"how many ranged units" Topic

Building my army, I've decided to have 5 spear units, 5 mounted(3 sergants, 2 knights) my army will be 17 units, so 10 are taken up by these. The last 7 I was planning on dividing between ranged and foot knights. My plan is 4 crossbow, 3 foot knights. But would this be to much ranged units vs regular infantry. 5 spear vs 4 crossbow.

It all depends on what county's army you are building for what time period.

I think a "typical" medieval army usually divided up with 50% infantry, 25% cavalry, and 25% archers. Of course you can find outliers in either direction, but for the example above, I would do 4 – 5 more of foot knights and the remaining balance archers.

Damon.

But if I have 4 foot knights, won't that be a very high "knight count" next to regular infantry?

5 spear vs 4 foot knights?

They would still be infantry though!

So you would have 9 infantry (5 spear, 4 foot knights), 5 Cavalry, and 3 archers.

Damon.

What army? Many medieval armies had more ranged troops than other infantry. If it's late medieval your spearmen numbers are too high for many armies.

+1 Marshall Mark

Its a what if norwegian 1260s army

I believe that all Scandinavian armies were light on cavalry during the middle ages, compared to mainland European armies generally. I wouldn't build a Norse army with more than 10% mounted troops.

And of course they would usually dismount to fight anyway.

Infantry was mostly armed with broadaxe and spear/javelin, i.e. a spear that could be thrown. I doubt that more than 25% of the infantry would be archers or crossbowmen, and I also doubt that crossbow would outnumber bow. I favor three archers to each crossbowman, since we are talking about building wargame armies, or a big effort in time and money. You don't want an army that you can't use. Stay reasonable….

and Scandinavian armies were old fashioned in their kit so only top chaps would have bang up to date stuff.