What are you even doing in this thread? you're raving about americans and yet you posted with a yankee IP on your one flagged post. are you alright? why are you debasing yourself?
Did you guys use crossbows or archers? did you copy chinese crossbows?
Composite bows were used in Europe long before the crusades, both the Greeks and Romans had them. If anything the Greeks and later Romans took that shit from the inbred fire worshipers who got those things from Steppe niggers. Composite bows do have a problem with the humidity of western europe, its why self-bows were rather prevalent until the crossbow came around. Composite crossbows do not have a problem with the elements due to how they're constructed.
We used crossbow even to this day, many mountain hunters still use big ass crossbow, in fact one of our earliest myths involving our ancient line of King protecting the land with some kind of God/Divine crossbow, then the chinese sabotaged it and took over the country.
As we all knows, composite bows aren't shit compared to the longbow.
Yes, composite bow can be smaller and weaved into interesting shaped like re-curved bow, but yew wood longbow has always been the best.
What if Washington had archers?
still, id take a composite recurve over any other bow of equivalent length. their power to weight ratio is ridiculous.
Holy shit Satan! You're onto a very important point there! Effective training regimes do definitely improve the way you use a tool/weapon! This completely changes the argument!
If you don't have the balls to post with your own flag them turn it off and accept the ridicule you deserve.
Yes, the crossbow is a weapon that is notably less effective than a longbow wielded by a (very very very) well trained man, but it is a hell of a lot easier to field a few thousand crossbowmen than it is to train enough of your people to produce a few hundred mid-range longbowmen. The mercenaries who had the funding and time to train with crossbows made up for a lot of the deficiencies of the weapon (when compared to the longbow), but expert users are not really relevant when talking about army level use - unless you do what the Bongs did and use legal and cultural tools to produce as many of them as you can which would probably be equivalent to a modern army fielding entire regiments of Delta/SAS/Spetsnaz equivalents mixed in with your average riflemen - it would probably end with you looking completely retarded unless you somehow made it work
What's wrong with mixing veterans into rookie troops again?
Shouldn't they balance each other out?
Producing veterans is a long and uncertain business (a lot of men are inconsiderate enough to die in the process as well), and then while the vets are certainly going to improve a unit of rookies the rookies are going to break a lot faster than the more experienced men which puts those vets in a place where they're very likely to get killed. It would generally be a much better choice to put those skilled and experienced men into special units where their greater skills can be used without risking losing them unnecessarily.
The concept was known since Roman times.
Your opinion on this topic doesn't matter, its historic fact that they went onto the battlefield and fought in several different roles.
You don't need it, but it enhances its utility. See pic related.
It literally does, because if is you then your claim was that I was spouting bullshit that crossbowmen were amongst the better trained soldiers.
And the fact that crossbowmen were amongst the first type of soldiers to be part of a regular standing army is the literal proof that I am right.
Additionally the Genoese and Swiss mercenaries remained popular for centuries despite takeing part in several battles on the losing side.
user medieval towns all over continental Europe had their own guilds to train crossbowmen. Its a misconception to think that the Longbowmen trained harder in their art than the Crossbowmen.
People decided to use Crossbows because they had their own defining characteristics, which made them better despite the fact that they didn't have the range of the Longbow.