Does Carthage have.....?

[hoof]

Baeleric Slingers (I'm sure I misspelled their name) are awesome slingers. I haven't fully analyzed them yet, but from using them in the field, they are as good as any archer unit. They have an advantage over the archer unit too against tightly packed groups of units: their arc of fire is so low that if they miss their target unit, they usually hit the unit behind them. The downside is that you have to put them in front to have a clear shot, but I've never had much luck in RTW with putting archers behind my front line anyway.

You get a few of these units at the start as the Carthaginians.

With the exeption of Horse Archers and siege defence, those mercenary slingers are my #1 choice for missile troops.

[hotingzilla]

They are good as slingers, but simply they can't replace archers.

I modded the game to give Carthage the normal archer.

[Soulflame]

Oddly the picture for Archer for the Numidian faction is called "carthagian archers", although it is only available to Numidia...
I suspect that if you mod this unit in, it might even get the carthagian colors by default (without skinning), the way some others have gotten greek cities hoplites to get macedonian colors without skinning, when they added them to macedon.

Still, you have to wonder if it's necessary... Carthage has the most units in the game after the Romans, so it would be kind of unrealistic to give them access to even more units.

[Boudicca]

I´ve just granted Carthago the "Charthagian Archer" by setting it available for Carthago...I like Archers far too much for not having one.

[Lichgod]

Missle troops for Carthage.

I am very experiened with Carthage (my favorite faction). Long range missle troops are thier weakness. No archers. The Carth slinger is only good for garrison duty on Stone Walled cities - one per (sit on top the gate to shoot). It is a cheap unit tho.

You do have access to the best slinger in the game, Balaeric Slingers. ONLY buy them from the Balaeric Isles. You get +2 exper for them there at the same cost for no exper ones elsewhere. Balaeric Slingers have a range of 120m versus 80m for normal slingers. Most archers have a range of 120m, elite archers 170m. As mentioned, slingers fire in flat archs - so put them in front. They seem to do better vs armored troops than archers.

Still want archers? Ok, me too. Here is how to get some of the best archers as Carthage. Put a leader on a boat and sail to Crete. Crete offers lots of mercs including the elite Cretean Archer. Crete has always been rebel controlled in my games (H or VH campaign settings). I land with just a leader, buy some of the mercs offered, usually - 2 hoplites, 2 archers, 1 Rodesian Slinger (2nd best elite slinger behind the Balaeric Slingers), and either a peltast or the unti with the wierd looking shield. I attack the unwalled town which has one unit in it but will get reinforcements of about 300 guys. Each time I have beaten the unit in the town square and held it for 3 min before the reinforcements could affect the battle. Now you have a nice source of archers (although you have to wait for them to refresh).

I send the two archers back to the empire. Leave the leader behind. I keep an eye open to expand his force with mercs/town watch. Rhodes has fallen to this force when it went rebel. Have some ships/diplomats scout the area to see where you can expand. The same merc collection available on Crete is also available on Rhodes and the Turk prov closest to Rhodes. I have also picked up +3 exp merc Hoplites from the Spartan prov. You do not need to own the land to recruit there.