Archers Tips
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I find archers do a really great job initially when armies are closing in, but once closed to melee range, archers tend to start accidental friendly fire. It is not that bad initially, but assuming you are doing calculated battles, against indies for example, the worst phase seems to be when the enemy routs. Archers will fire full volleys against areas containing just a few routed troops, containing your troops en masse, causing massive unnecessary friendly fire….
Pending a rework, the best thing for archers is to reserve them in big battles and using Fire Archers in my opinion. If you suspect one of your Forts is ultimately going to be breached and stormed, archers can excel with Defend, applying lots of damage from the wall assuming the attacker is mundane army incapable of flight or passing through walls.
In the larger scheme, archers make good patrollers, siege chaff and also act as a larger chaff buffer against small Attack Rear raiders – rather than them slipping through directly at your lone or few commanders, which has caused me a few headaches while expanding and in smaller raid based warfare.
If a nation has native archer troops, I recruit them situationally and keep a pack of around 30-40 on hold. If you have elite troops and these archers, you should be able to do a nice run of expansion, if you choose the battles where the enemy is not very armored.
For a last push, when your expansion party is nearly out of men, having those archers can make a difference in the size of the last risky expansion – you could save for example indy Barbarian provice for last, if you expanded westward with just an archers + elite troops party – with some luck, the elite can hold out and survive 70-80 barbarians when supported with the 30-40 archers fire, and a morale route TKO can be achieved before they wipe the frontline.
I find the archers thing relevant more in the early game and rarely strategize exclusively with them in mind. I know you could have fire or poison arrows with magic, but I guess that would just increase the friendly fire risk also, and in the end if your front troops break your archers alone can’t do much. For their cost, they make sense from many perspectives in small and moderate quantities -> for a theoretical melee line to line battle, the line which also has support from the back with projectiles and magic is obviously at an advantage than the ones just having the melee line fight.
If your backline to frontline ratio is too backline heavy, friendly fire becomes a big issue. If you have just a small backline as a natural entourage for your commanders, priests and mages, friendly fire is less of an issue and you net the versatility and situationally bonus advantages of having archers either way. Against stupid enemies like Elephant riders, I found it lowers the cost of defeating them if you have ranged support fire to deter their morale on top of your melee infantry finishing the job. It comes down to balancing your options and adapting I guess.
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