Longbowman Changes

[Acuto]

Longbowmen were an iconic part of medieval English armies but they are rarely seen in this game at a high level and do not function quite as I think they should for several reasons:

1. They are very hard to mass:

It seems odd to me that a class of soldier that was essentially exclusive to the commoners can only be made from the castle. This makes them really hard to mass even though historically they made up the bulk of medieval English armies due to laws banned all sports on Sundays except for archery practice which was required by law for all able bodied males.

2. They shoot too slowly:

While I realize that having 12 range with thumb ring would be over-powered, it is also odd that a weapon that has been referred to as the "machine gun of the middle ages" fires slower than the crossbows/arbs of almost every other civilization due to the lack of thumb ring.

3. They shoot too far:

I understand that medieval longbows had impressive range but an additional 3 range for both longbows and the archer/crossbow/arb line (+1 for reaching castle age, +1 from yeomen and +1 for reaching imperial age) compared to other civs seems like a bit much.

In order to correct these issues, my suggestion is to change the Briton's unique castle age technology "yeomen" so that instead of giving +1 foot archer range and +2 tower attack, it would do the following:

1. Yeomen would now allow longbowmen to be created at the archery range rather than just the castle:

In order to not make Britons the equivalent of Goths but with archers instead of infantry, I would increase the training time of longbowmen to 30 seconds (24 with the Britons faster archery ranges). That way, they would take a little more time to train than crossbows/arbs but could still be massed much more quickly than they are now.

2. Yeomen would also make longbowmen shoot 15% faster:

Note that this would not give longbowmen the accuracy buff that comes along with the thumb ring ring technology and that the speed boost would NOT apply to the crossbows/arb line.


I'm not actually sure if this would be a nerf of a buff overall for the Britons, but it would give them a little more unique flavor. Losing 1 range would likely make the Briton's archer line and longbows a little less over-powered in archer wars, but would probably also make them a little more effective against non ranged units due to the increased fire rate. The ability to create them out of the archery range would make it so there is very little reason, other than not wanting to spend the resources to research yeomen in the first place, to use the archer line over them. In my opinion this would be a good thing as many of the civilizations in this game feel too similar, especially because the UUs of many civilizations get very little use as is. I know that it is unlikely that this change will happen and I don't even know if anyone will read this but feel free to let me know what you think if you do.

[Kinvadren]

I always play as Britons vs AI and love the Longbowmen, but they are kind of hit and miss. They're amazing from a hill and when defended. And there's something very satisfying about having 20 Longbowmen all snipe a single enemy unit at once. The very definition of pin cushion.

You make some good points. Considering the speed at which you can pump out normal archers from an Archery range, the capacity to produce Longbowmen is substantially less even if you have 2 or 3 castles. Though I do like the super range they and castles and towers have.

[Acuto]

Hey, thanks for the reply! Yeah I love them too and they are actually a really good unit right now, but sadly not the most practical one. They only have slightly better stats than arbs so it typically just isn't worth the investment to switch especially once you consider the amount of time it takes to mass them. While losing one range on all foot archer units would hurt a bit, I think the suggested faster fire rate of longbowmen plus the ability to make them out of the archery range would make the switch from archer/crossbows to longbowmen way more practical and the 1 additional damage compared to arbs plus a slightly faster rate of fire would make it worth the price of yeomen in most cases. I love longbowmen as they are but I think they could use a little bit of a tweak to make them a bit more realistic and a little more practical to use

[Karl Perkins]

They're perfectly fine.

[Buntkreuz]

Just a question, who refered to a longbow as the "machine gun of middle ages"?
Its the slowest bow you can pick anyway, but that quote seems rather off.

[Acuto]

This quote is from an article by Robert E. Kaiser who wrote an article with the intent of separating fact from fiction regarding the English longbow. It took about fifteen seconds to about a minute to re-load a medieval crossbow depending on the type (those with a stirrup or belt hook were faster to reload but the more powerful windlass crossbows took much longer). The longbow on the other hand could shoot 10-12 arrows per minute which allowed massive armies of them in battles such as Crecy and Agincourt to shoot additional arrows before their previous shots had landed which created an arrow storm effect. While there were certainly faster shooting archers using smaller bows that could be shot from horseback such as the horn/composite bows used by the mongols and middle eastern armies among others, the longbow was capable of shooting much faster than the bows used by the English/Welsh's European contemporaries (this is of course not counting small hunting bows that were not powerful enough to be useful in war). Obviously having crossbows fire at their actual rate in a game like this would be silly but I still find it a bit odd that the majority of crossbowmen in AOE2 have a faster rate of fire than longbows.

[Kinvadren]

Yes, despite the amount of practice and strength required to shoot a longbow, it (like any bow) could shoot way faster than a crossbow because a crossbow required you to crank the string back, place the bolt and then fire (at short range). A heavy crossbow was even worse and needed an entire gear assembly and huge strength to crank it all the way back and set. People often forget that crossbows were more like one-shot guns than bows, though other than the English Longbow, they had better armor piercing than most bows.

Longbows also had massive long distance piercing power whereas a crossbow usually only had short range armor piercing power, partly because the draw distance on the string was so small. The only way to solve this was to make a very heavy mechanic crossbow that required a LOT of hand cranking on a winch to set it and that was almost impossible to hold without some sort of stand supporting it.

As for firing speed...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossbow#Medieval_Europe

"Usually these [crossbows] could only shoot two bolts per minute versus twelve or more with a skilled archer [longbowmen]..."

Longbows were also dirt cheap to make compared to the complex mechanical assembly of a crossbow, making longbows popular among peasants.

[Acuto]

Here is a video showing a comparison of a longbow vs a windlass crossbow (one of the slower but more powerful kinds). Obviously it took a lot of training to build up the strength and technique to shoot a heavy longbow but speed and accuracy compared to a crossbow. This is why this type of soldier was practically exclusive to England and Wales but that English law about practice ensured that they had a whole nation of men who could shoot a longbow competently.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1w8yHeF4KRk

[Acuto]

bump

[PeteSkTemplar]

Reflex bows and those similar (composite, etc.) used in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Middle East and dunno where else were to be used precisely for fast and still strong shooting. Those bows had even more range than longbows though they were very expensive, even hereditary so I think that Longbows should not be that different from other bows but cheaper though weaker or on par at max with composite. But I find more problematick that some civs though they havve arbalest or heavy cavalry archer do not have bracers (last range upgrade) what is big problem same with thumbring and parthian tactics bonus. Only exemption would be kipchaks for they shoot like MGs still:)

[Acuto]

Well a lot the reason they don't have bracer is just due to balance reasons which I totally get. That is one of the hardest part of a game like this, trying to make it as balanced as possible while remaining somewhat true to history. Obviously if it was too accurate it wouldn't be balanced at all. That being said, I still think some things can be improved upon.

I think Cumans are plenty over-powered as is and don't need bracer but they at least do feel pretty unique. Their light cav and cav archer creation speed bonuses along with their very strong/practical unique and semi-unique unit give them a lot of character. It is kind of a fine balance, I really like the design of this civ but the devs simply need to find a way to make them less overpowered without making lancers/kipchaks completely useless. Basically what I want for the Britons is for their UU to be a bit more accessible without being completely broken but at the same time tweaking it a bit to make them a little more realistic/different from crossbows.

As far as the bow comparison, eastern composite bows were fantastic and had a phenomenal power to size ratio but they were limited on how powerful they could be without giving up the ability to use them from horseback.

The type of longbows used in war by professional English and Welsh soldiers during the 14th and 15th centuries were not limited in this way because they were used on foot. Due to the quality of armor they were competing against, they had been up-scaled to about 120-180 pound draw weight at around 30 inches. The downside to this amount of power was of course that they were not usable from horseback, since a bow of that power and length really cannot be drawn unless your feet planted and you use a forward leaning posture to engage your back muscles so you are pulling with more than just your arm. While the eastern composite bows were likely more efficient (getting more power per pound of draw weight) the fact that they could only have so high of a draw weight and still usable from horseback makes me doubt they were able to out-range/out-power the heaviest longbows. That being said I do think that the 12 range of elite longbows (and the 11 range of Briton arbs) is a bit excessive when compared to other civs.

[MVRK99]

I love my longbowmen. Ive really only been playing with the Britons. Pretty successful so far. 6 ranked wins and 1 loss. TBH. I think they are fine the way they are.

[Kinvadren]

Good points about longbows needing the user to be firmly planted on the ground. It's often why squads of longbowmen would have pike walls in front of them to try and give them protection on the battlefield since they weren't that mobile. Longbows were excellent defensive weapons though if the user was protected by a wall or height advantage.

And yeah, making longbows any more powerful in the game would probably make them too unbalanced unless you nerfed something else about them. I usually play as the Britons and one of the best counters to them are onagers. Nothing worse than seeing your squad of 20 longbowmen flattened to nearly nothing by a single onager shot.

[Pastapockets]

The real advantage of a crossbow is you could load a bolt and peek it around a merlon and wait indefinitely until a target appeared. A bowstring can't be pulled back forever as you physically tire out.

[Acuto]

Exactly, pikes/stakes/ditches and of course walls were often employed to protect them because they were vulnerable to enemies up close, especially mounted ones they couldn't run from.

Yeah I'm actually curious about how this would work it would probably be a buff so maybe they would need lower armor or something. As far as nerfing something about them there are actually 2 things:

First losing one from their max range due to yeomen having a different function would hurt as they would out-range enemy archers, skirms and those dreaded mangonels by less (unfortunately, I have had 20 of my longbows get vaporized by a sneaky mangonel while I checked my eco more times than I can count).

The other thing is that crossbows/arbs only getting to max 10 range would make them a little less effective longterm and they don't hit quite as hard as longbows either so you would likely need to make the switch which would mean spending the resources on yeomen and likely elite longbows in order to keep up. This isn't quite as clean as the current strategy where you make archers in feudal upgrade them to crossbows and then arbs and kind of forget that longbows exist.

But yeah overall I'm not sure exactly how this would play out with out testing. I'm aware that a change like this is super unlikely but I would it if the devs found a way to make longbowmen and other UU (such as the absurdly powerful but horribly slow teutonic knight) more of a part of their civs standard army comp.

[Acuto]

Originally posted by Pastapockets:

The real advantage of a crossbow is you could load a bolt and peek it around a merlon and wait indefinitely until a target appeared. A bowstring can't be pulled back forever as you physically tire out.

This is a great point. A lot of people would look at crossbows and be like "those are so slow, they must have been useless". But their ability to shoot from cover or crouching rather than standing with most of your body exposed like you had to with conventional bows is where they really shined. In drawn out sieges, a high rate of fire was not as critical as being able to stay safe and shoot with precision. Also, the heaviest windlass style crossbows could be extremely powerful.