Castillo Family/Leonidas/Reference of Leonidas' works/On the advantage of archers

I, Leonidas of House Castillo, offers this book to the military library of Enweilieos:

Archers in large battles is often considered as an hardly useful addition. They only do minor damage to well armored enemy, they are quite useless since they don't partake in the initial melee, can't shoot during the melee, and usually die in mass when they have lost infantry cover.

So what are archers good for? Well they are usually very useful killing monsters; but not only monsters but any enemy that the army does not want to engage in melee or will simply not engage in melee. In short, they are useful as takeover unit, as pillaging unit, for defending siege, and in any battle with diasymmetrical numbers of troops.

For example, when an enemy who is by far less numerous and can be killed in the first round of melee, adding more infantry is totally useless, as such when outnumbering the enemy by a lot, archers are the way to go. They do very well in raiding parties, along with cavalry, for they will be able to quickly deal with scattered troop leaders.

On the opposite, when an army is outnumbered by a vast amount, archers, or even better special forces, and mixed infantry are the best troop for a strategy of delay and wound since they will be able to shoot while waiting for the enemy to approach and attack them.

Archers are good in takeovers and pillage because they are good against low armored troops which is often a realm's fastest and first response againt pillaging and takeovers. Moreover takeover forces are usually weak and archers usually rarely partake in battle except in defeat which saves the takeover unit from being lost for nothing.

On a side note, troop leaders often use archers as a way to get gold more quickly since they usually don't have to recruit after every battle as archer regiment are always the last to suffer casualties in a battle, and often hardly suffer any. As such, it should be a good reason for dukes to give gifts to those who recruit infantry as often they won't have any gold left after recruiting whereas archer troopleaders will often have a lot more.