Favorite/"Best" Archer?

[konny]

Caucasian Archers. They are good, reasonable area of recruitment (lvl 1 barracks help as well!), not expensive; vital infantry support for Hayasdan campaigns.

In this case my vote would go for the Persian Archer-Spearmen: dirt cheap, everywhere in the East recruitable and can do at least a bit hand-to-hand combat in particular against cavalry. From pure archery I find best the Skythians.

When you are searching for a decent all-around infantrist, you need to pick either Syrians or Cretans (I don't think they differ much): good armor, sword+shield and an above-average (but not the best) archer. If you don't care about game balance or accurancy you might even recruite them as your only infantry. I don't think that many enemies will survive a contact with that army.

[Lysimachos]

I prefer the Syrians over the Cretans. The Cretans have slightly higher attack, but the Syrians have more men, more armor, more ammo and more range.

Edit: Well, not more range. Unit documentation said so, but the files say different...

Edit 2: In fact, there are some more differences between the documentation and the actual values... Maybe i should have another look and think another time.

[||Lz3||]

where can I find the skythians?

I've had wonderful results using imperial auxilia archers , in a huge size battle and 4 units of archers , killed like 1/2 of my kills , around 200 each

[jhhowell]

Favorite archer: Thanvare Payadag. Available everywhere in the east, has very good attack and range, level 1 MIC, very cheap. If you want to send your archers into melee, pick someone else for the job, though.

Subeshis, Mardians, and Caucasians are all quite good. Can't comment on the Scythians or Bosphorans - I have some, but the Crimea has been completely uncontested in my Hayasdan game.

||Lz3|| - Scythian units are found basically all around the northern half of the Black Sea, plus the Caucasus Mountains. For factions not named Hayasdan, I believe the standard method to acquire them is to take the Crimea.

On the "more fun troop combo" question - horse archers! Especially cataphract HA, though you're out of luck there with AS. You can get Parthians and I think also Dahae HA in the northeast.