Genoese sailors...

[Jon von]

..were not archers. They were crossbowmen; the best snipers in the whole christian Europe, the range of their weapons, built in Genoa, exceeded 400 metres. They became famous with the take of Jerusalem, Ith Crusade, when, thanks to their invention, the assault tower, they were able to kill the turkish soldiers on the city walls. After that, they were often assolded as mercenaries by italian, byzantine, french and crusader armies, and were considered the best artillery unit available in the Europe. They succesfully defended most italian cities sieged by Barbarossa and then by his grandson Federico II.
The first battle they lost was Crecy (1346, If I remember well), when, fighting in the french army, they were slaughtered by the english arrows and cannonballs...
I'll add this in my "historical accurated" mod...
see u

[Foreign Devil]

Eenteresting. I only built a few units of them when I played my Itailian campaign, and I think only really used them in one or two battles. Didn't notice much difference from reg. archers.

[A.Saturnus]

Oh, they have better morale. I used them as main archer unit in my Italian campaign. But given that there are lots of spacial archer units, it would have been nice if CA had made them crossbows.

BTW, that guy was called Friedrich II, he was German after all.

[Sandy-San]

if you mod them to have x-bows, are they still available in the early period? (xbows are only available from high onwards normally, right?)

[TosaInu]

You can mod any unit to any era. It's possible to make a copy of a late era unit, tweak the stats a bit and make him available in early.

[Kraxis]

They are faster too...

Quite efficient archers, but I would go for Trebizond Archers anyday.
If they were made crossbows it would indeed be interesting, giving the Italians a lead on the others, needless to say they would need to be higher on the techtree and higher cost.

[Lion King]

400 metres? thats a lot
my grudge against MTW is the pitiful range and efficiency of the missile units. In MTW the longbow has a range of 120 metres, almost three times shorter than their realistical counterparts. my mod fixed this in part, making them slaughter enemy units from afar at the higher prices and lower ammo. Looks much cooler having 8 units of Elven archers decimating the enemy line like longbows did in real life, killing more then the usual 4-5 kills per volley