...:::Slingers Vs Archers:::...

[N0V0NEU]

According to my experiences, slingers are the most effective missile units in the game, though they are extremely cheap (300-600 Mnarii and easily recruitable (you just need a simple drillground in a ridiculously small village). They are effective against armor, which means they can easily destroy and weaken legionaries, phalanxes and elite units.
Militia don't even stand a chance against them (once the enemy attacked one of my settlements with an army of 1200, mostly levies, I had about 2-3 squads of slingers and some militia units, the slingers have killed about 600-700, which was more than the half of the enemy's army)

However, from my experience, archers are only good against cheap and poorly equipped units, they are completely useless against heavy, elite and armored units. Still, they are lot more expensive than slingers (600-1600 Mnai(!)) and you need large settlements and costly barracks to produce them. (One of my best memories is when 5 units of Syrian Archers were shooting at 1 unit of Pezhetarioi (hellenic phalanx) and they were only able to kill 4 or 6 of them )

So, as I see:
Slingers:
- Extremely cheap
- Easily recruitable
- Effective against armor/heavy/elite units
- Highly mobile

Archers:
- Relatively cheap
- Highly mobile
- Useless against armor/heavy/elite units

What do you think?
-

[fomalhaut]

there must be self restraint in the useage of the powerful slinger, however. they weren't super plentiful in ancient armies due to the amount of skill necessary to become an effective slinger

[A_Dane]

They really aint that useful against elites, unless they got quite a bit of chevrons.

I've also found, that archers do better against light-medium armored troups for some reason.

Also, archers are capable of fireing above your soldiers lines, slingers can't.
Using slingers requires you to have quite a cavalry force, so you can cover them while you flank the enemy. (atleast that's the case when I'm fighting the blasted seleucids -.-)
there are clear pros and cons to both, and some of the more costly archers are actually quite effective :)

[fomalhaut]

not necessarily, any decently armored enemy will laugh at your arrows. he is totally right about Syrian archers arrows bouncing off elite enemies, essentially

[gamegeek2]

It's fairly well known that slingers are overpowered as there were no projectile changes to compensate for slingers' ap ability.

[Vaginacles]

well you need archers to kill off the slingers

[A_Dane]

not necessarily, any decently armored enemy will laugh at your arrows. he is totally right about Syrian archers arrows bouncing off elite enemies, essentially

Most elites will laugh at your inexperienced slingers as well.

Don't get me wrong, I love slingers, but they serve a very specific purpose on the battlefield, where archers just have more overall use :)

[QuintusSertorius]

Unless the people they're shooting at are unarmoured, (foot) archers are frankly useless. I have a unit of them for historical accuracy/feasibility, not because I think they're any good. For the same reason, I only ever have one unit of slingers, they're effective but too many of them is credibility-straining.