Missle battles

Ive found that if you have about the same number of archers as your opponent, micromanaging can easily turn the tide in your favor. Everyone knows not to let it auto-fire at peasants but Ive seen very few people actually change targets off the already depleted(less then half) missle units. Most people seem to let them keep firing away at the eight or nine guys that are left untill they are all dead or you run out of arrows. This wastes alot of ammo that could be better used elsewhere.
If you use all of your missle on a single target, obviously that unit will get decimated. The trick is to not waste time/ammo to finish off the last 10 men in a unit, but to change targets to one of the larger units after just a few volleys. I always try to target the one with the most men, after one or two shots I switch to the next and so forth. This often makes a big differance as compared to letting the units auto-fire.
Ungrouping the units is almost a must, since grouped units tend to fire at the closest target regardless of what you tell them to do.

very true rom.

Another thing is in large scale missle wars (8 archers) i found that its typically more useful to get 6 good archers and 2 bad ones.

say im rome, i would get 6 Archer Auxilia (think thats the name) and 2 Roman Archers and line them up as such.

R A R A
AA AA AA AA AA AA

the roman archers typically take up ammo from their side and guard your good archers front from light cav, now if the opponet is just gonna sit there and arch your 2 bad ones, you dont' lose all that much and it wastes alot of ammo and time.

Another good way to use this is to have your good archers up front, with your bad ones behind you as such


AA AA AA AA AA AA
R A R A

Once an archer war would start, you would move your bad archers up to get pot shots on their army, this start only works against armies that lack cavalry though because your bad archers will take some time to get into range and most likely be chewed up by light cav.


Sorry if i stole some of your thunder rom