Bow Balance

[Bowlingballhead]

Bowmen are almost universally cheap, however. I have discovered, through playing around with Caelum, that bowmen are rather effective in larger hordes. Since you can buy ten times the bowmen you can any powerful melee unit, this is quite possible. Their inaccuracy does make them difficult to mix with melee units, which is a shame.

In my modding experiments I also discovered that morale checks are caused merely by being shot AT, not just by being hit. Fire enough arrows, and you can send low-morale units fleeing without a single arrow hitting its mark. This became clear because my multilaunchers (deliberately) can't hit the broad side of a barn.

[Taqwus]

Massed bowmen in back; cheap or tough units in front. When playing T'ien Chi, for instance, early on I used masses of cheap and ethereal Dispossed Spirits to stall enemies and had my bowmen fire volley after volley into the melee. Works even better with Wind Guide, and while Flaming Arrows will hurt your chaff too, chaff's meant to be cheap.

[Argitoth]

Originally posted by Taqwus:
Massed bowmen in back; cheap or tough units in front. When playing T'ien Chi, for instance, early on I used masses of cheap and ethereal Dispossed Spirits to stall enemies and had my bowmen fire volley after volley into the melee. Works even better with Wind Guide, and while Flaming Arrows will hurt your chaff too, chaff's meant to be cheap.

One time I casted Wind Guide and Fire Arrows on 100 animated archers (which already do massive damage) and about 50 more regular shortbow archers. I kill huge ranks with one round. It was too sweet.

[Gandalf Parker]

there is one bow that does. The "thunder bow" I think it is. I like to give it, and the crystal eye thing, and a BUNCH of strength boosters to the summonable giant when I need a god-killer

[Taqwus]

Yeah. The Firbolg (Awaken Sleeper; Nature / probably Conjuration, but check...), with 15 precision and otherwise good stats makes a good archer.
Another missile weapon for which strength is useful is the Fire Bola; it's a thrown weapon, and strength affects range. Lots of ammo, too, and it takes only one hand slot.

[Kristoffer O]

Originally posted by IKerensky:

Bow weakness strike me when I compared the composite, long and current bow. then I look at a basic shortsword and saw his damage range to be from 5 + 10 strengh = 15 + 2D6* so they are basically better than any bow.... wich is somewhat surprising ....

I would prefer to be impaled by a thin arrow to being impaled or cut by a short sword. To my knowledge the romans were considered ignoble when they started to use short swords instead of long spears because the casualties were so much higher . Battles were no longer fun so to speak.

[Osium]

The longbow was like the stealth bomber of its day and age, but the crossbow was probably a more leathal weapon and cheaper in both ways.

It was lethal because any tom dick or harry could pick it up learn to load it and fire it very effectively. It was cheap because no intricate skill was required to kill the most skilled and dedicated warriors on the field, it also happened to be cheap enough to be able to conscript hundreds of peasants and arm them all with a crossbow.

Sure the rate of fire was slower than a longbow, in the hands of a skilled archer the longbow was the most dominant weapon of its time. However those skilled archers cost way more than threatening to throw your peasants off their land if they didnt come fight for you ;p