Archer Tell All!

[Crazy_Banker]

I am a huge fan of the English faction. Naturally my favorite archer unit is longbowman from Welsh. They are armor piercing, versatile, +1 to valor and have a natural stagger formation. In large defensive battles I will have 12 longbow units and start with with four and replace four with each wave, its seems to be really effective. I want to know who uses what archer units and why they are your favorite and what mods you think are fair for your archers to have.

[CherryDanish]

Longbowmen are the best, hands down. I even buy em up as mercenaries when playing other factions. They have one flaw, their rate of fire is too high and they run out of ammo too quickly. It's the same for all archers, but keeping all archers as longbowmen means you'll be withdrawing them at the same time as they'll all run out of ammo at roughly the same time. What I do to avoid this is keep one unit of arbs or some other unit and they will run out at a different time. This gives my troops missle cover while I swap out my longbowmen. More continuity. If your position takes a charge while you are swapping 4 units, it's like taking a 4 unit handicap, while only swapping 3 at a time is less of a handicap.

Still for missle troops, I'll take upgraded HA type units (IE Slezcky, Boyers, Byz Cav, turkoman hourse, Steepe Heavy Cav ... ) over longbowmen anyday, except when defending high ground. Mobility and the ability to run down your enemies, or intercept reinforcements really give you more options than lonbowmen even though one on one a dedicated missle unit will decimate mounted missle troops in ranged combat.

[Odin]

Longbowmen are the best, hands down. I even buy em up as mercenaries when playing other factions. They have one flaw, their rate of fire is too high and they run out of ammo too quickly. It's the same for all archers, but keeping all archers as longbowmen means you'll be withdrawing them at the same time as they'll all run out of ammo at roughly the same time. What I do to avoid this is keep one unit of arbs or some other unit and they will run out at a different time. This gives my troops missle cover while I swap out my longbowmen. More continuity. If your position takes a charge while you are swapping 4 units, it's like taking a 4 unit handicap, while only swapping 3 at a time is less of a handicap.

Still for missle troops, I'll take upgraded HA type units (IE Slezcky, Boyers, Byz Cav, turkoman hourse, Steepe Heavy Cav ... ) over longbowmen anyday, except when defending high ground. Mobility and the ability to run down your enemies, or intercept reinforcements really give you more options than lonbowmen even though one on one a dedicated missle unit will decimate mounted missle troops in ranged combat.

I think CherryDanish says what I wanted to more eloquently then I could. The only thing I would add is Longbows are the best, but exclusive to England. Buying them as mercs is kind of a crap shoot due to availabilty and even then you cant upgrade them or build reinforcements (unless you take British provinces).

Boyers are one of the best units in the game and my personal preference. The cost is high, but having a nice boyer army to address hot spots is loads of fun. I often just build vanilla archer units as support for heavy infantry units and keep a few footmen around them to protect them and let them chew away at the enemies softer targets.

Not glamarous I will grant, and certainly not going to be a battle winner (like longbows can be), but it works for me. So in a nutshell I do archers on the cheap and make sure they are covered.

[_Aetius_]

I dont know, i dont think longbowmen are THE best i mean they have the best range but i think Janissary Archers or Janissary Infantry kill more soldiers. Also Janissary Infantry are as good a light/medium infantry unit as youll find.

I use longbowmen to hit enemy horse archers or cavalry because normal archers dont kill very many, but Janissary infantry and Janissary archers devastate even the most armoured of infantry.

Longbowmen have range and are armour piercing but Janissary infantry I think are all round better archers/infantry.

[Accounting Troll]

Longbows are my favourite infantry archers in the game. Their lack of armour is a weakness though, and it means they will usually lose an archery dual against an equal number of pavise arlabesters despite their faster rate of fire. When I lead the English, I prefer to use longbows in conjunction with pavise arlabesters.

Janissary archers are good, but they are too difficult to build, and I don't like the way you can only build them in a single province.

I strongly suspect that CA deliberatly made longbowmen less powerful than they were historically to prevent the English from being unbeatable.

[ichi]

Their lack of armour is a weakness though, and it means they will usually lose an archery dual against an equal number of pavise arlabesters despite their faster rate of fire. When I lead the English, I prefer to use longbows in conjunction with pavise arlabesters.

Many folks make the mistake of using Longbows as anti-pavs, and this is IMO a huge waste. Use pavs as anti-pavs and save those LBs for the enemy inf and cav. At valor 2 LBs make good fighters.

Trebizonds and Janissaries are my favorite hybrids, but I've seen guys who can use Bulgarians and Genoese Sailors effectively.

ichi
:bow:

[_Aetius_]

I dont know what they were thinking by making bulgarian brigands so hard to train, they are relatively poor archers yet very advanced development is needed.

Longbowmen are useful as light infantry but Janissary infantry are better.

Trebs are good but shocking armour.

[macsen rufus]

One thing I noticed during bridge battles, is that Xbows and Arbs without the pavise have a slightly better range - not much, but it can make all the difference if the other guy's pav arbs have to get on the bridge to reach you...