The Longbow should not be availble to every Civ

[Phrossack]

Not only Englishmen and Welshmen used the longbow. The Indians during Alexander's attempted conquest, for example. Arrian wrote,

"...the infantry have a bow, of the height of the owner; this they poise on the ground, and set their left foot against it, and shoot thus; drawing the bowstring a very long way back; for their arrows are little short of three cubits, and nothing can stand against an arrow shot by an Indian archer, neither shield nor breastplate nor any strong armour."

If I recall, many Native Americans and Nubians used longbows, as well.

 

[De Begerac]

Was that not the one which involved sitting down and bracing the bow against the soles of your feet, effectively turning yourself into a human crossbow?

Cyrano

 

[Phrossack]

Was that not the one which involved sitting down and bracing the bow against the soles of your feet, effectively turning yourself into a human crossbow?

Cyrano

Are you referring to the Indian, Native American, or Nubian longbows? If it's the Indian, the only source I've seen says you put your left foot against it. When holding a bow, a standing right-handed archer's left foot would be right next to a bow long enough to be poised in the ground. That said, the bow you mentioned seems quite interesting.

 

[Gustavus]

If you want to be historical, longbows would come much later.

They appeared around 200 years after the Feudal Era in Western Europe had ended so... kinda out of place. Also, they should be a lot stronger considering how they were used to basically obsolete the knight's use in warfare...

But I'm still even more for the idea of the "rewriting history" thing. Sometimes I wish the game would generate some 5th grade history book I could read on my Civ and the world . But now I'm getting nerdy.

I'm going to have to disagree with you on the history part.

For one, I'd like to know what you mean by the "feudal era": I'd agree with you if you meant the pay system that kings used to reward their vassals changed when the two parties developed these crazy things called money and contracts. But if instead you mean that the longbow was deployed only after governments started to become centralized... I think history would disagree with you.

In addition, the longbow certainly did not obsolete the knight's use in warfare--that's such a Anglo-centric historical outlook. AfterShafter would have your head. The longbow's widespread use certainly made the deployment of heavy cavalry much more difficult, but the stereotypical knight was very much used for the next three hundred years, even if the nature of his job slightly changed.

 

[Racsoviale]

a little OT, but in line with the current topic as well.

not being able to get to the americas in the earth map, playing the vikings (UU longboat anybody? - could work like the galleys from earlier editions, where they could sink in ocean)

sorry about the random semi-rant

 

[Feyaria]

Play RFCEurope, Englands UU is a longbow!

 

[nanomage]

chinese used recursive bows with high range extensively afair.
maybe it was only english who invented what we classically understand as ""longbow" i.e. long single piece of wood, straight when unstretched and 2 nearly 2 meters long, but idea of a long range bow as a means to throw arrows at great distances is common throughout the world,
it's just a pity that they all look like english longbowman, but it's BAT mod to fix this.

 

[midwaymas]

Well, it seems fairly odd, then, that other civs get access to the stealth bomber (B-2), Modern Armor (M1A1), Mechanized Infantry (Bradley Fighting Vehicle), Jet Fighter (F-16), Marine (who uses the M16), etc.

Most modern warfare technologies aren't used by 95% of the civs in the game, but the game makes fairly major concessions in order to have a contiguous timeline.

 

[ORION11380]

Inspired by an episode on Welsh Longbowmen on Tony Sheppard's show "Warriors" on the History Channel, I tried to simulate the pull strength of a Welsh longbow with pull-down cables at my gym.

Given that I am 5'10", 220 pounds, and can bench press 335, I found that I would totally get pwned by a 120 pound starving peasant from the 15th century English countryside.

I only managed to 1-arm pull about 120 pounds with repititions, compared to some longbowmen who supposedly pulled up to 160 pounds.

 

[ORION11380]

I'm going to have to disagree with you on the history part.

In addition, the longbow certainly did not obsolete the knight's use in warfare--that's such a Anglo-centric historical outlook. AfterShafter would have your head. The longbow's widespread use certainly made the deployment of heavy cavalry much more difficult, but the stereotypical knight was very much used for the next three hundred years, even if the nature of his job slightly changed.

Actually, IMHO, the longbow itself did not make knights obsolete. It's the prevailence of longbows that made them obsolete, due to economics, efficiency, and effect.

1. A suit of armor takes dozens of men days just to forge, not to mention mine and refine. With the same amount of effort you could make dozens of longbows.

2. A knight is a lifelong commitment. It took years of training to become a knight. It also takes much more to employ and feed a knight (since they tend to be much bigger in stature...you'd have to be to haul around 70 pounds of armor). On the other hand, you can have entire villages of peasant farmers who could train to be longbowmen in the winter non-farming months (like our National Guards).

3. The increased range of the longbows meant more salvos before hand-to-hand engagement, and forced the knights to shed the weight of the armor for speed. Thus they could cover the distance faster. This led to...drumroll...cuiressaires! Who were nothing more than knights without arm and leg protections. (Actually, lancers were used more against infentry; cuiressaires were used more against other cavalry.)

4. The success of longbows forced more armies to increase the ratio of ranged infentry to melee infentry. With less anti-footmen infentry, armies would then increase the amount of pikesmen, who were great against the cavalry, but weak against the infentry. The "rock-paper-sissors chain" of longbowmen>melee>pikesmen>cavalry>longbowmen evolved into the removal of the melee soldiers.

 

[sfnhltb]

Use of the longbow is where the (in)famous English two-fingered salute comes from - "I still have my bow fingers!" A captured longbow man used to have his index and middle fingers cut off before being ransomed back to their kingdom. For that reason, they were pretty adept sword fighters too - discarding their bows and fighting with swords if the enemy came too close for comfort. If the enemy mistook them for infantry, they'd be more likely to keep their digits.

While this legend is often repeated (seeming to originate in the 1970s oddly enough), there doesn't seem to be any proof of it. Any historical evidence origin of the sign you refer to seems to have been lost (Desmond Morris in Gestures: Their Origins and Distribution ended up giving 10 possible origins, but no significant evidence for any of them), which isn't so surprising if you consider it was almost universally a working class only insult - Churchill notably had to be informed that he was insulting people in the crowd at first and had to switch to the famous palm outward version.

 

[katipunero]

I think world history as we know it now is a poorly played civ game. Everybody, at the moment, is playing for a time victory until the year 2050!

Kidding aside, longbowmen or any other standard unit should be made available to all civs in the game because it is what the researched technology gives/allows. Imagine for a moment I, playing as HC, research advanced flight and don't get a unit for it or invent a totally different and unique flying contraption just because it's not accurate.

The entire civ game is based loosely on what we know in history. It has to be founded on certain aspects of world and historical (technological) reality but not so much as it would upset the game balance. Otherwise, if the mongols did research a pretty advance tech like physics, who can now say for certain what would come out of it in real life and in the game? A blimp? or a flying horse?

Edit: Ooh yes, the idea is good. Every civ should have a unique unit for every tech. The next version should implement a system where it is possible to create civ-specific unique units based on intelligent speculative analysis. Physics doesn't always give u a flying balloon, but maybe a land-based military unit or a naval unit--always asking the question what if the chinese or some civ got to or researched a certain tech first? that would be awesome.

 

[stethnorun]

What Civ 5 needs to do is make every civilization it introduces ENTIRELY unique. That is, every building and every unit are unique to each civ. Obviously, that's a lot of work which means less overall civs than we are used to. But just think about how cool it will be when every unit you make (while functioning basically the same as other civs units) looks unique to you. And just think of all the artistic liscence that the devs could play around with. What would an Incan jet fighter look like (think feathers!)? Or a Mongolian tank (covered in blood splatters?). The biggest thing disconnecting me from the current game is that while improvements have been made (and I CHEERED every time they made the civs more unique looking), the civs still basically looks very similar. The boats all look the same (especially the modern ones), the planes all look the same. And all of the late game units look the same. I say make them all look so unique, you can tell at a glance just whose units are whose (even without different coloring).