Retinue Longbowmen

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"Black arrow! I have saved you to the last. You have never failed me and always I have recovered you.'"

— John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, The Hobbit

In game[edit | edit source]

Lbow elite rkc.png
Retinue Longbowmen — Vital statistics
Retinue Longbowmen

Unique light infantry unit with quicker upgrade time than crossbow, but poorer damage and accuracy; capable of dealing rapid-fire splash damage, and an elevated timber ramp cost.

Prereq: Build time HP LOS Attack Attack speed Movement
speed
Upgrade of Upgrades to
  • Late Mediaeval Era [3];
  • Level 2: Mercenaries Military
12.2s
(183t)
129 12 22 2s
(30t)
26
Longbowm,en merc.png
Apex unit.
Cost Created from Armour Weapon range Specialty
Base Ramp Pop
Wealth.jpg: 70;
Timber: 60
Wealth.jpg: 2;
Timber: 3
1 Barracks.jpg 1 1–12
  • Strong versus heavy infantry.
  • +1 splash attack radius.
England.jpg

Overall strategy[edit | edit source]

Unlike spears, guns or crossbows, longbows are very difficult weapons to master, but highly deadly if in highly trained hands. And so for this reason, English noblemen of the Imperial Era are known for raising picked bands of Retinue Longbowmen to bolster their king's armies. Although outranged by crossbows, and also not very capable of piercing armour, the English Retinue Longbowman, based off the Welsh helwyr , has a rate of fire that compensates well its lack of range along with greater attack and robustness compared to their Yeoman predecessors.

If sufficiently massed together and protected, longbowmen can easily mess up massed formations of infantry and can even pack sufficient punch to down more heavily-armed foes. This is helped further by longbowmen having a medium splash attack radius, meaning that they can shower an area with plenty of arrows, causing a definite psychological if not physical effect on their enemies. Because of their good movement speed, Retinue Longbowmen can be used to outflank even the more heavily armoured heavy archers of eastern nations like Venice and Turkey.

Unit summary[edit | edit source]

  • A Rain of Iron and Blood — Yeomen Archers are best used for attacking heavy melee infantry and countering other archer units.
  • Rush Crush — Massed infantry can easily overwhelm archers. Bring your own heavy infantry as a "moving wall" to protect them.

See also[edit | edit source]

History[edit | edit source]

It was thought that the Normans owed victory over the Saxons in 1066 to the use of Breton archery as well as strategically timed cavalry charges against the Saxon shieldwall at Hastings, yet after this episode the Normans were slow to appreciate the value of massed archery as a tactical asset until their forays into Welsh territory, during which the guerilla tactics of the Welsh, aided by their use of the longbow, exacted a price so high in Norman blood that the Normans themselves were impressed enough to begin recruiting the survivors of Norman rule in Wales into their armies. Unlike the Welsh, who preferred silent, sniping attacks, the Normans arrayed their new longbowmen en masse, turning a single-shot weapon into a deadly hail of pointed ends which could even penetrate steel armour at a proper angle.

So valued did the longbow become in Norman eyes that in 1251, Henry III ordered all men in England to practice at archery on Sundays. Despite being ridiculed by the other military powers, English faith in the longbow was proven in the battlefields of France, and even convinced the Portuguese to use the same tactics as their English allies, allowing them to maintain independence from Spain. The wreck of the Mary Rose (lost in 1545CE) was found to have contained many longbows as well as hundreds of arrows. Although firearms proved their worth in ease of use despite being inaccurate and unwieldly, the English colonists in Virginia even considered longbows for use — the reason why the English then didn't use them wasn't simply because they had firearms, but because they didn't want the native Powhatan to learn to craft their own longbows in the English fashion and menace their own American settlements.

Chronicles

Bronze Dawn