Quote Originally Posted by gamegeek2 View Post
It's more of how you use the archers you have. If you have one archer instead of one line unit, and use that archer to badly damage the enemy cav, then you win the cav fight and can rout the line. But if you have five archers and the enemy has four identical ones, well then they cancel each other out much more, and the enemy has more line units to help break through.
It depends on the faction since defensive infantry are quite hard to definitively kill. Having an additional identical archer is actually quite useful if the enemy is packing expensive cav because it by itself makes it hard to use cavalry since it will have extra ammo to spend and will be able to swing cav engagements your way... which will make it much easier to win a cav fight and mass rout the battle line. Also good in no cav at all cases because then it can break away and prevent flanking because it can shoot flankers or doods chasing your cav in the back.