Useless units?

[caravel]

The use i was referring to was to shoot at other lighter horse archers like vanilla HA, Turcoman horse etc. Using any kind of HA to duel with foot archers would be madness!
I'm surprised some people have thought that would be a good idea

You're quite right, you did refer to HA's and not foot archers...

However, archery duels apply to pretty much any kind of archer vs archer scenario... They're even more pointless if you have a unit like Byzantine Cavalry involved. You want them targeting the units which will be the most challenging in melee or those which might trigger a chain rout, not their low value horse archers, whom your Byz Cav can easily beat in melee (if they can catch them). The Byz units have better defence and armour, thus better survivability, so you are in a position where you can ignore the archers, and target the units which you will have most difficulty facing in melee...

Speaking of chain routs, playing as the English (started in early, now well into the high era - playing on hard difficulty), I was facing the Hungarians last night in Venice. They brought 16 full units led by a 4 star general mostly made up of mounted x bows, militia sergeants, CKs, arbalests and CMAA. As I recall there must have been about six units of the mounted x bows altogether...

My line up consisted of 2 units of billmen, 1 unit of chiv sergeants, 2 hobilars, 2 feudal knights, 1 unit of longbows, 1 unit of archers and a few other misc units of e.g. MS, clansmen, FS, etc to make up 16 units (like the AI I also had a few non battle worthy rag tag reinforcements.

Now these fellows were fairy high valour, well battered crusade veterans newly returned from Algeria, I'd say about 5 valour on average and as I recall they were about 2000 men to the enemy's 2500 - but I considered us to have the overall advantage from the start - the main worry being seizing the terrain advantage and dealing with the mounted crossbows.

It began with the enemy in a typical line up, and then repositioning his formation as soon as my motley crew slowly trudged for his right flank... this went on for more than 5 minutes without a shot exchanged. By this time my army was starting to get within bowshot, my men were showing two bars (quite tired).

I decided to detach the cavalry and have them take up a position on an adjacent slope... this, or mere whimsy, caused the Hungarians to attempt to abandon their position and seize another piece of high ground - and this was their first and last error.

Their whole army decamped and headed in a column downhill of my formation taking it past my waiting spear/bill units and within bowshot. I let off a few volleys and then seized the opportunity and charged the mounted crossbows with the bills and CS...

The result was pretty much insta-rout and at that point I threw everything I had at them...

200 killed, over 700 prisoners and about 20 losses...

Hardly a stunning victory, but the point being that patience often pays higher dividends than archery duels...