The Archer is the most useful and versatile troop in Stronghold Kingdoms, they are exceptional ranged units but are ineffectual at hand to hand combat, making them a poor choice for melee troops. Their primary function is defense but are equally useful on the offensive if placed properly.

Whether it’s attacking your in-game nemesis or defending your castle against the collective forces of the Wolf, you will find archers play an integral and indispensable role in any military.

Before you can train Archers you must be rank 6 (Villein) or higher and have completed the required research. Each Archer requires a Peasant, 20 Gold, and a Bow in your Armory to recruit.

 

Gold Cost	20 each
Rank Required	Villein (6)
Unit Space	1
Weapons Required	1 Bow
Research Required	Level 1 – Military Level 3 – Command Level 1 – Long Bow

 

Archer Defense

When logging off for the night or any extended period of time it’s a good idea to station 200 or more archers in your castle. Stationing at least 350 archers in your castle should guarantee it un-scoutable. If you have a level 10 keep, 330 archers is the bare minimum stationed to render your village un-scoutable.

Whenever catapults are involved in an attack, odds are they will target the center of your castle leaving the corners primarily intact. You can use this to your advantage by stationing archers on the corner towers to kill off the enemy catapults, these archers being only vulnerable to enemy archer fire. Of course this is not always the case, sometimes enemy players will target your castle corners but such occurrences are quite infrequent.

Archers in towers have the odd tendency to target only one enemy unit per tower. Since it takes no more than 9 arrows to kill any given troop type, putting more than 9 archers on a tower is an overkill.

Archer Offense

When attacking, it’s usually best to keep your archers behind your other melee troops, this will protect them from defending swordsmen or Pikemen set to aggressive. Archers will also stop their walk towards the keep to engage any enemy troops within range. Since no more than one unit may occupy each tile having your archers ahead of your melee troops prevents those troops from moving to the front of the battle. Keeping them trapped behind the archers achieves little unless you are bombarding the area with catapults and wish to reduce causalities due to friendly fire

Archer waves can be useful in a timed attack to clear enemy archers off outside towers without loosing any catapults. Generally the first attack of 500 archers is sent and subsequent attacks are timed one second or so behind it. .