Archers too weak?

[Gisebert]

For what reason can i make archers or mounted archers? They aren't cost-efficient in any way! I just had a fight with the pathian elite mounted archers vs bronceshield pikes and after my archers shot all their arrows, the pikes had still 40 men. The units are costing nearly the same and pikes should usually get countered by archers, so can you tell me why i should recruit archers if they can't even counter the slow footmen even if i have endless time to run away? I lost with my 60 elite archers at the end vs the 40 pikemen because i had to go into close combat....

Of course some archers are good to reduce the morale of the enemy with fire, but i want a viable strategy based on archer-heavy armies. Archers really should counter infantry-heavy armies or big pike armies and get destroyed by good cavalry usage, but atm they are completely useless.

Also in a historical pov, it's not very realistic that archers don't kill anyone with their first volley and then kill a bit more and more after some volleys and after the hitpoints of the enemy soldiers have been reduced significantly.

(i have to apologize for my bad english, but i'm not a native speaker)

[[N2]Kami]

Use javelin men. It take about half ammo of a levy unit can broke/kill a general/elite celtic unit. ( if they can shoot freely of course)
Archer and slinger is too underpower in this game. Not like in other TW game ( I'm looking at you S2TW)

[Colleptic]

Maybe you are playing them wrong; I think most ranged units are over powered. I can win almost all battles without engaging any of my melee units until the very end to mop up the 7-15 guys that will be left per enemy unit. The only way they are ineffective, is if the AI puts their shields above their heads, if they do that, then expect a lower kill count.

[Lockpick]

This is intentional:

archers - fast firing, medium range, medium damage, weak vs armor
slingers - medium fire speed, long range, low damage, equally strong vs everyone
javalinman - slow firing, short range, high damage, most damage to armor

So basicly you can pawn unarmored enemies with archers, for everything other you have to use javalin or slingers.
This is to balance the ranged units so any of them have a role and not only archers-pawn-all-others-are-useless.

[Astrohawke]

Archers are beast. Ever fought a full stack of steppe horse archers? Even cataphracts get decimated trying to charge them.

[Praetorian349]

Shields, mate. It's because shields.

In this game there is a collision system with projectiles. So if a projectile hits a shield it will not have an effect. Phalanx covers most of the unit with a tight-knit formation of shields. So arrows are very ineffective at countering it.

Even then, projectiles are very ineffective at killing troops who are facing the source of the fire, due to them holding up their shields. Shots fired into the flanks or rear of a unit are tenfold as effective. Ridiculously effective. Obscenely effective.

[Korburss]

The big use of archers is defending walls. I put some javelins on the walls and they don't even try to fire half the time or hit if they do. Not to mention in a tight city your rarely going to have direct line of sight or movement, so archers come out on top by far in city fights.

[Gisebert]

I see, there are many different opinions, so i want to narrow the topic to multiplayer battles, because in campaign battles, the armies are nearly never even valued and also the ai isn't using units as effective as a normal player. So maybe you are right with telling me, that you destroy your enemies with pure archers in campaign, but that's perhaps only because you have much more or better units or a better position,... (but i agree that archers are great in defending villages and walls)

I will only tell you experinces from the multiplayer and will only accept opinions based on multiplayer.
So i never saw effective archers in a battle. I once won with only pikes easily vs 50% archers in the enemy team. The normal archers did literally no damage while i was crushing his melee troops and the mounted archers were shooting my pikes in the back, which lead to some casualties, but they never killed a regiment and when they were out of ammo, my enemy had some horsemen unable to do anything.
In this case i should never be able to win because i choose a totally unbalanced army and fought against the "blind counter" of my forces. At the end of the battle, the enemy mounted archers had 40-60 kills, which is very poorly due the fact that they shot till they were out of ammo.

[[N2]Kami]

Missile units in general in this game suck, except siege.
About your post before, I only play 2 multiplayer and I find archer is more of a annoying force rather than killing force. But javelin is so much different, you can easily get ~60-70 or more kill in 1 blob melee fight with levy, no exp unit, if you stand at perfect spot, assume behind your infantry line without any flanking force. ( like city defend) And 1 plus that javelin work great against elephant.
But if you are camping/defending in high ground, archer or slinger can easy harras the enemy skirmisher or light infantry before they can reach you.
But in my opinion, you should spent that gold in cavalry because they are so much better. They can do so much more than archer.
I rarely use archer in multiplayer, even in Shogun 2, where archer is godlike. I prefer cavalry especially my gun cav than archer.

[Korburss]

Hmm, interesting. I'd say compared to slingers and javelins would be less versatile but only to a point. A slinger makes a effective skirmisher/counter and manage decent results all round. Javelins are counter infantry and only good for a quick blast at a line and meager flanking but fail badly at skirmishing due to range. Really the only thing archers have going is that they can be placed safely behind the line thus keeping up fire continuously through a match.

[Korburss]

Doubled.

[krisslanza]

Unlike Shogun 2, almost every unit in Rome 2 has a shield. Depending on the faction, this shield can absorb a very good amount of abuse before failing the unit. The proper way to use missile troops is to only use them to hit a unit's flank or rear, where they cannot use their shield to block the shot. If you have flaming shots, those are effective at breaking some shields head on, but otherwise you need to tie them up in melee first, then quickly hammer their flanks/rear with missile fire.

[Gisebert]

@Kami: Yeah, i agree! I don't play archers and use cavalry, too. But i would wish that there are more viable army compositions then pike/cavalry or heavy infantry/cavalry. There is not much tactic if you can just ignore enemy archers because you know, they won't do anything.
I have another exemple of a battle with useless archers:
I played the celtic guys and made only heavy infantry and 2 regiments javelines. My opponent had 4 regiments expensive archers (the 540 gold guys, can't remember their name) and some cavalry and infantry. As you can imagine, i send my javeline men out first and they totally got smashed. So i had literally only heavy infrantry and decided to attack his quite balanced army straight forward. I won without problems, because the archers were a waste of money that was needed in better infantry. His cavalry did also nothing, because i had in the fight 2 back-up regiments only defending the back of my fighting guys. It was a very easy win and i realized how less tactic in the fight is and you only have to have more "op" units then your opponent.

[Adler]

Pfftt... Archers, slingers, javelins... Onagers are the way to go, I make my armies up of 2 cav for dealing with out flankers, 12 legions (or equivalents) that hold the line, & 5 heavy onagers, they absolutely cane, I killed 5000 men with 1 onager!

I don't even bother with skirmers etc now. If things are tough, I will send 2 units in to create a mosh pit so my Onagers can really make some soup

[Gunfreak]

Well generaly ranged soldiers were not that effeciant during this period, 1 bows, slings ect, were not as powerfull as the later longbows and crossbows, 2, heavy infantry was the main unit of many armies, so arrows and slings did have a hard time to get through the shields and armor of heavy infantry. Even pikes would stop or atleast slow down arrows.3 these weapons were mostly used for skirmishing, the use of large bodies of formed slinger and archers isn't that realistic, often they would be intermingled with other light infantry like peltasts, or even among heavy infantry(or EVEN cav)So there wasn't these massive volleys of archer fire of the medieval era. (with a few exceptions) Infact skrmishing in general was ineffecive, it's hard hitting other light infantry with javling and arrows, they were fast, angile and spaced far apart. Suprsingly javlins did more damage after the battle in ernest started, as the two infantry lines went head to head, the heavy and light infantry behind the main line would just throw javlins over the head of the front line, and this would actualy do some damage, because you could not see the javlins as you were packed close, you could simply be hit by random javlins, this happed a few times to high ranking officers even consuls of rome could be hit by stray javlins once the battle had started.