When playing HRE early on peasant archers are useless to me. I either use them as ram carriers or disband them. Peasant archers have simple hunting bows that could not hit the broadside of the smallest shack at 10m. And even if they had better bows the fact that they are untrained rabble would likely not remedy this. I usually crush or route the enemy before I can get my archers into a flanking or rear position anyway.

Although during playing a Russian campaign I used the archer militia to great effect in villages, shooting over buildings and such. And of course Kazak calvary which seem to know how properly to use this strange tool that is the bow. Basically the entire point of this post is peasant archers are tools, rusty tools, tools that have no real purpose and thus should probably not be referred to as such as they are of no use.

Tschüß!
Erich