Playing as a Muslim Faction

[gollum]

You are exactly right. Thats their achilles heel, like with all pure archer units. They unbalance the army composition (detract from average stack melee capacity). Thats why the JA are a plus in this point - after you make them emptry their quivers carefully (ie without participating directly in the missile duel and take many losses) you can use them as reserves. JA are meant as the cherry in the pie not bread and butter like TF/xbows.

TF on the other hand are made exactly for the missile duel as you say - because of the armor. Yet not only they cant melee after it but also they cant be used like crossbows/arbs that can dissuade enemy units from reaching them with mass coordinated volleys in the end phase.

They are a weak unit in that respect, and they need quite some teching up to get (Castle/bowyer3). Its only their cheap maintenance cost that still makes them useful in high as archer substitutes. But by high in vanilla, most (pure) archer units are semi-obsolete - xbows are cheaper to recruit and maintain and much more useful (volley mass/armor penetration). I recruit 1 or 2 units of archers in high per stack and 3-4 crossbows. Since the xbows work as the main missile component adding more missiles is only worth it if they can melee too. Hence prefer Nizaris and JA and much less Futuwas and TF.