n00bPanda said:
For me it's hands down the Qohorik Quardsman for its multi-purpose. They wear heavy plate armor and have a decent chance to spawn with a strong shield. This means that they are tough to beat (the 6 in ironflesh also helps, which neither of the other archers have
) and they can be sent to join the infantry when ran out of arrows to score more kills. They also wield War Maces, which means that they deal huge amounts of damage in melee combat even to armored units. Their fighting skills are good enough to support that, in fact it even rivals the skill of most other top tier INFANTRY. On top of that, since they deal blunt damage in melee, they can make you a ton of prisoners. They may not have the strongest bow (recurved bow) but it's good enough. With their archery skills they are deadly and surprisingly accurate with it, often scoring headshots from long distances (note: the Quardsmen have 5 power draw, while all the other archers have only 4 at max. The recurved bow has 2 power draw requirements, while other longbows have 3, so the Guardsmen surpass the requirements by 3 points, and that is the reason why they are so accurate compared to other archers). They fire fast as well compared to most other elite longbowmen, meaning they have a very good DPS rate, and win against other archers in a ranged combat (not to mention melee
), but as a cost, they run out of arrows quickly. The tier below them is the Qohorik Maceman, which is an excellent heavy infantry unit, being similarly armored and equipped with the same war mace, but with guaranteed shield of course. So making prisoners and damage output shouldn't be a problem with the top tier of the qohorik troop line
.
Concerning raw ranged damage and archery skills only, the Elite Targaryen Longbowmen are slightly better archers on paper, although you can't argue with the higher accuracy and DPS of the Qohorik Guardsmen. The Elite Targaryen Longbowmen may not have the perks of the Qohorik Guardsmen and they are harder to recruit in general, but at least they also wear heavy plate armor, which not many archers do. For that, the
2nd place goes to them for me. (Note: Other factions' top tier archers are pretty much generic, mostly the used bow and the proficiencies vary a bit. Qohorik Guardsmen and Elite Targaryen Longbowmen have the highest proficiencies among the archers: 160)
*Edit: As a final touch, everything I've said applies to ACOK 2.2 naturally, I'm unsure about how much troop trees were changed in prior versions, as far as I remember a LOT.