Are English Longbowmen underpowered?

[kujalar]

I am not a professional expert of medieval warfare other than reading of it and playing wargames, but this is how I think of cavalry and longbows, some ideas...

If we speak of Agincourt, then there is one thing that is very hard to simulate with Field of Glory. It is infantry packing too dense in muddy field. I guess this happened at Agincourt. French knights exhausted themselves before reaching English lines. If the field would have been a firm grassy plain it would have been totally a different story.

Dense arrow fire forces infantry to advance shields interlocked with ~0,5 meter frontage/man. This slows the advance but makes impenetrable shield wall if the infantry uses big shields. (add the ploughed wet field)

What I have read about cavalry tactics, they all seem to circle somehow around the way how the horses react in battle. Horses are not very brave. They are quite scary pack animals who would like to evade danger when possible. For example, they evade dense infantry formation naturally, because they do not want to run against a wall. Infantry formation looks like a wall for them, if it is solid. Cavalry line charging another cavalryline is propably the same. One of the lines will evade the other. It depends on whose line of horses gets scared first and decides to evade. (cavalry learned to advance with many lines, because if the first line evades, the 2nd will force the enemy line to evade and rescue the first friendly line. Enemy first line is confused after meeting the friendly first line). Fatigue plays a major part when cavalry is skirmishing. The side whose horses gain too much fatigue will start to lose all skirmishes and have lost the battle. The worst situation is when horses after evade cannot outrun the enemy... cavalry often runs away from the battlefield before this happens, to save their skins.

And what longbow should do to cavalry charge? If there are enough arrows, I guess it should look like a thick wall of sticks incoming in front of the horses. Then you add some pain from arrow hits and second and third volley... and there you have a quite a good change of distrupting the charge... actually spoiling the charge by forcing horses to evade.

So in Field of Glory,
I think arrows should have a greater changes to distrupt cavalry. It should be cumulative so that with only 1 longbowman group the changes should be pretty poor, but if you concentrate lets say 4 groups to shoot the same target, the changes should be pretty high. Speaking with familiar wargaming term, the arrows should add SUPPRESSION

You need strong good quality archers, because they need skill to release arrows as volleys and they need skill to shoot enough arrows. There is only a minute or so time to shoot the arrows! What is the time a horse gallops 200-300 yards? If the bowmen are not ready and prepared they do not have time to react... So it is realistic that you have only 1 turn time to shoot at cavalry (1 change).

[Skanvak]

A modern composite bow (with the wheel thing) as a direct fire range of 50m. So against a charging horse, you really get only one shot...

[Paisley]

Well that would depend on a host of factors, not least terrain and how keen the knights were to maintain at least some order. Anyway, there's no doubt that most longbow fire was indirect and probably opened at around 200yds, maybe a bit more. It's extraordinarily unlikely the knights would have been going full tilt over 100 yds let alone 200. But if you say the knights average 20kph over the ground (which would be good going, and the longbows open fire at 180m, which is possibly a bit conservative), they cover 18000m/hour or 300m/minute. So over 30 seconds to cross the ground allowing perhaps three or four volleys.

However, I think the game models the longbow vs mtd knight pretty well - longbows never successfully defended their front by fire against a proper cavalry charge, they always needed an obstacle (stakes at Agincourt for example) to halt the cavalry's charge.

[deadtorius]

As I have already pointed out the main difference between TT and PC games is that on the TT you will get more chances to shoot due to the turn sequence than the PC game allows. Probably 1 more turn of shooting on the TT on average looking at game moves and how many turns you will spend getting shot at before you close. My personal experience is that LB with stakes can't shoot down the knights, but the stakes will cause them a great deal of pain if they get to them. Much less effective versus foot troops though and the stakes don't help against foot.

[Paisley]

So 50% more shooting on the approach? An argument for MF firing with 4 dice rather than three, perhaps (and artillery with 6 rather than 4).

[rbodleyscott]

So 50% more shooting on the approach? An argument for MF firing with 4 dice rather than three, perhaps (and artillery with 6 rather than 4).

The problem is that the game has to work well
1) For archers being directly advanced on by enemy.
2) Archers shooting against stationary enemy.

If you up the number of dice to 4 then you will find the latter far too effective. (It is pretty effective already).

[Paisley]

That's true.

I'm wondering if anyone has examples of French knights on foot being stopped by arrowfire (as opposed to the slaughter of the less well armoured Scots spearmen on numerous occasions which I think the game probably does okay (though I've yet to test it). I know French armour was generally regarded as arrowproof (rather dubious modern testing to the contrary notwithstanding), so were that so, there's no reason for anything to be considered wrong.

[SRW1962]

So 50% more shooting on the approach? An argument for MF firing with 4 dice rather than three, perhaps (and artillery with 6 rather than 4).

The problem is that the game has to work well
1) For archers being directly advanced on by enemy.
2) Archers shooting against stationary enemy.

If you up the number of dice to 4 then you will find the latter far too effective. (It is pretty effective already).

Richard, as one of the authors of the original TT game, do you think that from the tests that Paisley and myself have conducted with regards to comparing TT shooting with PC shooting (earlier in the thread) that there are differences (PC shooting less effective) and perhaps there is a shift in bias towards hand to hand combat as a result of this. Also considering the 'ganging up' factor in hand combat this might be quite a heavy bias away from shooting, that is presuming our figures are correct of course. If this is the case was it a deliberate design decision or an oversight that can be adjusted within the context of cohesion test modifiers etc.

It would be invaluable for your insight into the difference (again presuming the figures are correct) as I personally do find it puzzling as to why this may be the case if indeed it was a deliberate design decision.

[kujalar]

After reading all posts here and trying to find more information I have started to think the game propably handleds the cavalry charge thing quite good.

For some reference conserning how the charge is executed look http://www.deremilitari.org/resources/a ... nnett1.htm and find the part delivering the Knights' Charge. (not speaking anything of longbows)

The actual charge is launched from about 50 yards and that would be usually 1 hex or less in game.
This is also the range where longbows could think of scoring direct hits and penetrate the armor better.
The stakes give such a good protection they propably simulate the 'longboweffect' good enough, combined arrows and stakes and some billmen or spears helping the archers.
(The game does not have Romans throwing pilums 2 hexes either, there is 'impact melee' weapon type.)

[rbodleyscott]

Richard, as one of the authors of the original TT game, do you think that from the tests that Paisley and myself have conducted with regards to comparing TT shooting with PC shooting (earlier in the thread) that there are differences (PC shooting less effective) and perhaps there is a shift in bias towards hand to hand combat as a result of this.

Hard to say, because there is another factor to take into account, which is that it is much easier to "gang up" shooting in the PC game than in the TT game, which may cancel out some of the perceived disadvantages.

All I can say is that I am taking lots of longbowmen in my armies and winning most of my games. I am not quixotic. If I found them less than cost-effective I would not be using so many of them.

Just don't expect them to stand up to armoured enemy well in the open - they didn't historically.

Also note - the "muddy fields" of Agincourt are effectively simulated by the "open field" terrain type in FOG - "open field" being, perhaps, a poor choice of descriptive term, for which you can blame me and the rest of the TT team, not the PC team. (I cannot speak for the PC Agincourt scenario - I didn't design it and have not tried it).

Also note - in the Wars of the Roses, although both sides had lots of longbowmen, they don't seem to have had very much effect on the results of the field battles, which were mostly decided by melee between the opposing men-at-arms and billmen. This is pretty much what happens in my WOR games - they tend start with an exchange of archery between solid lines of archers, which then withdraw through gaps in the HF line, which are then plugged with HF to make a solid line again. (This is easy to achieve with the FOGPC movement system). This seems to get pretty much the historical effect.

If longbowmen were able to stop dismounted men-at-arms in open terrain something would be wrong with the game. They didn't do it in England and they didn't do it in France.

[SRW1962]

Thanks for the reply, I see your point about 'ganging up' and I will have to look into that, haviing said that I still believe that longbowmen can give a good account for themselves in the game under the right conditions. I totally agree that longbowmen should not be able to stop knights whether on foot or mounted, unless they have use of favourable terrain such as ploughed fields, edges of woods, ditches etc. I too play a lot of WOTR games as indeed I do with the TT rules and you are right that most of the battles did indeed come down to a slugging match.

As for the open field, maybe ploughed field would be a more appropriate description. I can also thoroughly without any bias whatsoever recommend the Agincourt 1415 scenario on the Hoc Est Bellum site, wonderfully rendered map and authentic deployments, troop types and army sizes and gives a great game too