Quote Originally Posted by Cambyses View Post
Archer Spearman are many people's favourite unit for all the reasons Foot mentioned. I do not think that they "pretend" to be infantry either. There are similar skirmisher/archer units found all over the game that can be suprisingly competent in melee. For example Numidian skirmishers, heavy peltasts, velites, cretan archers, dahae riders etc. After badly damaging a unit with missile weapons they are more than capable then to (help to) finish them off in melee. Clearly they cannot be expected to take on and beat (even weakened) elite troops on their own however.
Archer-spearmen (and velites, IMHO the worst javelin skirmishers in the game) can't be expected to take on and beat any real infantry unit in melee. Not even pantodapoi, if I remember the stats right. Of course either would do a lot of damage as a missile unit. But the topic is these guys pretending to be infantry, not who would win a duel starting at range. Taking archer-spearmen (or similar, like velites) into melee is a desperation move, they just don't have the defense to survive (and last I checked, in the velites case they lack a melee weapon with decent lethality).

I've made my opinion of Riders plain over in the cavalry thread. Again, I'll take specialized units who do one thing well over multi-role guys who do two things worse than the specialists. Multi-role guys who do as well as specialists are another matter - Peltasts, cataphract horse archers, perhaps Syrians and Bosphorans if you absolutely must send foot archers into melee.

Like the Riders, actual use of archer-spearmen looks like a very early game economizing strategy to me. And it's good to know the historical basis for the unit. That actually makes a lot of sense with my own impression of the unit, namely that it's great for those annoying little rebel spawns one gets in the Persian highlands but not much use for the player or an AI faction. A real army can put together a much better force mix, either for fighting HA or fighting conventional foes. But if you're just a bunch of yokels in the back end of nowhere, archer-spearmen are probably about as good as you can get.

Also I might say that the armoured archers in my experience do last quite a bit longer in a ranged duel. If you are playing on harder difficulty levels you may not notice this among your own troops, but certainly when shooting at the enemy you ought to see a significant difference in casluaties/volley.
Unless 1.1 changed this, Persian Archers have 3 armor, Heavy Archers have 6 (blacksmith upgrade included for each). Syrians have 9 or 10, I haven't looked at them recently. I do see a difference between Persian and Syrian casualty rates; nothing significant between Persians and Heavies (there is a difference, it's just not very obvious or noteworthy). I value armored archers, I just don't consider the Heavies to be in that category.