theres no reason to take archery out.
bow on horse is easy, you can just use your horse to run infantry over, deal that charge damage. its easier than trying to hit them with bow weapon and you can do it until you find something to pick up and use
in big battles if you spawn with bow, just hang back, wait for some people to get dead, then go scavange weapons/horses. in small battles, depending on what the enemy lineup is like, you actually want them to spawn mounted troops, cause the AI isnt very good. After the initial charge, they tends to circle around you neither getting close enough to hit you, or far enough to make a proper turn, so give yourself plenty of room in the middle of the combat zone and then just spray arrows at their horses and then punch them to death usually. its only challenging when your ally is a mounted horse archer, your a foot archer, and the two guys charging you have sw/sh. 2handed guys are easy, zoom in with a headshot even with 20 archery isnt too hard
fists dont do alot of damage, but if your not a dedicated archer character then you should have some power strike, and its usually enough to do even 3-4 damage with fists to a guy, and you can keep swinging until they get knocked out