Archers

[GenocideBringer]

Alrighty.

Archers are normally counted as city defense units, although they have a pretty low base strength. The bonuses they can get for being in a city, though, can be pretty damn nice. What do you folks think of using them as defenders instead of, say, axes?

Also, is there any use of archers outside defense? I'd imagine a couple could be good in a stack to stop counterattacks while you're sitting on a hill.

 

[Lurking Liu]

If you don't have Construction, you can use ablative Archers to damage defenders before your real units start going. It's inefficient, but you don't have any Catapults to do the job for you...

 

[GenocideBringer]

Why not just use more swords then?

 

[Lurking Liu]

Swords cost more hammers, and if the first few attackers are going to die anyway, you may as well use something cheap and expendable. Archers have First Strikes, so against non-Archers, they'll possibly do a little damage, and against Archers they'll at least cancel out defending First Strikes.



As I said, not efficient, but a possible use...

 

[DaveMcW]

Archers are a more cost-effective city garrison than axemen.

 

[slobberinbear]

I have tried to use archers as cannon fodder (usually with the Drill promotions), and I wouldn't recommend it unless the city defenses are removed and you're fighting archers or warriors. From what I can tell, the Drill promotions are less effective against units with a higher adjusted strength rating. This is why some folks beeline Feudalism to get early longbows, who can actually hurt things with their base strength of 6.

And yeah, they're cheaper than axes at 25 (instead of 35) hammers apiece, and have no hard countering unit. Also, with drill promotions, they can become harder to hurt with collateral damage.

If you build your cities on hills, archers are even better.

Finally, archers are perfect "picket" defenders in the early game for fog-busting while being parked on a hill.

I like archers, but I am probably in the minority.

 

[slaze]

A cover archer promoted up the combat line can be useful to clean up damaged units while city attacking. Any unit vs a 0.8 strength unit is a sure win. Sometimes, the lower strength archer will be the only unit able to accumulate more than one exp point.

 

[Polycrates]

I like archers.
For starters, on Raging Barbs you pretty much NEED to beeline archery or you're in all sorts of trouble (at least on emperor). Unless you're lucky enough to have copper in your first city radius, the barb archers come too early, and too thick and fast to rely on axes. Archers in forests or on hills can stop a line of barb advance, they can kill barb warriors easily, and cover archers have a good chance attacking barb archers on flatland. So proactive defense is perfectly possible, though getting copper or horses asap is still a high priority.

Second, they're a solid, cheap city garrison unit with no particular weaknesses. A single archer can defend equally well against anything they throw at a city, and the CG promos only add to that. Whereas axes otherwise need spear support to prevent a surprise chariot attack, and of course spears aren't much good vs axes either.
Plus you generally want to focus your forces of offensive units such as axes into a particular place, rather than having them spread out all over the empire because they're stuck in garrison duty. So a couple of cheap archers everywhere (and you don't really even need to produce them in a barracks city) cheaply frees up your hard-hitters (as well as providing happiness for hereditary rule).

But yeah, on attack I find they're not much use except maybe to clean up wounded defenders, and to garrison newly-taken cities against chariot retaliation.

 

[madscientist]

I like archers alot when I play a protective civ but will likely pass on them with non-protective leaders unless there is no copper nearby after teching BW (chariots are rather inefficient defenders and swordsmen are too far off to defend with arriors.)

Benefits to archers are they are cheap city defense specialists. They can also defend hill mined resources (pigs, sheep, gold, copper, etc..) very well if given the hill promotions. Also they are good for fog busting.

As my game has improved (Monarch now) I have had less dependence on early archers.

 

[Silence101]

I just had this discussion on another thread a few days ago -

As a Prince player (almost always play raging bararians), I would never prioritize archery - honestly, unless you've just got no copper or horses around, I think it's a waste of research.

I will submit that archers are better city defenders in the early game than any other unit, but my main gripe is that they are terrible offensive units. When it comes to preventing pilliaging, axemen and/or chariots are the way to go. And it's honestly not that difficult, even on raging barbs, to hook up one of the appropriate resources before the barbarians start rolling out the big guns. Before then, you should be able to defend your empire just fine with warriors.

When it comes to production costs - yeah archers are cheaper, but as poorer offensive units, it stands to reason that you'll like spend more time building more archers to replace losses than you would replacing axemen and chariots... unless you just plan to hide with your archers in your city. (In which case you might as well forget about improving your land.)

I like to backfill archery once I've discovered alphabet, but there's so many important early techs like BW, AH... I like going for the Oracle too, so Mysticism is a must and Priesthood, and so the bottom line is that I don't like to waste time on archery.

Is there a time and place to research archery? I'm sure that there's plenty of winning strategies that involve researching archery - again, especially if you don't have access to copper or horses, but personally I think it's rarely the most effective way to go.