how do you get(kill) horse archers?

1. light cav? but they don't run faster than HAs.
2. elephants?
3. horse archers
4. heavy cav, so I can forget their arrows from far distance
5. just ignore them...

oh.. what a nightmare

Light cavalry or foot archers is the way to go. Just chase them around with your Light Cavalry until you reach the corner of the map and since the AI are completely unable to turn of "skirmish mode" their horsies can't fight.

HA are as fast as light cavalry, so unless playing for a long time with the map borders, they can't be caught.

So far, the only reliable way I've found to kill them, is to use superior foot archers.

If they weren't AI controlled, they'd be a real dilemma.

Chariots can catch them. Unfortunately, if you don't have chariots you are stuffed, as my Macedonian armies are discovering. Personally I would like CA to tone down the horse archers, because they have no effective counter at the moment, unlike in M:TW.

what about dog's? does that help?

Pincer them with cavalry. The AI doesn't spot the pincer move until it's too late. What you do is run (due to the arrows) a unit of cavalry to either side of the horse archer unit. When all three units (your cav pair and the horse archers) form a line, then order the attack. Due to the "lead computing" nature of intercepts, and the AI's slowness in recognizing the threat, you can almost always trap the horse archers. Three cav units works even better.

Keep in mind that you have to stay out of skirmish range when you set this up.

Persian cavalry are a bit trickier, since they can actually fight hand-to-hand. But the principal is the same.

Foot archers are supposedly quite effective as well, althought I tend to focus my early building efforts towards cav/infantry early on meaning most of my earlier armies don't have much in the way of archers. From playing the Parthians, properly used horse archers will beat foot archers due to the cantebury circle, but the AI doesn't use that from what I've seen. Again, that may be because my armies tend to not have much in the way of foot archers until later in the game.

WRT to counters, try militia cavalry. They are easy to get for most factions, and are very effective vs horse archers. Don't bother with their javelins vs the horse archers, just use them in pincer maneuvers like above. However, if you don't mind losing a few of them, you can put them on cantebury circle and unload your javelins before charging. The horse Archers don't skirmish away from units that aren't advancing on them, so they let your guys pepper away. And with the cantebury circle, their arrows tend to miss most of the time. But there aren't enough javelins to do too much damage, so I usually don't bother.

My method is to throw lots and lots of units at them on the campaign map. Then auto-resolve the battle. Saves on aspirins.

Archers or light cavalry work well I find. Either that or have a load of armoured hoplites, so the arrows just bounce off :dizzy2: