"Melee" archers

[rvg]

Armored archers do very well vs unarmored archers or horse archers though, so their armor still comes in VERY handy. For the Byzantines, the Guard archers will do wonders again countless Turkish light horse archers.

Bottomline: Armored archers are very well worth the cost.

[Grombeard]

They are very good for defending walls! First they let their arrows rain down on the approaching enemy and when they climb up the wall they pull their swords and slay the rest of them to pieces.

I mostly left a few units of Norse Archers to defend my castles in my denmark campaigns.

[Old Geezer]

Did you run any tests to see if the the more armored archers who have high melee capability are any faster than the regular slobs? Even the fastest foot archers are never going to keep up with your cavalry.

[Zenicetus]

In my current game with the Danes I always recruit Norse Archers when I can. As mentioned above, they are the perfect wall defenders in a siege, and the defense rating helps if they're targeted by enemy missile units in open field battles. Norse archers do a little more attack damage than peasant archers, and they're not outrageously expensive. For the Danes I think they're a no-brainer choice, since the alternative (peasant archers) are a weak unit.

The stats for the two Byzantine archers are a lot closer together, the Byzantine Guard unit is expensive, and you have horse archers for open field battles. So in that case, I'd mostly use them for just for garrison/wall defense.

[PBI]

Just did a test on custom battle; in a footrace on grassy plain, the trebizond archers are slightly faster, however surprisingly they also tire slightly faster than the guard. For me stamina is more important than speed, since in my experience horse archers tend to scurry away from foot archers before they can get more than a couple of volleys away, aiming to tire them out chasing them.

However, my conclusion is that despite their advantages guard archers probably aren't worth spending the extra money on upgrading to an archery range. For those factions where the only other option is peasant archers it's clearly another matter.