Professional Archery UP in Rome II?

[Crappy]

Just came across this video.



It goes to show how little we truly understand about ancient warfare. At least I was under the impression that archery was slower, like modern archers today. It really does explain how, say, the Parthians or the Mongols were able to dominate as much as they did in history. Is DeI underrepresenting the ability of ancient archers? What do you guys think?

['Gunny]

Those moves are cool, but in now way representative of ancient warfare. It doesn't take into account the fact that archers were generally deployed as mass formations and that those mores are incredibly impractical.

[MagicCuboid]

As cool as the the video is (and the man really is extremely talented, no matter what "real" archers have to say about him), it relies primarily on a very weak bow with minimal draw strength. I read a review which stated the bow couldn't be more than 20lb draw, and he's only drawing about halfway as far as he should. Thus, his arrows wouldn't have the force necessary to pierce even common/cheap armor.

There's also a HEAVY degree of skepticism/frame analysis of just how easily he pulled these stunts off. The general consensus is that any one of these trick shots could have been a result of hundreds of attempts, and in no way would have been reliable on the battlefield.

[Augustusng]

I think this is the third thread in the past few days bringing up this video. The moves are cool, but I don't think we'll change anything about archery in DeI because of it.

[gornoviceanu]

Imagine having to keep that up for an hour on the field and others have already mentioned how hard this would be in a formation.

[Alu10]

Thats extremely short distance, archers have to be reliable for longer distances and the strengthof the bow he uses would not reach a long distance + piercing armor. And i dont know why there are always people reading a thread with a video and decide to make another thread about the same video. Some kind of "Hype" about nothing. Even if he was this fast with a strong bow for a long distance he would be unreliable. The speed of elite archers fully experienced ones in DeI already is pretty realistic.

[Menulo]

i dunno, my germanic longbowmen always have the highest kills of any unit in my nervii campaign. they seem to do just fine

[Maetharin]

how historical are longbowmen in ancient times actually? Especially in barbarian cultures? as far as i have gathered, the bow wasn´t part of northern european warfare until way into the middle ages...
In mediterrean cultures small recurve, and in eastern cultures, compound bows were used during ancient times, and nowhere in any scources have i read about celts, germans or belgae ever using bows in warfare...

[geala]

All bows in middle and northern Europe from the Neolithic Age onwards till the disappearing as a tool of war in the 16th c. AD were "long bows" in the sense that they were usually long (up to 190 cm). They had to be long because all were self bows made from one piece of wood, the most primitive bow design. The wood used was mostly yew, sometimes also ash. Bows used prior to the early middle ages were constructed differently from later medieval bows regarding the direction of the rounding and the flatter side. The medieval longbow was clearly the inferior design, more easily prone to break and weaker than the older Stone Age design if constructed in similar strengths.

That a bow is a "longbow" does say nothing about it's strength. It can be made weak or strong, depending on the user's abilities.

Such bows were also used in wars because some arrow tips are found in conditions related to military events. But you are right that seemingly they were not used in masses. During the Bronze Age you can see a steadily decline in the use of the bow. A Germanic army composed of a lot of longbowmen would be utterly unhistorical.