difference between short bows used in Europe (Romans, Greeks, germans and so on) and eastern composite bows. The formers were much easier to make but more affected by weather conditions and less durable (pls do not rely on the RTW descriptions... indeed, the construction of a composite bow prevented it from loosing it's properties in rainy conditions very well while simple wooden bows suffered much from rain becoming practically unusable sometimes). I don't know what kind of composite bows was used by Parthians but I remember that when Darius was trying to conquer Scythians he sent their king (Idanthyrs?) his bow and then received scythian one that had more long range and so he decided not to attack.

P. S. Very sorry, but I do not remember the author...

P. P. S. Also I should mention that eastern nations (and nomads too) used quite different missile techniques and had more long range and also better accuracy. Do not bother me with Hippocrates' stories of Amazons as he, like most Greeks and Romans, was NOT familiar to this fact.

[pannonian]

The descriptions in the first part of the unit card are generated from EDU, and reflect the unit's abilities. The descriptions in the second part are flavour text.

[florin80]

The descriptions in the first part of the unit card are generated from EDU, and reflect the unit's abilities. The descriptions in the second part are flavour text.

Yes, that was my point. I took his question to be a technicall one, not a historical one about the use of the bow at the time.

Armed with the powerful recurve bow

from his title is a line that is used in export_units text file. It is part of the description though so it does not do anything. Or reflect anything for that matter. But it appears in the game if you right click the unit and since there are also those abilities that are generated by the game(based on the unit real stats) right above, people assume that it is somehow a real and up to date reflection of the unit, but actually it can be changed to about anything with no other concequeces then cosmetics.