Crossbows vs. Longbows

[Lingchih]

So, something that has always bothered me. Crossbows are armor piercing, while Longbows are not.

Don't get me wrong. I have never been in a crossbow or a longbow fight, but the Battle of Crecy was won by longbowmen zinging the French Knights to death, right?

Crossbowmen were generally poorly trained troops who could crank a handle, and shoot quickly without much training. Longbowmen were highly trained veterans, who could shoot with amazing force. I believe the longbow hit with much more force than the the crossbow.

So, why are Longbows not armor piercing?

[analytic_kernel]

I've wondered that as well.

I seem to recall reading somewhere that a properly trained Welsh or English longbowman could achieve a greater rate of fire than a continental crossbowman or arbalestier(?). I'm not sure if that was comparing against cranequin(?)-style crossbows or ones that used a lever (goat's foot?) to tension.

One difference is that you can aim a crossbow. My understanding is that longbowmen involved their entire bodies in drawing their bows, and so it was difficult to aim. So, they had to make up the difference with greater range and rate of fire.

[Omnirizon]

i've actually done some light research on this topic as i prepare to add these items, alongside firearms, into the Fourth Age project.

Longbows:
less force
higher rate of fire
years of training required

crossbow:
more force
lower rate of fire
weeks of training required

firearms:
terrible aim
dangerous
cheap
little to no training required. the weapons had such poor accuracy there was actually no point in training marksmenship. all soldiers needed to know how to do was to prepare the weapon to fire and to move in the correct formations.

i've read that firearms were actually cheaper than crossbows, which is the another reason they were used, other wise they were worse in every capacity (except for low train time).

the ammunition required for the weapons was another reason firearms were used.

longbows:
fletching requires skill and is expensive. it may take weeks to produce a bundle of war worthy arrows.

crossbows:
bolts require less skill and less money

firearms:
shot required little skill and could be made quickly for very little money. soldiers could actually produce their own shot in the field if necessary.

lastly, their were environmental factors.

longbows:
wind could easily cause stray arrows

crossbow:
with more force, wind was less of a factor

firearms:
wind had relatively little effect on firearm shot. additionally, the accuracy of the weapon itself was so poor a little straying didn't matter at all. additionally, all the smoke would foul cavalry charges a little. however, in the rain the weapons were little more than clubs.

[Jazzepi]

A couple of points on crossbows as well. Much like modern guns, crossbows didn't require the extensive training that longbows did to fire. You could give anyone a crossbow, and show them how to load it. Beyond the ability to turn a crank, or stretch the initial string, the force of the weapon was completely independent of the wielder's own strength. Obviously they still have to aim the thing, but the mechanics beyond that are very simple.

It was also my understanding that the mud in the field made it very, very difficult for the knights on foot to do any fighting. Since the bottom of their feet were basically broad plates of metal, they would squish down into the mud, and then when the knights when to lift their feet out of it, there would be a huge amount of suction keeping them in place. The longbow men had much different foot wear (I can't remember exactly what) that was /much/ better suited for fighting in the muddy field that they were fighting on.

Jazzepi

[Horst F. JENS]

Another factor favouring firearms over bows/crossbows was the quantity of ammunition a solider could carry.

Transporting 50 arrows takes a lot more space than transporting 50 bullets and gunpoder.

[Illuminated One]

I agree with the OP.
Imo longbows should be armor piercing but much more expensive than crossbowmen.

Another thing that I find funny about missile troops is that slingers are mostly represented as inferior to archers.
Slings are superior to most bows.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sling_(...epresentations

[BesucherXia]

Originally Posted by Illuminated One

Another thing that I find funny about missile troops is that slingers are mostly represented as inferior to archers.
Slings are superior to most bows.

Some slingers do have shields (i.e Marverni ones), which give them edge over archers.

Besides, I beileve slingers are much cheaper and thus useful in skirmish against bowmen. They are very effective in beating independent missile cavalries if deployed carefully.

[Aezeal]

I'm not convinced about the slingers really. That wiki has obviously been made by someone fond about sling (as will the wiki's of all weapons probably) but to me.. I look at it practically.

In midevil times shepards had slings in wide use, IF they where so much better overall (better range etc) then they would never have started using the more expensive arrows.

I think the main point of it is that sling bullets aren't AP..

In dominions it's sad there is only regular, AP (50%) and AN (100%) ... a % of AP (0-100) would probably be better as a value for weapons.

Blunt weapons (maces and slings etc) would then have like 5-10% AP,
swords 10-20% AP
piercing arrows 50%
crossbows 65 %

and magic weapons sometimes 100%.

(Omni if you are still in here, plz think about this as an extra stat too weaponry for your game in addtion to dmg/att/def

[Knai]

Originally Posted by Aezeal

I'm not convinced about the slingers really. That wiki has obviously been made by someone fond about sling (as will the wiki's of all weapons probably) but to me.. I look at it practically.

In midevil times shepards had slings in wide use, IF they where so much better overall (better range etc) then they would never have started using the more expensive arrows.

I think the main point of it is that sling bullets aren't AP..

Slings actually did out range bows, and had a comparable rate of fire. As for armor, plate was really effective against either of them, and mail and lighter were less effective against slings, due to the layers of padding; the only reason Agincourt went down as it did was because the french cavalry were trying to ride over thick mud, and horses don't get along well with thick mud. Then the horses started dying, and the people had to walk through thick mud while getting pelted, and by the time they actually reached the archers they had taken a bunch of minor bruises through the armor, fallen off a horse, and acquired a bunch of mud. Against troops that were basically fresh. And this is assuming that they didn't fall down in the mud and have lousy vision and excess weight at this point as well.

However, Bows have an obvious advantage. They are much easier to aim, and if you need to do anything fancier than put a stone in a general direction with a snapping sound (which will direct animals, and scare others off), you are going to be spending a long time practicing. Where the bow is an aim then shoot weapon, the sling is an aim while shooting weapon. Making arrows, particularly fletching, is not as demanding as previous posts state, and they could be cranked out, although not anywhere near the level one could do that with a sling or gun bullet. The difference in training needed to get accuracy is immense.

Furthermore, a slinger requires more space than an archer to operate a weapon. While it out ranges the bow, the ranks will naturally stretch further back quickly (tripled or so), and the effective range of the weapon isn't good enough to mitigate that, as the difference in range isn't very pronounced until you get to people who are very good in both weapons, as the slings range is highly determined by skill level, and the skill level needed for the maximum range is absurd at a troop training level. Meaning that, in a mass troop situation, the slings effective range is nullified, and it is a simple matter of weapon and ammunition cost against training time.

Which brings me to my next point. Longbows are hard to acquire, so ex soldiers and such couldn't get a hold of them easily, and be a threat. Manufacturing is enough of a process to make it difficult to get high powered bows as well. By contrast, the sling is easy to manufacture, either the two strings and a pouch design, or various woven designs. Leather and wool are not hard to acquire, and you really don't want recruits who are not full time soldiers (which they wouldn't have been in the medieval era) having a weapon like that.

Originally Posted by Endoperez

Actually, if the arrows is fired higher up it will come down nearer to the archer, not farther away. It took me some time to find the term, but "clout shooting" or "clout practice" describes the act of firing inside an area marked on the ground. With enough practice, a longbowman would at least be less likely to miss, especially if he wasn't aiming at a lone soldier but, say, a group of cavalry.

Inaccurate. Or rather, inaccurate some of the time. A 45 degree angle with have the longest horizontal distance, although that is obviously modified by wind. If you lift it past that, or not quite to that then range decreases, but going from 0 degrees up to 45 is constant increase.

[Knai]

Bows and Crossbows are being addressed here, to keep posts reasonable. Also, I can't seem to find the edit button.

Crossbows were more powerful and could pierce armor better than bows, and were more expensive. There were immensely complicated machines, and crossbows weren't among them, but at this point standardized parts didn't exist, so each crossbow had to be built by hand, which made them more expensive than bows. And just like bows, they arc. Meaning that as a sniper weapon, or when one actually needs to go through armor, or, given less training, you just need to shoot one guy and take him out, this is probably the better weapon. For mass battles these were less efficient, although a crossbow volley from close range would be devastating, so a few ranks of crossbowmen up front who made sure to fire in concert (and in a line, since that makes armor piercing that much easier, as everything talked about but the sling bullet loses way too much power to puncture armor effectively if arced significantly) would make the front ranks that much nastier. This just means that you don't have the melee types, or the melee types have the crossbows, and assumes a high archer battlefield, which stops being effective against cavalry on a sunny day without mud unless you have something like a river with a bridge, and troops that can hold the bridge. Pike contingents aren't bad here, but a spear and shield formation similar to the phalanx would be effective as well.

Bows had a higher rate of fire, which made up for quite a lot. Now, to address one particular point that had been made. Arrows would flex significantly when fired, but they would then straighten out and fly straight. The flexing didn't impact accuracy, and was not a problem. Similarly, on bows having one point to draw to. This is accurate for the modern compound bow, and there are distances at which it is much easier to aim than others, but you have a decent variety of draw lengths with any ancient bow.

Now, arrows flexing needs to be looked at a little more, which brings up another relevant weapon. The atlatl. It threw darts that were basically long arrows, and they bent massively, but still straightened out and flew straight. The flexing of the darts was not an issue, and just like the arrows you need a very high speed camera to see this. Both weapons could be very accurate. Now, the bow out-ranges the atlatl significantly, but the atlatl has its place. A nice hunting weapon, always readied, and probably better than just a javelin, although it takes more training. Mictlan should have these, but sadly doesn't. In both cases, with these weapons, armor is a lot more effective than against crossbows, but the bow isn't bad for sheer volume, and the longbow is among the best, not the English bow specifically, but any high draw weight bow which wasn't made in a really shoddy fashion.

Staff slings were also omitted from the above post. They work completely differently from hand slings, and have a lower effective range, but are made for heavier projectiles. These are probably closer to a crossbow in armor effectiveness, as the projectiles had a lot of force. Unlike the sling though, you could not use a shield, although you wouldn't with a sling as it makes reloading difficult, and screws up many styles of aim.


All of this addresses massed formations. Things change rather dramatically without them, which means anywhere cavalry isn't effective. In a large, mountainous area slings are suddenly very efficient, crossbows are upped because you can shoot down a ledge without retaliation and deal with a less significant problem from armor, and the atlatl remains a big game weapon.