Quote Originally Posted by jhhowell
1) Archers - why should I build any? To the best of my knowledge, they are inferior to slingers in every way - lower range, less ammo, weaker stats (esp. accounting for slingers AP), and needing the same or higher level MIC. Since EB skirmishers vaporize elephants, the fire arrow ability just isn't much of an attraction (anti-elephant duty was all I ever used it for in vanilla, anyway). I'm probably missing something, though.
Archers beat slingers, slingers beat heavy infantry and heavy cavalry. If you bring a mix of archers and slingers while the enemy only brings slingers, your missile units will generally beat theirs, and then your slingers will be free to tear into the enemy's heavy infantry or cavalry.

But of course, some of the archers in the west are just plain crap.