ethan wrote: Are they seen as an effective troop type? or are they generally (leaving aside longbows, jannissaries and a few other super elite troops) just something you took because they were around? Lots of peasantish types could use a bow, telling them to stand in a line and shoot was pretty easy so voila! you had troops.
Would be interesting to see what other uses of MF archers in history we can find. The Chinese seem to have used a fair number, the Germans fielded fair numbers of Xbows I think, Fatimid Egypt has a corp of Armenian archers IIRC, there are many others.
Strange the french would'nt allow their peasents the use of a bow did'nt want them trained unlike the English were no doubt.
Crossbows would have been easier to train people to use and the self bow used in European armies would not have the penatration of either the Longbow or the Crossbow against Knight ect.
The trouble with bows not longbows (different range and penatration power)is that if you stand in a field shooting at charging Knights honestly if you don't kill enough you will die. Its quite simple man in open with bow man in armour on horse charging you with lance how long do you have to hit enough to break the charge. On Sky TV there was a history programme about Longbows (loads on you tube) and they did a test to see what was the range that a longbow could penatrate a good Italian set of Armour it was was about 50 yards I'm sure that the ordinery self bow would struggle at less than that. IMO I think that medium bow are classed as about right against most troop types.