Is there really a use for missle units?

[stupac]

Well I don't control the baleric isles I do have Krete, maybe I will recruit some Kretian archers when I get the marian reforms.

You can hire them as mercenaries all over the place, which I think the romans frequently did. You can hire them for certain on sardinia and corsica, and I think also in sicily, iberia, and north africa.

Edit: why wait till marian reforms, you should be able to hire kretan archers in level 4 local MIC. Though they are pretty worthless against armored enemies. At least slingers get armor piercing.

[d'Arthez]

Get Iosatae instead. The Gallic slingers are more than decent. You can recruit them in a lvl 2 regional barracks.

They are quite useful, especially in dealing with Gasaetae.

[Centurio Nixalsverdrus]

Slingers are a bit overrated imho. They are not so extremely useless against heavily armoured opponents like archers, ok. But against non-armoured opponents archers are more effective because they have a higher attack value.

[Gebeleisis]

well without the missile units,how do you think the cavalry based factions could've survived?
Pahlava,Sauromaete,Saka, in the game,and in real life history also?
In history pahlava took iran from the seleukids for example.

[Korlon]

I especially enjoy using missile units during sieges where the walls are low (no ladders or siege towers to use). Kind of a exploit I would say, but I grab a unit or two with high defense rating. I grab some missile units to shoot at the unit guarding the breach that I made with a battering ram. They generally run away. I send the unit with the high defense rating in and put it on guard mode blocking a small alleyway. Then enemy then swarms in. I stick my missile units still at the outside of the walls relatively in position behind the enemies that are trying to kill my one unit. Easy pickings.

As for field battles, I usually don't have way too many slingers as they're usually spread out and unwieldy, especially with their low angle of trajectory. Archers are nice to have. I put them behind my line of infantry, usually flank them with more infantry. Javelineers I like a lot in field battles. They're large in number, small amount of ammo but they hit hard. I send them behind enemies and stick some javelins in their backs.