The Medieval Weapons Mod - adding history and logic to the civ4 middle ages.

[Aeon221]

Oh shaddap ;p

I was high when I wrote that, so be proud of me for the quality!

 

[Dracleath]

From playing this everything seems to work well except crossbowmen, the ai seems to skip through and just go straight to civil service. Anyone know how to get them more interested? I reduced machinery's tech cost a bit.

 

[Simetrical]

Spatha is the prototype for European longswords.

1) Spathae are not longswords. They're about three feet long, counting the hilt. Longswords would be more like four to five feet long.

2) Spathae were not prototypes for European longswords any more than any of the other longish swords of the period.

While the Romans, Celts and others didn't have a vast understanding of carbonizing iron to make steel, they used coal in their furnaces at first simply because it helped create high heat and later as a matter of course. The Romans were working with steel even though they may have thought that it was iron.

The iron they were using was of better quality than simple, plain iron, but nowhere near blast furnace-quality. It had strips of steel in it. See here. So it may have been about as good as bronze, or perhaps even better; bronze was, however, definitely superior to simple wrought iron. See this:

Iron is not superior to bronze for tools. Wrought iron, the form first encountered by Near Eastern smelters, is roughly equivalent in hardness to annealed 10% tin bronze, and inferior to all cold-worked tin bronzes. It is only when carbon dissolves into the iron (carburization) and the artisan quenches the resulting steel that ferrous metals have a definite hardness advantage over bronze. [emphasis in the original]​

Gladius penetrated chain mail easily . . .This claim is based on the words of military experts, not mine.

Indeed? Which experts in particular?

For example, in the pre-Roman-Imperial western mediterranean there was no archers.

Overly broad. There were some archers. They just weren't very effective.

The Roman legionaries were in testudo formation during Carrhae, and they were bombared by horse archers who used small bows, and because of this the arrows were small and couldn't penetrate the shield.

Pardon? Have you read the accounts of Carrhae? The arrows very much did penetrate the shields, pinning soldiers' arms to their scuta. How else were there tens of thousands of casualties? Furthermore, the Parthian cataphracts stopped the legionaries from forming testudo, according to the account.

No, the ancients didn't know how make iron plate armour, large plate pieces. Thats why the lorica segmentata is made of small pieces. But bronze could be made into large plates and it could take severe damage.

All plates were expensive, though. Mail was overwhelmingly preferred throughout most of Roman history.

Edit: also, the theory that bronze was, at some point, better than Iron isn't true.

Not according to the paper I cited above. Do you have a source?

Re: danish axe severing a man's torso

First hand accounts of hastings state that huskarls at hastings used danish axes with two hands and that a huskarl could take down an armored knight and his horse in one blow. . . .

All very nice, but no mention of severing armored torsos.

Regardless, do you agree with the point about spearmen vs axemen? With the setup I describe above, ancient spearmen would be about the same as they are now against horsemen, would with against swordsmen 45% of the time rather than 33% of the time prior to bonuses, and greek phlanx formations would be even with non-legion swordsmen prior to terrain or defense bonuses.

Spearmen should, in general, perform about as well as swordsmen and axemen, perhaps slightly worse. All the weapons had their advantages and disadvantages, but none was qualitatively worse than any other in simple combat.

They would go from failing the majority of the time against archers in cities with no walls or culture bonus to having a slight edge, though with swordsmen would still be the superior city assault troops by far unless the spearmen was specifically promoted for the role.

If we're talking realism, you know, why exactly are Swordsmen better against cities and Axemen better against Melee?

Axemen . . . would be approximately equal in combat to chariots.

Well, we come back to numbers. Presumably each unit of chariots is much smaller than each unit of axemen. One chariot per axemen would mean near-certain death for the axemen, five axemen per chariot would mean near-certain death for the chariots, so how will you slice it?

The Roman heavy infantry was made obsolete by Horse Archers, which dominated the battlefield and replaced Heavy Infantry as the primary tool of Military leaders.

There were two primary problems with horse archers. First, they relied on mobility, and on rough terrain they were hampered―there's a good reason that the steppe cultures favored horse archers so strongly while they remained little-used elsewhere. Second, all things being equal, a horse archer can't use a bow as large or powerful as a foot archer, and therefore foot archers could quite simply outrange horse archers if using bows of equivalent sophistication (slingers could work too).

In general, I think it's pretty silly to say that horse archers in any way "replaced" heavy infantry―heavy infantry remained a major combat tool throughout Europe up until the advent of gunpowder-based armies, while horse archers were used only sometimes, in some places, by some civilizations. Of course, heavy infantry's heyday in Europe ended sometime during the Roman Empire period, but it was hardly unused, which is more than could be said for horse archers in the region.

You know, the information that is being bandied about and used to refine this mod, while interesting, is all very Western-based and thus Western-biased. If we could get some aficianados on non-Western military-tech in on this thread that would be fantabulous.

Indeed. I know bugger all about any non-Western civilization.

Well, Romans utterly destroyed phalanx many times. Many times when they fought against the Seleucids and Carthaginians.

But, the argument runs, the Seleucids and Carthaginians didn't use combined arms to the extent of Philip and Alexander. They relied heavily on their phalanxes, not much on their cavalry. The legions were more maneuverable than phalanxes, and this was their winning attribute, but cavalry was still more maneuverable than legions, and so some speculate that this could have countered the Romans' advantage, used properly.

The big change from the Ancient-to-Medieval in warfare was the adaption of Stirrups by the Europeans people. It was invented in China, and bring to Europe by the avars, the Huns and other nomadic people. The stirrup allow a Heavy Calvary attack; direct, frontal.

This is a surprisingly common misconception. Stirrups were a nice bonus, yes, but heavy shock cavalry most definitely existed before they were invented. Cataphracts, anyone? They were basically ancient knights―heavily armored, with a lance for the charge and then smaller weapons for the ensuing fighting. Their equipment just wasn't as good, of course, due to the technological inferiority discussed earlier in the thread. Heavy cavalry before stirrups used special saddles and their legs to hold on in a charge.

From playing this everything seems to work well except crossbowmen, the ai seems to skip through and just go straight to civil service. Anyone know how to get them more interested?

I've only glanced through the XML files to date, but isn't there some kind of "value" toggle? Or does the AI draw its own cost-benefit analysis? If the latter, you could always reduce the cost.

 

[Dracleath]

There is a wieght field, but this generally is left at 0 so I assume it's the latter based on flavor and what the ai needs. I reduced the cost a bit, haven't gotten to the middle ages in my latest test game so we'll see.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Ok, I just wanted to through in some of my views on this whole issue of Romans and medieval warfare.

There are so many fundamental differences between the imperial Rome and the warfare of the medieval era.

First of all, it is a big difference in economy and numbers between the two types of warfare. The Romans were very rich compared with any of the western powers of the medieval period, then there was the diminishing number of people because of the many plagues.

Now, the Roman Legion was invented by the Romans to fight the Phalanx in the rough and broken terrain that portray the Italian peninsular. So that was the early Legion, and during this period large part of the Legion was even inferior to most of their opponents in weapons and armour. What they had was knowledge of the terrain and used that to its advantage and outmanoeuvred the phalanx.

During the early to mid period of the Roman Empire, Romans used very little ranged troops as part of the Legion. They usually had skirmishing troops with light javelins and slingers. Slingers remained very effective for a long time compared with archery. Many of the early bows were simply not effective enough.

Cavalry was only used by the Legion to chase a routing enemy, they had no cavalry worth the name chock troops until much later.

What the legion did have was (most of the time) brilliant leadership and well trained soldier. They were not levied peasants but well trained and drilled soldiers with high morale.

A late roman army did have heavily armoured horsemen and also armoured archers, all who were well trained and drilled soldiers.

Now I will go over and compare with some of the western medieval forces.

The early medieval army was usually very poorly equipped, I obviously don't know the differences in numbers here, but at least 50-80% was untrained peasantry, armed with what they could afford. Perhaps soma rudimentary mail armour a spear (a sword or axe if they could afford it) and a shield.
They commonly fought in a shield wall, very similar to a phalanx, but nothing as sophisticated as that.
Some was armed with Crossbows, a very powerful weapon used during all of the medieval period and very good against heavily armoured troops that was few in numbers; one of its disadvantages was its rather slow rate of fire. Though it was cheap to both train and equips a soldier with a Crossbow

The rest were elite soldiers with full armour fighting on foot or on horse, these warriors were devastating to all other forces. They used full mail armour, the wealthiest used reinforced mail and large metal plates that even could withstand a crossbow bolt at medium to long range.
Heavy foot infantry rarely used a shield in melee combat, but they might have one before the melee begun.

There were no Roman Legionary, even during the late Imperial period that could stand a reasonable chance against a fully armed medieval heavy infantryman (Noble on foot).
Once the stirrup was introduced the Noble warrior more frequently rose to the saddle since that gave them an additional advantage. The same armour as before but also the power of the lance.

Before the Stirrup the Great Dane axe was the death of many cavalrymen, it was long enough to kill the horse and rider, and the armour of an infantryman was usually better than that of the horseman during that period.
There were many other types of combat tactics against cavalry before the stirrup, and the long spear was used very effectively against cavalry.
Now the peasantry could not afford to buy good enough spears to be effective against a mounted charge from Heavy Cavalry during the middle Ages.

The single most affective weapon against a knight was the crossbow (accept of cource the Longbow, but that was a very rare weapon) before the Pike was introduced yet again, fighting in a very similar form as the Greek phalanx, though the pike formation was somewhat more manoeuvrable and smaller. Also the armour had evolved to the point of arrows being very useless against the breastplates of the late medieval period.

Now to sum things up, a highly drilled and well equipped late Roman Legion could easily destroy an early medieval army on the sole basis of its morale and better overall equipment, leadership and training.

No Roman army could defeat an Early Medieval Army that consisted of 50% Elite and 50% Peasants, the weapons and Armour of the Elite was much heavier than the Romans used. You can’t compare the power of a Long sword or a Dane axe and full mail (medieval metalworking had improved very much) armour and steel plated chest armour.
The Crossbow alone is so superior to any ranged weaponry used by the Romans because it is so simple to use.

By the way, Romans did use auxiliary heavy spearman troops as part of the Legion during the later ages. This was mainly to protect their flanks from enemy Cavalry.

You just can't teleport one army out of context like that, one of the strength of the Roman Legion was its adaptability. And if the Western Roman Empire had prevailed, it would have bin the most powerful army during the middle Ages to, though they would probably have used more Heavy Cavalry and less Heavy infantry, more like fifty-fifty perhaps and then add Archers, Crossbows and whatever have you.

The Roman Legion was never really beaten, once they was on the field they ruled it more than they didn't in any time period, more in some than others, but the Legion is perhaps one of histories most victorious combat formation ever, even when it was outdated. The Eastern Roman empire continued to use its heavy infantry until its destruction and their armies was the most powerful armies in all of Europe.

 

[Simetrical]

Slingers remained very effective for a long time compared with archery. Many of the early bows were simply not effective enough.

Western bows, it should be noted. Eastern composites were very effective, and existed there since prehistoric times.

Some was armed with Crossbows, a very powerful weapon used during all of the medieval period and very good against heavily armoured troops that was few in numbers; one of its disadvantages was its rather slow rate of fire. Though it was cheap to both train and equips a soldier with a Crossbow

Well, it wasn't that cheap; one major advantage of early guns was their lower cost. Crossbows involved complicated mechanisms that needed to be made by an expert. However, I'm guessing they were still cheaper than longbows, which took years to make (although mostly just sitting around, granted), and the training was certainly cheaper.

The rest were elite soldiers with full armour fighting on foot or on horse, these warriors were devastating to all other forces. They used full mail armour, the wealthiest used reinforced mail and large metal plates that even could withstand a crossbow bolt at medium to long range.
Heavy foot infantry rarely used a shield in melee combat, but they might have one before the melee begun.

All, unfortunately, rather dramatic overgeneralizations. Armor varied greatly by period; basically all mail in the 6th century, up to the cap-à-pie corrugated plate of the 15th and 16th. The best examples of the latter could typically withstand crossbows and early guns from any range, at least most of the time, and more or less the only way to kill the wearer was to tire him out to the point where you could overwhelm him with superior numbers, tackle him to the ground, and stab him through his eye-slit (or make him surrender and take him hostage).

Shield usage, too, varied widely by time and place.

There were no Roman Legionary, even during the late Imperial period that could stand a reasonable chance against a fully armed medieval heavy infantryman (Noble on foot).
Once the stirrup was introduced the Noble warrior more frequently rose to the saddle since that gave them an additional advantage. The same armour as before but also the power of the lance.

The stirrup was first developed in ancient times, and reached Europe at the beginning of the medieval era. There were doubtless exceptions, but as a rule, I'm fairly sure European nobles of the medieval time always fought mounted.

Now the peasantry could not afford to buy good enough spears to be effective against a mounted charge from Heavy Cavalry during the middle Ages.

Any spear formation is sufficient to completely stop a cavalry charge, unless the riders have longer spears. Horses were not trained to charge into spears, and I've heard that they would typically refuse―that's if their riders were feeling suicidal enough to try to get them to. Regardless, there would always be much more effective and less costly ways to disrupt a peasant spear formation than a full cavalry charge.

Now to sum things up, a highly drilled and well equipped late Roman Legion could easily destroy an early medieval army on the sole basis of its morale and better overall equipment, leadership and training.

I would tend to suspect you're right, but of course we'll never know.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

I tend to agree on most of your point there Simetrical, first of all I was generalizing about the armour for the period. And secondly there were allot of heavy infantry from the North, the British Isle and today’s France, why??? because most of the horses were to small to actually keep the weight of a fully armed soldier with heavy armour.
As far as my knowledge goes, the really big warhorses come from the Germans who used them first and then they spread from there throughout most part of Europe.

I was also talking about the bows in and around the Italian peninsular when I mentioned why they used slingers. If the Romans had lived in Egypt for example, they would have used bows I'm pretty sure about that.
Romans did use very powerful bows during the later stages of their reign. One of the Romans strength was their willingness to adapt new technologies that they thought would better their overall chances. Such as heavy cavalry, archers and heavy spearmen.

Now, a peasantry line would often be to broken and not enough long spears to pose a decent threat against a knight during the middle ages. Now this is a general statement, there was of cource exception to that rule.
A wealthy noble might understand the importance of army the peasants properly, but they favoured the crossbow to giving the good armour and spears. The Crossbow was much more useful, also as a peacekeeping weapon in the cities. It was small and very effective for shooting at an enemy from the walls.
The crossbow itself was not to cheap, no it was not. But compare the total cost of training and equipping a good archer with a crossbowman. And the crossbow saw some refining through the years also making them both faster and more powerful as time went on.
There is a reason why the church banned them, probably because the church relied on heavy knights and the crossbow was too dangerous in the hand of even an untrained peasant to pose a serious threat against a knight.

 

[Dracleath]

I've been playing with the religions and time scale a bit of late, I slowed tech down to 140% which worked well for extending the middle ages, but ended up worsening the problem of having buddhism, hinduism, and judaism take over the game.

I've finally decided to edit spread rates to combat this (don't worry, the ai still uses missionaries and often times early religions still become major because of this.

I've made the first 3 religions spread at 1/4 the original rate, the 2 chinese religions spread at 1/2.5x the original rate, and christianity and islam spread at 2x the original rate.

I was thinking also that maybe there needed to be an incentive to use the later religions, so I was thinking of adding a couple of units now that skins and models are availible:


Crusaders:

as Macemen, str. 9

Answar warriors:

as Knights, 25% bonus vs mounted units.


How does this sound?

 

[woodelf]

Sounds good. How do you alter the spread rate?

 

[Dracleath]

It's in xml/gameinfo/religioninfo



One thing I've also been trying to figure out is a way to make the ai prefer one religion type over another if it's in it's borders so that it'll know to switch over to a later religion if possible to get the advantages.

I was also thinking of a random event to spread christianity and islam randomly to a city every few decades to help seed them if the nation isn't a theocracy, and maybe another if the nation is a theocracy that would remove a non-state religion and its buildings from a random city. I'm trying to figure out exactly how to do this in python now though, so I don't know if it'll ever be in or not.

 

[woodelf]

I found the right xml spot, but have to admit that I'm not sure if I should go higher or lower with the number. So far lower has meant faster, correct?

 

[Dracleath]

I believe so, and that seems to be the case.

 

[Dracleath]

Oh, I was also trying to figure out what to do about the persian's UU. The immortal cavalry is out of place and made up so I'd like to replace it with a foot immortals unit and use it for the answar warrior, the problem is that the only foot unit available is the hypsasist that doesn't really look persian at all. Alternatively I could just ask frontbrecher if I could use his mujadeen skin and leave the immortal as is or do something else entirely.

 

[Princeps]

1) Spathae are not longswords. They're about three feet long, counting the hilt. Longswords would be more like four to five feet long.

This is arguable. I havn't found any exact minimal lenght for longsword.

2) Spathae were not prototypes for European longswords any more than any of the other longish swords of the period.

"The Spatha is a type of straight sword, measuring between 75 and 100 cm, in use throughout the 1st millennium AD. Introduced in the late Roman Empire in the 1st century AD as a cavalry weapon, the Spatha remained popular throughout the Migration period and the Viking Age, until it evolved into the knightly sword of the High Middle Ages from about 1100."

The spatha was most produced sword during the migrational period, IIRC. It was from spatha which most swords of the time evolved. Indeed, word spatha is found in many romance-languages, in Spanish... spada, etc.

The iron they were using was of better quality than simple, plain iron, but nowhere near blast furnace-quality. It had strips of steel in it. See here. So it may have been about as good as bronze, or perhaps even better; bronze was, however, definitely superior to simple wrought iron. See this:
Iron is not superior to bronze for tools. Wrought iron, the form first encountered by Near Eastern smelters, is roughly equivalent in hardness to annealed 10% tin bronze, and inferior to all cold-worked tin bronzes. It is only when carbon dissolves into the iron (carburization) and the artisan quenches the resulting steel that ferrous metals have a definite hardness advantage over bronze. [emphasis in the original

Oh, btw, that quote were not my words, I forgot to put the " " to it-

I still doubt the claim that iron was worse than bronze, since hoplites, iirc, for example, used bronze armour while they used iron spearheads. And there are many other examples.

Indeed? Which experts in particular?

I refered to these words.

"Gladius' stabs were deep and wide, and if in the chest area, they would kill fast."

These were based on the words of military experts. Indeed, they say that the wounds left by gladius were probably most deadliest left by a hand-held weapon untill the invention of more advanced gunpowder weapons. Is that true or not, is not relevant, however gladius' stabs were deadly.

Just look at the blade, imagine that inside you.

When Greeks saw the blade in action, they were horrified by the wounds it left. Chain mail, IMO, protects well from many attacks, but I dont think it protects from that kind of a stab.

Overly broad. There were some archers. They just weren't very effective.

No, there really wern't. IIRC, Carthaginians did not prefer archers, Iberians and Celts were not the most likely archers and so on. There were of course, bows used for hunting, but archers were very rare in the western mediterranean armies. In theory they had but it practise they didn't.

Slingers were much better, they had longer range, better damage and they were much more numerous than archers.

Pardon? Have you read the accounts of Carrhae? The arrows very much did penetrate the shields, pinning soldiers' arms to their scuta. How else were there tens of thousands of casualties? Furthermore, the Parthian cataphracts stopped the legionaries from forming testudo, according to the account.

Of course I've heard them, otherwise I would not make such comment.

The claim that the Parthian bows penetrated scuta and especially claim that the shield was pinned to the hand are dramaticisations (sp?) by the writers, IMHO. Parthian bow was powerful, but it wasn't that powerful. The Scythian bow which Romans adapted, IIRC, did not penetrate scuta, and I doubt that Parthian bow was significantly more powerful then it.

The Battle was decided by the cataphracts working in combo with the horse archers. The battle lasted for a very long time, if the bow would have really penetrated it, the battle would have lasted for much shorter time.

All plates were expensive, though. Mail was overwhelmingly preferred throughout most of Roman history

Bronze chest plate was still more expensive that lorica segmentata, IMO.

The chain mail was of course much preferred because it was economic. Also, it was cheap and it did protect very well.

However, lorica segmentata was still much protective. No bow of the time penetrated it, swords had problems and so on. The problem with the armour was that it was expensive and took alot of maintaince.

Not according to the paper I cited above. Do you have a source?

No, but thats based on my believe. If iron was really less effective that why was iron used as spearheads, while the troops wore bronze as armour?

But, the argument runs, the Seleucids and Carthaginians didn't use combined arms to the extent of Philip and Alexander. They relied heavily on their phalanxes, not much on their cavalry. The legions were more maneuverable than phalanxes, and this was their winning attribute, but cavalry was still more maneuverable than legions, and so some speculate that this could have countered the Romans' advantage, used properly.

True, however, a Legion can be turned into a effective anti-cavalry unit too. Indeed, it often was.

Second, all things being equal, a horse archer can't use a bow as large or powerful as a foot archer, and therefore foot archers could quite simply outrange horse archers if using bows of equivalent sophistication (slingers could work too).

Wrong. In fact, often the bows used by horse archers were far more effective than the ones used by standing archers. The Goths were horrified by the "Hun horn bows" (recurved, composite bows). And, Mongol bow has significantly longer range than the longbow.

 

[Svetogor]

1. About spathaes and swords. Spatha is the prototype for later swords, having badder steel used in blade of sword. Later, in the end of 1 millenium until 13th century most used type was "caroling" sword type, larger and heavier then spatha, and in 13th-16th "roman" sword called so because it has length and proportions compared to spatha.
I don't know what exactly you mean under term "longsword", but there are some sword types that can be used by two hands. They have lenght 100-150sm, and in mass use appear in 15th century.

2. About the mod at all. It's unreal to make "medieval weapons" mod, it's real only to make great and big, medieval mod. Medieval weaponry greatly depended from civilizations types, their needs and encounters. For example Mongols didn't need infantry, because of great territories. Russian and Golden Horde 13-14th centuries cavalry body armour was heavier and harder then European, but almost all of helms hadn't face protection compared to european helms, because of battle characters.
So why do not make a mod using each medieval civilization unique way of developing, armouring and weaponing. Hard work but great work.

With best regards.

 

[Simetrical]

"The Spatha is a type of straight sword, measuring between 75 and 100 cm, in use throughout the 1st millennium AD. Introduced in the late Roman Empire in the 1st century AD as a cavalry weapon, the Spatha remained popular throughout the Migration period and the Viking Age, until it evolved into the knightly sword of the High Middle Ages from about 1100."

Wikipedia is not the most impressive of sources, I'm afraid. You still might be right, of course.

"Gladius' stabs were deep and wide, and if in the chest area, they would kill fast."

These were based on the words of military experts. Indeed, they say that the wounds left by gladius were probably most deadliest left by a hand-held weapon untill the invention of more advanced gunpowder weapons.

Please quote these military experts. Give exact names and places, give exact quotes.

No, there really wern't. IIRC, Carthaginians did not prefer archers, Iberians and Celts were not the most likely archers and so on. There were of course, bows used for hunting, but archers were very rare in the western mediterranean armies.

Well, yes, of course. Some used them, but mostly they were marginal or entirely ignored.

The claim that the Parthian bows penetrated scuta and especially claim that the shield was pinned to the hand are dramaticisations (sp?) by the writers, IMHO. Parthian bow was powerful, but it wasn't that powerful. The Scythian bow which Romans adapted, IIRC, did not penetrate scuta, and I doubt that Parthian bow was significantly more powerful then it.

I'm sure I've seen studies of penetrative power somewhere. Buggered if I can remember where, though. I'll try to get a source.

The battle lasted for a very long time, if the bow would have really penetrated it, the battle would have lasted for much shorter time.

It's fair to say that people weren't being skewered left and right, but I have no doubt a Parthian bow would penetrate a scutum if it struck head-on. That's not to say that the shields wouldn't provide a good deal of protection, but not enough to render the bows less than deadly.

In general, it's true that ranged weapons are less effective than hand-to-hand weapons, since if you have a sword you can slit your enemy's throat once he's incapacitated, but arrows don't work that way. So if people are just getting hit by arrows, you may well have more wounds than kills at the end of the day, with more people dying of blood loss and infection than organ trauma. You also can't effectively track down and kill the healthy soldiers, since your arrow isn't that accurate at long distances, which means a lot of people will probably survive due to dumb luck.

Bronze chest plate was still more expensive that lorica segmentata, IMO.

Of course.

If iron was really less effective that why was iron used as spearheads, while the troops wore bronze as armour?

Because iron was cheaper to start with, and later on (once it started becoming more like steel) it did in fact become a superior material.

True, however, a Legion can be turned into a effective anti-cavalry unit too. Indeed, it often was.

Yes, but not against horse archers.

Wrong. In fact, often the bows used by horse archers were far more effective than the ones used by standing archers.

I said "all things being equal", and that means the foot archers have to be using the same type of bow. Given any type of bow, you'll be able to use a much larger and therfore more powerful one on foot. My understanding is that horse archers often carried a second, larger bow to use while dismounted. Obviously ancient Western bows of any kind would be horribly outclassed by Eastern composites.

And, Mongol bow has significantly longer range than the longbow.

Not according to this page, which looks authoritative. That he doesn't mention the specific branch of the University of California whose Anthropology Department he was assisted by is slightly worrying, however. Anyway, I may do a bit more investigation on this guy later, or you could.

 

[Princeps]

Wikipedia is not the most impressive of sources, I'm afraid. You still might be right, of course.

Wikipedia, IMHO, is often more reliable than the random sites in google.

Give exact names and places, give exact quotes.

That's a problem, since I read them in an article, not exact quotes. I have to dig it up.

Actually, after thinking it while, I read the article 3 years ago, so it might no longer exist.

Well, yes, of course. Some used them, but mostly they were marginal or entirely ignored.

In practise the western mediterranean armies had no archers.

It's fair to say that people weren't being skewered left and right, but I have no doubt a Parthian bow would penetrate a scutum if it struck head-on. That's not to say that the shields wouldn't provide a good deal of protection, but not enough to render the bows less than deadly.

Well, you see, the bows could pierce the shield, however, I feel such happening would rare. A tiny minority of the arrows actually would pierce the shield, many would be diverted by the curving, many would miss and many would simply absorbed. The battle lasted for a long time, the Parthians carried uh, very large amounts of arrows, even for an eastern archers, who traditionally carried alot arrows with them and several extra bows, because in battle bows would often break.

You also can't effectively track down and kill the healthy soldiers, since your arrow isn't that accurate at long distances, which means a lot of people will probably survive due to dumb luck.

Well, people dont aim in the battle in the same sense as you would do with a rifle "pick your target!" They aimed to the direction where the enemies were.

Because iron was cheaper to start with, and later on (once it started becoming more like steel) it did in fact become a superior material.

Yes, but the Hoplites used bronze armour (or chest plate) while they used iron spear heads. Why didn't they use bronze spear heads if it was better?

Yes, but not against horse archers.

Well, cavalry archers were rather rarely used in combined arms with a Phalanx (although there were exceptions, like Armenians and Bactrians). The Hellenics used the Hetaroi (aka, companion cavalry), which were lancers with something like 30+ feet lance. The Seleucids also used bronze covered cataphracts.

And, the legion was, when with good cavalry-arm and archers, capable of defeating a horse archer army as it did several times.

I said "all things being equal", and that means the foot archers have to be using the same type of bow. Given any type of bow, you'll be able to use a much larger and therfore more powerful one on foot. My understanding is that horse archers often carried a second, larger bow to use while dismounted. Obviously ancient Western bows of any kind would be horribly outclassed by Eastern composites.

"All things being equal" Well, in technology the Chinese were more advanced compared to the Mongols, however, the Mongol bow still had longer range than the Chinese crossbows. IIRC.

Not according to this page, which looks authoritative. That he doesn't mention the specific branch of the University of California whose Anthropology Department he was assisted by is slightly worrying, however. Anyway, I may do a bit more investigation on this guy later, or you could.

http://www.coldsiberia.org/monbow.htm

Some sources say otherwise.

"The Mongol bow is not as large and long as the English one, but it is vastly more powerful. The draw weight of an English longbow averages around 70-80 pounds, whereas the Old Mongol bow had a pull that, according to George Vernadsky, averaged at around 166 pounds. Chambers states that the pull varied from 100 to 160 pounds. This seeming discrepancy certainly reflects the fact that draw weight varied with the strength of the user, and with what use the bow had been made for. As could be expected, there was a considerable difference in shooting range. Whereas the English longbow could shoot at distances up to 250 yards or around 228 meters, the Mongol counterpart can hit its target at 350 yards or 320 meters and, if the archer is well trained for the task, even beyond that."

And if you wonder how they fired it accurately...

"The Old Mongols have their own technique for shooting, known as the "Mongolian release." The Mongols, if right-handed, keep their bow in the left hand, pushes it forward as the right arm pulls the string all the way back to behind the ear. The left arm is now fully extended, and the release is near. However, now comes an interesting part. Since this bow has immense power, the Mongols have to use a special technique to hold the string during the drawing of the bow and before the arrow is released. The technique is as follows: The string is held by the thumb, since this is the strongest finger. Still, it is not easy to hold 166 pounds comfortably. Thus, the thumb is supported with the index finger curling around, placed atop the outermost joint, exactly at the base of the nail. The other fingers are also curled, forming a fist. Even so, this is not enough. Hence, the Mongols use a special ring on which the string is hooked before release. This thumb ring, a cylinder that fits around the outer part of the thumb and protects its pad from damage as the string is released, is typically made from Chinese jade or agate, but leather, metal and bone is also known to have been used"

 

[Dracleath]

I've already explained in another thread why a 160 pound horsebow is absurd Just because something can be built doesn't mean it was standard issue. No one's going to use a 160lb bow in real combat because generally in real combat you're expected to aim and fire the bow more than once without your shoulder becoming dislocated from the socket.

Mongol bows were similar in construction to chinese bows and turkish bows. Bows with draws of up to 200lbs were made in these tradtions for TRAINING (building strength) and COMPETITION (distance contests). Not warfare.

Edit: And modern reproductions actually used in competitions in mongolia today made by traditional methods tend to draw from 50-75 lbs, going up to about 100.

 

[Simetrical]

Wikipedia, IMHO, is often more reliable than the random sites in google.

I don't pick random sites. I pick sites that are authoritative in some way, or if I don't, I mention the problems with my source.

That's a problem, since I read them in an article, not exact quotes. I have to dig it up.

Actually, after thinking it while, I read the article 3 years ago, so it might no longer exist.

Ah, well, it's not that important anyway. I think it's fair to say that the gladius was an effective weapon, but probably not nearly as damaging as being hit by a big axe, which would have its own disadvantages. I wouldn't, a priori, expect particularly good armor penetration from the gladius, but it would be easier to aim for vulnerable points than with an axe or spear.

In practise the western mediterranean armies had no archers.

I believe a few smaller tribes or what have you did. The major powers didn't, no. But I don't think we actually disagree on this point, except perhaps very slightly.

Well, you see, the bows could pierce the shield, however, I feel such happening would rare.

As long as we're clear that both of us are pretty much working on feelings. I'll see if I can't find that study.

Yes, but the Hoplites used bronze armour (or chest plate) while they used iron spear heads. Why didn't they use bronze spear heads if it was better?

I don't know. Possibly bronze was harder to forge but easier to cast, and that factored into it somehow?

Well, cavalry archers were rather rarely used in combined arms with a Phalanx (although there were exceptions, like Armenians and Bactrians).

Er, right, forget the context of your statement. Taking that into account, my reply now becomes: the idea would be that to fight the cavalry, the legions would have to stop and get hammered from behind by the phalanx, which could easily catch up to them. So the cavalry would just pin them in place while the phalanx did the actual killing.

"All things being equal" Well, in technology the Chinese were more advanced compared to the Mongols, however, the Mongol bow still had longer range than the Chinese crossbows. IIRC.

But the Mongol horse bow didn't have longer range than the Mongol foot bow.

Some sources say otherwise.

Undoubtedly. I don't have any opinion on the matter, personally.

(Damn, I'm feeling unusually conciliatory tonight . . .)

 

[Willowmound]

Where do these files go?

Sorry about the big font, but it seemed I needed to yell a little to be heard through the din.

I'd like to try this mod, but need someone to tell me the path. Thank you.

EDIT: never mind, it has been figured out.