Archery poll

[Cainehill]

Saber Cherry said:
Yes! If something is never useful, it has no reason to exist, as it detracts from the game (like rotten sea-slug entrails at a salad bar). More importantly, if something was never historically useful, it would never have existed (or been remembered). Slings, shortbows, axes, and militia were not deployed for centuries because they were useless (that's a double-negative, meaning "they were deployed because they were useful") - so if a game makes them seem useless, something's wrong!

Except that Dominions doesn't model some of the things that made those things useful. For example : militia were used for ages because, "real" troops required training and equipment, while militia could simply be pulled from the farms when it wasn't planting or harvent time.

Similarly, axes and slings were used for ages because they were cheap and easy to make - slings could be made almost instantly from rags, while an axe required a piece of wood and an axe head, both of which could be turned out in good quantity by trained people in a single day. A sword, on the other hand, took days of work for a single weapon.

Finally - many of those were useful for centuries because there weren't demons, undead, demi-gods, and mages on the battle field, nor were there entire armies that were all heavily armored, making the sling and short bow almost totally useless. Look at Ulmish armies - if there had been entire armies wearing heavy plate mail in historic warfare, a long of tactics and weapons would have been useless.