Agressive use of longbowmen

[Oinz]

I have been used to use the longbowman as a purely defensive unit. But last when i was rushing with horse archers and got killed by tons of spearmen and having only horses i had to produce longbowmen for the offense. I had vassalage+theocracy on and upgraded them with drill 1-2 and later on 3. Together with some catapult and the 3 first strikes and later 5 strikes they just slaughtered everything. I would not have believed this from a str 6 unit..
U get the unit quite early too so it could be a good replacement for swords, as long as u have enough catapults..

 

[Gufnork]

Longbowmen cannot get City Raider, which makes them much worse for conquest than Swordsmen. They are a lot harder to counter, but if you have Iron then Swordsmen is the way to go.