Archer shines in Feudal but diminishes precipitously as you age up and become dead weight by imperial. I can’t seem to squeeze them in for population space even as a counter to pike. They either hit hard on light infantry or no damage to anything with armor. This polarization of damage output force crossbowman to cover your weak point. With both being weak vs siege, it’s in just waste of resource and population space. Crossbowman at least does reasonable damage to light infantry and damage output isn’t as polarized as the archer. Both horseman and pike has specialized role in Imp that dictate plays and neither has that level of polarize damage output as the archer.
Even for their lack of use in the late game, their upgrades is still very expensive. I rather invest that resource… In anything else.
yup they are. at that point mango replace archers to counter xbow bcuz siege meta. the point that we have archer upgrades that are not viable is an core unit design flaw.
I think what you’re saying is valid up until you start getting near max population, at which point the price efficiency benefits get overriden by supply efficiency. You may be able to make your army cheaper… but if it dies who cares?
I’ve seen a few games when pros playing english swapped to crossbowmen when aging up and skipped the elite upgrade for the longbowmen. Personally, I’ve only had use for them in some very gold starved back-and forth non-maxed scenarios vs opponents who were too heavy on the archery range department where I incidentally already had firearrows researched.
Yeah, I do wish archers didn’t feel so ineffectual against armored units as the game progresses, particularly longbows. They are cheap and do continue to counter spears and crossbows, but it does seem hard to justify them when Mangonels are so strong and do the same (and more).
It’s not just that they’re ineffectual against armored units, they’re also exceptionally ineffective against siege and buildings. Archers are good against spearmen and crossbowmen. Against the most common late game armies though they’re out of luck. Useless against knights. Exceptionally vulnerable to siege and more or less incapable of damaging it.
I’m not sure if archers need a buff, the much warranted nerfs to siege/knights might well suffice.
They’re a unit meant for trash wars in the late game, they serve their purpose of being readily available to fill up an army once gold runs out. AOE4’s meta and abundance of gold just means trash wars aren’t really a thing at the moment and honestly, I’m happy with that, trash wars were cancerous to play out.
Yup I just had a trash war and thank god I had the camel archers available to me because regular archers are just ultra trash.
I wish they could run up to and torch stuff just like any other unit. The fact they can be blocked by just a palisade wall makes them useless. Or reduce torch damage maybe. Just seems like everything else is more valuable than the archer because they can torch or penetrate armor. Even in feudal age, you’re better off constructing a tower and loading it with spears than a range of archers. My villagers make more aggressive plays than archers late game.
If you have big amount of gold by using a lot of traders yes you can buy 100 wood for 500 golds with no problems , in some games I earn 80k+ golds
If you don’t want advice don’t ask ,
And craft archer in imperial is pointless btw you must craft mangonel
I feel it a bit too. From castle age onwards, xbows are just the better option.
They counter knights and MaA and they get countered by siege and horsemen like archers.
Archers on the other hand just deals +2 damage on spears, but spears anyway don’t counter xbows, and those can deal decent enough anyway. The only real advantage is that you can have a mass from the second age, and that they attack faster.
Still, I like this, it give you a sense of progression through the history.