[Knai]

Bows and Crossbows are being addressed here, to keep posts reasonable. Also, I can't seem to find the edit button.

Crossbows were more powerful and could pierce armor better than bows, and were more expensive. There were immensely complicated machines, and crossbows weren't among them, but at this point standardized parts didn't exist, so each crossbow had to be built by hand, which made them more expensive than bows. And just like bows, they arc. Meaning that as a sniper weapon, or when one actually needs to go through armor, or, given less training, you just need to shoot one guy and take him out, this is probably the better weapon. For mass battles these were less efficient, although a crossbow volley from close range would be devastating, so a few ranks of crossbowmen up front who made sure to fire in concert (and in a line, since that makes armor piercing that much easier, as everything talked about but the sling bullet loses way too much power to puncture armor effectively if arced significantly) would make the front ranks that much nastier. This just means that you don't have the melee types, or the melee types have the crossbows, and assumes a high archer battlefield, which stops being effective against cavalry on a sunny day without mud unless you have something like a river with a bridge, and troops that can hold the bridge. Pike contingents aren't bad here, but a spear and shield formation similar to the phalanx would be effective as well.

Bows had a higher rate of fire, which made up for quite a lot. Now, to address one particular point that had been made. Arrows would flex significantly when fired, but they would then straighten out and fly straight. The flexing didn't impact accuracy, and was not a problem. Similarly, on bows having one point to draw to. This is accurate for the modern compound bow, and there are distances at which it is much easier to aim than others, but you have a decent variety of draw lengths with any ancient bow.

Now, arrows flexing needs to be looked at a little more, which brings up another relevant weapon. The atlatl. It threw darts that were basically long arrows, and they bent massively, but still straightened out and flew straight. The flexing of the darts was not an issue, and just like the arrows you need a very high speed camera to see this. Both weapons could be very accurate. Now, the bow out-ranges the atlatl significantly, but the atlatl has its place. A nice hunting weapon, always readied, and probably better than just a javelin, although it takes more training. Mictlan should have these, but sadly doesn't. In both cases, with these weapons, armor is a lot more effective than against crossbows, but the bow isn't bad for sheer volume, and the longbow is among the best, not the English bow specifically, but any high draw weight bow which wasn't made in a really shoddy fashion.

Staff slings were also omitted from the above post. They work completely differently from hand slings, and have a lower effective range, but are made for heavier projectiles. These are probably closer to a crossbow in armor effectiveness, as the projectiles had a lot of force. Unlike the sling though, you could not use a shield, although you wouldn't with a sling as it makes reloading difficult, and screws up many styles of aim.


All of this addresses massed formations. Things change rather dramatically without them, which means anywhere cavalry isn't effective. In a large, mountainous area slings are suddenly very efficient, crossbows are upped because you can shoot down a ledge without retaliation and deal with a less significant problem from armor, and the atlatl remains a big game weapon.