>>18004384
Pointless debate. 99% of medieval armies outside of Europe had no armor. In Europe only 25% had armor.

>>18004384
Depends on the range

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>>18004396
This isn't up for debate btw. Look at any contemporary medieval depiction of a battle and most soldiers will be unarmored.

Nothing a man can launch can punch through steel plate.
Even early guns struggled.

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>>18004405
Where are the steel plates?

>>18004415
Brownoid chinks were too stupid and poor to make them.

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>>18004415
And no they aren't wearing armor under their clothes, that's retarded. I'm not saying that no one ever war armor, just that the vast majority (80-90%) of soldiers never did.

>>18004415
>>18004421
>*tooooot* *tooooot*

>>18004415
>>18004421
These are just artistic depictions not accurate depictions of the events and soldiers.

>>18004384
they were effective against horses, the english lost the war, and longbow's heyday which was very limited in itself was about 100 years. that's all you need to know. middle ages contain additional 900 years of warfare tactics

>>18004396
>>18004402
people base their understanding of medieval warfare on fucking dungeons and dragons
a full suit of armor probably cost more than an average peasant would earn in their life and even portions of a suit were prohibitively expensive for anyone that had to work for a living. and that's not taking into account the work required to maintain metal armor so its actually usable or all the surrounding components you needed to properly use a suit of mail
the average fighter wore thickly woven linen with maybe some leather and/or metal studs sewn into it

>>18004533
>they were effective against horses
not really, what was effective (for the english) was putting inbred retards that thought charging heavy cavalry uphill through mud was a good idea in charge of military strategy

>>18004542
D&D was renaissance themed (its now US west coast themed) and at that point steel plate and mails were absolutely commonplace among foot soldiers.
You are thinking about the early middle ages.

I wish sieges were better understood, I don't understand them either very well, coupled with fortifications architecture. I can shoot a wooden bow pretty well but it just seems so clumsy on a typical euro castle. crossbows got memoryholed and few people can make them as they used to, if any. classic bowyery is in much better shape

>>18004552
>You are thinking about the early middle ages.
yes? DnD is what people think of as "medieval" when its very much not and then argue about how knights wearing full plate armor were charging down muslims at fucking Tours or some shit

>>18004555
because modern crossbows are better for hunting than historical crossbows and you don't need a war crossbow to hunt and anything someone would use a heavy war crossbow for they just use a gun

>>18004555
sieges are another area people are so horribly misinformed thanks to pop culture. most sieges ended either when the attackers gave up and went home, or when the defenders negotiated a surrender. and the day to day of a siege was mostly just sitting around and waiting, or digging tunnels or building trebuchets. very rarely did any real fighting take place because the castles were just too defensive. there's a reason early modern kings slighted every castle they got their hands on if they didn't want to take ownership of it

>>18004550
well, yes and no. muslims didn't have that problem in the third crusade but still they were very hesitant in approaching crusader lines because their horses would get decimated by crossbowmen. similar later with mongols in eastern europe. longbow did the same only cheaper and with higher rate of fire so it was more effective at stopping an actual determined charge of heavy cavalry in the open field, while crossbows would need a much more fortified position or a pretty strong infantry support to do the same.
the reason why turks couldn't break the lines by shooting from the greater range was light mass of such arrows and crusaders were well armoured. to shoot heavier they would have to get into a crossbow range and get rekt

>>18004568
primitive bows are also not a top tier hunting weapon but it didn't hurt the enthusiasm. I believe it's mostly cultural, the crossbow just isn't as iconic

>>18004583
I think it's also just easier to make. usually when you see historic bows they are based on easier cultural designs and only complete autists have like 80 lb recurve bows. another part would probably be the fact that bows were harder to use and train someone to use so a lot of cultures like the bongs and nips developed cultural shooting competitions around them and the types of bows that had competitions or whatever the fuck the nips do with their bows stayed around like how you don't really see any bongolian marksmanship culture in the US, but you do see germanic/central yuropean style shooting and guns designed for that style of shooting and shooting competitions derived from American and Scandinavian army training

>>18004384
>were bong longbowmen (or I guess archers in general) effective vs armor
Massed archers, yes. Individual archers, fuck no.
When you've got a few thousands arrows raining on you every handful of seconds, one of them is gonna get in a gap.

>>18004598
>I think it's also just easier to make

absolutely, that is the part, and the learning curve is easier. additionally crossbows operate in pretty high draw weights which is quite uncomfortable during manufacture, it's not quite a hobby tier

>>18004557
>DnD, a game that has had guns in its main settings for most of its existence, is what people think of as "medieval"
'no'

>>18004384
Everyone had archers, so they clearly worked on some level, but Todd & Co., have never been able to get an arrow to pierce proper plate armor in any meaningful way.

The best you could hope for seems to have been sheer numbers and lucky shot in the gaps of the armor itself, but any single shot had about a 1% chance of doing any real damage.

This is why they all chose lances eventually. Swords and arrows don't do much against a man-tank, so you either have to bludgeon someone to get them off their feet, pierce them with a really, really, really big stick or both.