Quote Originally Posted by Clistenes View Post
The advantage of chariots was that one guy could focus on driving it while other or two mere focused on fighting... learning how to shoot a bow while riding a horse with a primitive saddle and not stirrups took some time to achieve...
This is something that got way, way overblown. I rode a horse bareback on my second horse riding lesson, and to quote the instructor: "We're doing this so that you know it's not that hard, the saddle is there more to protect the horse rather than make you able to ride it." The whole problem started when historians who were never near the saddle started to make stuff up wholesale, people believed then and it then took forever to quash the misinformation - stirrups being necessary for couched lance charge is a favourite example.

Let's look at archery specifically. The mere act of shooting a bow is pretty much the same on foot, on chariot and on horseback, so no problems there.

The accuracy will suffer if chariot or horse move, because, well, they move. You need to learn to compensat for it no matter what vehicle you use, so the difficulty remains the same - except it doesn't. Because a horse is an animal, it tries to keep itself more or less level, a horse won't suddenly jump if it encounters a rock, it will go over it. That makes it easier to achieve a steady aim from a horse than from a chariot.

Staying on your platform of choice - well, there's nuance. On one hand, you just kind of stand in teh chariot, no skills necessary. On the other hand, you may well need to grab the chariot with one hand to stay in it if it maneuvers too much or if the terrain is rough, a problem which, on a horse, you solve with your thighs.

As for moving and shooting at the same time, yeah, horse archer is at a disadvantage and has to learn it, it takes some getting used to. It especially took a while to figure it out because you need to train your horse to respond to leg commands only, but once you do that, even a schmuck like me, on second horseriding lesson, can control the horse in such a way. That said, said training is enough of a hassle that it wasn't always done.