Favorite/"Best" Archer?

[MeinPanzer]

Best? Cretans. High attack, armour and shield to help vs return fire, and has the longest range *yes, even longer range then all the various steppe foot archers with a 201.6 range.*

Is this intentional? Because in the Anabasis and in Livy's account of the Roman campaign against Philip V, Cretans are explicitly said to have weak bows with heavy arrowheads that combined to make their archery far from effective. Xenophon relates an episode in which the Cretans were so outranged by the Persian archers that the 10,000 needed to recruit slingers from the Rhodians among them in order to fight back, while the Cretans later on captured Persian arrows and only then began to improve their range.

[Fondor_Yards]

Is this intentional? Because in the Anabasis and in Livy's account of the Roman campaign against Philip V, Cretans are explicitly said to have weak bows with heavy arrowheads that combined to make their archery far from effective. Xenophon relates an episode in which the Cretans were so outranged by the Persian archers that the 10,000 needed to recruit slingers from the Rhodians among them in order to fight back, while the Cretans later on captured Persian arrows and only then began to improve their range.

*Shrugs* I also read a while back *here I think, not too sure* that they were so good at killing because their fired their arrows horizontally, like a crossbow, to penetrate armour better. So probably not.

Also HA shouldn't be counted, since they are too good in the hands of a player vs the AI, not matter what type of HA and no matter the AI's army make up.

[Rilder]

Also HA shouldn't be counted, since they are too good in the hands of a player vs the AI, not matter what type of HA and no matter the AI's army make up.

Unless of course there commanded by me, At which point they turn into a disorganized mob and shoot themselves in the face.

[Hegix]

Definetely Cretans. No matter which faction I play I put Crete as a top priority to start ferrying in archers to my homelands.

[Conqueror]

As far as "common" archer units go, the Persian archer-spearmen take the cake. Massive recruitment area, cheap, reasonably effective and not afraid of light or even medium cavalry. For more specialist roles though, you'll want to look at some others:
- If you want your archers to NOT die like flies in prolonged arrow-duels, go for the Syrians
- If you want your archers to darken the skies and rain death like none other, go for the Subeshi
- If you want your archers to have lasting power in both missile and melee combat, go for the Bosphorans
- If you want your archers to really kick some ass in melee, go for the Indians

[Obelics]

persians, subeshi, mardian, etc. over everythink! in poor words, everythink that come from the east...

edit: but wait, i didn't know the cretan had more 200 range? wow, so they are the best archers in the whole world... strange, i always learnd the eastern archers were the best...

[Che Roriniho]

I thought Kretans had about 140 range, so where has 200 come from? Also, I for one am going to stand up for Scythians, in fact, anything from the East, but especially the North East. Best though in my opinion is the Sarmatian Noble Horse Archers. 32 Charge, 190 range, and 20 defence. What more could you possibly want when it comes to cavalry?
As I say though, for foot archers, go northeast. best place to go for the westerners is te Bklack sea, plus you get the bonus of bosphuran archers, who are also not to be sniffed at.