So... what's with the French super-archers?

**Blaze of Macedon** · December 03, 2011, 04:37 AM

I understand the Aventurier but can anyone please tell me why do the French have access to 2 uber-archer units - Dismounted French Archer and the Scots Guard?

I mean is there a historical background to this or is it just that one of the prgorammers was French?

**Moon** · December 03, 2011, 05:42 AM

Have a read of this link.

http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/scotlan...aise/index.asp

**Silverheart** · December 03, 2011, 05:47 AM

I always thought of that (and other examples) as a way to portray how France grew in power during the late medieval, and eventually became one of the strongest superpowers in Europe after the Medieval ages.

**eugenioso** · December 03, 2011, 08:22 AM

because the devs are french XD

**Blaze of Macedon** · December 03, 2011, 10:37 AM

Hm... Ok, maybe that link from Moon covers the Scots Guard but what about those Dismounted French Archers?

I think they have better stats than the Zweihanders (in melee

)

I dunno i have the impression they are a bit overpowered without a real reason

They already have some excellent knights, xbows, standard superb backbone infantry and can even recruit their own good pikes (not those crappy pike militias)...

**Aeratus** · December 03, 2011, 10:44 AM

They are not overpowered because they have "Relatively weak infantry in early period."

**Surgeon** · December 03, 2011, 11:14 AM

Just for the record, you normally can't recruit Dismounted French Archers in the campaign, so technically the French just have the Scots Guard and Mounted French Archers.

**Silverheart** · December 03, 2011, 12:05 PM

But the french are still the only one of the western catholic factions that can recruit horse archers.
Apart from that, it´s just the Reiters from HRE and Jinetes from the Iberian factions.

I remember finding that very surprising when I first played as the french and found out about those guys - had never even seen a hint of them before

But yes, the French super-archers (on foot) only includes Scots guard and Aventurier in campaign - compare that to England (Longbowmen, Yeomen Archers, Retinue Longbowmen) or Venice/Milan (Venetian Archers/Genoese Crossbowmen, Pavise Crossbow Militia) which are pretty much equal in that department.
Engalnd lacks crossbowmen, but have more longbows instead, and Venice/Milan have excellent crossbowmen coupled with excellent bowmen and the best crossbowmen respectively.

**Shasqua** · December 03, 2011, 01:30 PM

The horse archers are really inaccurate; France had mounted archers, but they rode to battle and fought on foot. The French had a hard time recruiting many archers of good quality, since they lacked the (relatively) long tradition of military archery with warbows like the English. And as I've always said, longbows shouldn't be AP, they should just get a higher attack. That said, a third of the Scots Guard had longbows.

**druzhina345** · December 04, 2011, 11:15 PM

Originally Posted by Shasqua

The horse archers are really inaccurate; France had mounted archers, but they rode to battle and fought on foot.

The Scots also dismounted to shoot longbows.
Other (non-guard) mounted archers formed part of a 'lance', that is, a gendarme and 2 mounted archers plus a (non-combatant) page or groome formed a 'lance'.

druzhina345
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**TWWolfe** · December 03, 2011, 01:57 PM

France as a whole didn't have a tradition of archery, but there were some villages in Brittany whose archers were considered some of the best in the known world.

**ShockBlast** · December 03, 2011, 02:19 PM

The pools for both should be lowered.As said by all the people before me France didn't same capabilities as England when it came to recruiting archers.The Dismounted French Archers should be recrutable not the mounted ones,shooting a longbow is hard and inpractical and the numbers of the Scots Guards were quite low,if i remember they were part of the king's guard so this unit should have a very low pool.

**Blaze of Macedon** · December 05, 2011, 03:06 AM

Originally Posted by ShockBlast

The pools for both should be lowered.As said by all the people before me France didn't same capabilities as England when it came to recruiting archers.The Dismounted French Archers should be recrutable not the mounted ones,shooting a longbow is hard and inpractical and the numbers of the Scots Guards were quite low,if i remember they were part of the king's guard so this unit should have a very low pool.

So when we're at it - what is the pool of other "elites"? As in Varangians, Byz Guard Archers, Tsars Guard, Goths, Lancers, Quapakulus etc... Is there a significant difference between the size of those pools and the pool of the Scots guard or are they the same?

I dunno i still think the programmers were French and disliked the Germans and English