Armies cannot afford to have all their troops in heavy armor. While heavy armored or shielded troops can protect and deflect away arrows, they don't make up the entire force. The lighter armored but more mobile forces are the ones that are going to be pelted and most vulnerable to the arrows.
Once the lighter forces are removed, the heavier forces are subjected to skimishers on the sides, hit and run, which disrupts the heavy armor formations and tire the armored soldiers out.
Yes, arrows can penetrate armor as armor does have an enormous spectrum in protection from light to heavy. Arrows are likely able to penetrate armor on the lower ends of the spectrum. But as the arrows and later the crossbows become more lethal, more effort goes to the armor --- from the very design that are rounded and angled meant to deflect the projectiles, the quality of the metal, the sheer workmanship needed to make these armors --- the greater the costs of these armors. But treasuries are limited, the more super these armors can be, the fewer people can wear them, leaving them to officers, nobles, and select elite few, while the vast majority of the plebian army is going to be poorly armored. That probably is what happened with the Battle of Thermopylae with Leonidas and his elite 300 hoplites (not likely to be naked with six pack abs, but with full laminar armor, but lets also give credit to the 2000 slaves they also commanded). A larger armor like the Persians likely to have a good amount of their troops poorly armored. However, in a more open battlefield, not forced into a tight pass, lighter forces of skirmishers like peltasts, would have harassed, pick apart a heavy armor formation with hit and run attacks, forcing heavy armor to exhaust themselves, a similar situation with the Crusaders facing the Arabs. On a tight pass, the advantage of skirmishers would not have been realized, until the Persians are able to get around the back of the Spartan formation, which again, would have called for lighter troops to scale the mountainsides.
The drawpull of a Mongolian bow is about 166 lbs, and that is double of an English longbow, which in turn is about double of that used for archery in sport today. While you can create armor to a select few to withstand that bow, most of their opposing armies do not have the finances, the time needed, the talent required to build such exquisite armors in quantity. Once the shiny knights have lost their supporting but lightly armored infantry, they themselves gets picked off.
When the gun finally came around, the armor designers also took the task of designing armors against these weapons, but the costs of these armors ended up too high, as you would expect, and the rest is history.
Which is why making defenses too expensive to be affordable matters.
Another note.
The ancient Chinese --- around the time the Roman Empire began --- already had crossbows with sights and triggers, which you can use and aim remarkably similar to a modern crossbow. These crossbows have a draw weight of around 78 kgs, which is around 167 lbs. But unlike the Mongolian bow, which requires a year to make due to the fish derived glues and the multiple layers of select wood needed, the crossbows are much easier to mass manufacture, with their metal mechanisms made by the first blast furnaces in the world. While seasoned archers is a specialized career that needs people to be trained from childhood, crossbows allow you to grab a mass number of peasants, and quickly train them in weeks, days, in using a crossbow. A crossbow uses these long iron bolts, like spikes or nails, as projectiles. While a shield can deflect these bolts from a distance, at closer ranges these metal bolts can puncture through shields.
Because a larger number of peasants can be trained to carry crossbows, that somehow alters how the ancient Chinese fought in relation to the rest of the world, particularly when they are in their constant civil wars. That means crossbows vs. crossbows. They also fought frequently against northern nomads that are heavily in horseback and uses archery, so there is a lot of flinging things between them. Further complicating things, the Chinese would also hire these nomads for archery-cavalry formations, and then the Chinese would fight their civil wars with the aid of these formations, along with the crossbow troops, the heavy armored troops, the cataphracts, and skirmishers.
Also noted is how over the dynasties, the Chinese evolved from light troops lamellar armors with shields and long pole arms, with phalanx like formations. But as time goes on, the body lamellar armors become more voluminous, covering more and more parts of the body, and as the body armor becomes more effective, the shields become smaller and smaller, until some point, they don't carry shields at all. Due to civil wars, Chinese vs. Chinese, the opposing forces are symmetric, leading to an arms race of thicker and more voluminous armors, heavier crossbows, longer swords and heavier pole arms. This reached a peak when you got both sides with heavy cataphracts, riders and horses with heavy armor, only thing that are open are their eyes, noses, mouth and hands.
But when they start fighting the northern horseback riders more, the Turks, Huns, the proto-Mongols and proto-Tungusics, the trend starts reversing again, with armors becoming lighter and lighter. The heavier armored soldiers will have problems engaging and chasing horseback riders that are skirmishing, and so the use of heavy armor began to go down for the rest of their history.
There is some counter play here:
Archers > Skirmishers > Knights > Archers.
As to how it relates to games, games are often simplification of military theory. Like your typical raid party.
Archers = Ranged unit
Knights = tank
Skirmishers = DPS
Plus the obligatory support unit, the healer, which is the representative of the support principle in warfare.
I will close this, to add that Jordan Weisman, the Creator of all things BT and MW, is fan of Roman and Medieval history.
Edited by Anjian, 22 January 2019 - 05:42 AM.
2
PhoenixFire55, on 22 January 2019 - 01:33 AM, said:
