Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!

[zzcat]

Originally Posted by VedalkenBear

After all, the samurai began as exactly the kind of mounted archer that dominated the medieval period in Asia.

I think you are talking about Mongol horsemen, not samurai

I tried to google some English infomation about Yumi just a minute ago. Thousands of webpages are found but few of them even mentioned the effective killing range of classic yumi. Most of them are talking about Kyudo and self perfecting, I think it's pointless for westerner to care about its practical performance.

Anyway, two webpages are found when I search "japanese bow+effective range"
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/...amurai#Weapons
http://www.samurai-archives.com/ste.html
The first one said the yumi's effective range is 50 meters or less, and the second said it's only mere 30 meters.

In fact Japanese bow is still quite deadly at short range because japanese archers are very skilled at point-blank shooting and the heavy arrowhead can penetrate through some armor, but it depend on personal training, and point-blank shoot do little help in big battle.

[VedalkenBear]

Originally Posted by zzcat

I think you are talking about Mongol horsemen, not samurai

This shows that you don't know the origins of the samurai. As I state above, Samurai began as _exactly_ the mounted archer that Mongol horsemen were. After all, the actual _training_ of the samurai was known as the 'Way of Horse and Bow'. Note what is present in that, and what is missing.

If you think of a samurai as a dismounted warrior wielding the katana, you are thinking of someone that only existed from the middle of the 1500s on. Samurai certainly existed in Japan for 500 years before that, and it is arguable for how long before that 'proto-samurai' existed (at least 200 years, in some people's estimate).

Please try to refer to the period when you say the word 'samurai', because it makes a very large difference. At different times, they were horse archers (before ~1530), highly pragmatic elite dismounted swordsmen (~1530-1600), and highly idealistic administrators (1600-1868).

If you would like to read a good book on the history of the samurai, you can check out Farris's Heavenly Warriors.