Longbow-Composite bow and AP

[Hashashiyyin]

I've been planing a lite mod to rebalance some of the eastern factions as I feel they got the shaft in some areas. But I wanted to get some feedback on an issue before I went too much farther.

After looking for a while at a good amount of text, I can not find any historical evidence that the English had a monopoly on bodkin style arrow technology or draw weight. It appears that both composite bows and yew longbows had similar upper end draw weights and that every society understood the concept that certain arrowheads penetrated armor better then others. So from a physics standpoint, the composite bow and the longbow have the same armor penetrating ability.

Now here is were my problem comes in. If you give an eastern HA unit the AP ability they become very overpowered. Their ability to outmaneuver and get behind combined with AP makes them cut down even the most armored knights like butter.

While it may be realistic I question; a.) the fun factor and b.) balance.

so I've though of some options but I'm at a lose as to which one I should take.

1.) Use realism, give them AP and chaulk it up to the the fact that historically, eastern societies were very hard to beat on open terrain.

2.) Balance them the way CA did, keep AP on longbow men and normal penetration on eastern factions. Fudge history to make up for the eastern faction's superior mobility.

3.) Take AP away from both longbow men and eastern factions. But this would kick Britain in the nuts and cause another balance issue.


Feedback would be appreciated!

[vikrant]

welcome to the twc
but the thread is at wrong place it will be moved to gathering

[Zimfan]

I could very easily be wrong about this, but weren't bows used by horse archers quite a bit smaller than bows for footmen? If so then maybe composite bowmen on foot could get AP but not mounted bowmen. Britain would lose some of the uniqueness of it's archers, but at least horse archers wouldn't be knight killing machine guns, and the composite bow would get the respect it historically deserves.

[warchief_ryan]

I know Japan’s samurai horse archers had a bow as big as foot soldiers, they just made the upper part of the bow bigger so the bottom was small so its easier to handle on a horse.

[Ahiga]

Could you lower the average damage of an archer, but give them AP?

Personally I'd remove it for the British. In my own view, the arguement of what killed the knights at crecy and agincourt varies from the arrows, to the arrows killing the horses and letting the infantry/archers get at the knights in melee, to the arrows but only up at practically point blank range.

I wouldn't give it to either, because it might negate the value of any crossbow units (Which would suddenly be beaten at their own game) - what you could do in regards with that is make crossbow units very cheap, and longbowmen especially expensive (with AP), but I don't think steppe archers should be expensive, yet they might deserve AP.

If it's at all possible, I would suggest making fire-arrows into AP arrows and giving them a limited amount.

[maxiumus_pooh]

I've been planing a lite mod to rebalance some of the eastern factions as I feel they got the shaft in some areas. But I wanted to get some feedback on an issue before I went too much farther.

After looking for a while at a good amount of text, I can not find any historical evidence that the English had a monopoly on bodkin style arrow technology or draw weight. It appears that both composite bows and yew longbows had similar upper end draw weights and that every society understood the concept that certain arrowheads penetrated armor better then others. So from a physics standpoint, the composite bow and the longbow have the same armor penetrating ability.

Now here is were my problem comes in. If you give an eastern HA unit the AP ability they become very overpowered. Their ability to outmaneuver and get behind combined with AP makes them cut down even the most armored knights like butter.

While it may be realistic I question; a.) the fun factor and b.) balance.

so I've though of some options but I'm at a lose as to which one I should take.

1.) Use realism, give them AP and chaulk it up to the the fact that historically, eastern societies were very hard to beat on open terrain.

2.) Balance them the way CA did, keep AP on longbow men and normal penetration on eastern factions. Fudge history to make up for the eastern faction's superior mobility.

3.) Take AP away from both longbow men and eastern factions. But this would kick Britain in the nuts and cause another balance issue.


Feedback would be appreciated!

Hello, I'm pooh, and when I'm not whining about how pc gaming is going down the crapper, I'm obsessing about archery. You brought up really good points. Indeed, as to draw weight the English did not hold a monopoly. The average draw weight of an English long bow as about 100lbs, however with the exception of a forearm guard they used no drawing aids, eg, they drew with bare fingers.
Now when I was in Korea I studied in their traditional archery. The Korean composite bow is taken directly from the Mongolian bow, that is, a horn and wood composite, bent back on itself ala recurve. The draw weight of bows in the time frame we are looking at could have easily exceeded 90lbs and even the weight of the English bows. This also applies to the composite bows of the middle eastern empires. In order to draw one of these bows, one requires a thumb ring, or "gak-chi" in Korean, made from antler or jade. Without said thumb ring, one will find the bow chord slices easily into their finger, like a wire garrotte. The range I shot at was a buddhist temple on a hill top - with the actual archery butts located on another hilltop!! An old codger would sit in a little booth and when everyone had fired he would pull the arrows out, place them in a little pulley and winch it back to the other hilltop.
As historical reference, on Crassus' ill-fated expedition to the east, we hear of Parthian arrows easily punching holes through Roman scuta, lorica, and even nailing men's wrist's to their scuta and their feet to the earth, as according to Plutarch.
In regards to the bodkin, however, I think though it may have not been the sole device of the English, it was little used in the middle east for two reasons
1) The muslim employment of lighter armour, due to culture, climate and resources.
2) The fact that many writings of time reflected that the muslims were shocked that crusaders would still be charging at them even though they had arrows sticking from their mail like pin cushions.
Excavations for the early, high and late periods produces a lot of tri-edged arrow heads, and longer, slimmer warheads but very few that would be the 'darning needle' type reflective of bodkins. As a counter to this, I have seen and shot many bodkin types from Korea, modeled after once employed during the Hideyoshi invasions, but then again this could be regional. Hope this helps.

[Hashashiyyin]

Thanks for the feedback!

thanks for some historical info there maxiumus_pooh and I also came across similar information about agincourt ahiga.

What I'd REALLY like to do is give the crossbows/longbows/composite bows an AP over range component. That is, they would have the ap ability to about 60 yards for long/composite bows and about 80-90 yards for crossbows.

This, however, way over my limited modding skills, if it is even possible from a hard-coding standpoint. If anyone would have a creative idea on how one might do that I'd be all ears

[Burcin]

I'm interested in bowyery,especially horse archery. In the game I see that even when the landscape is steppes, generally there's not enough room in the battlefield for cavalry tactics.This can be offset by adding a feature to the game: The skills of steppe archers like Turks and Mongols. They can use their bows even when running away. They release the arrow when four of the horses feet are on air( the most stabilized moment ).
Giving armor piercing capabilities to every eastern bowyer unit would be off-balance. But this capability can be given to elite bowyer units to represent historical facts. I've heard they Mongol composite bows had nearly double draw weight as longbow. Ottoman Turks had excellent composite bows and they held by far the world records for range archery while these where still short bows for easy horseback usage.