Talk:Mameluke (Age of Empires II)/@comment-24444169-20180206095521/@comment-24444169-20180206130032

I believe the reason archers are not generally advisable over skirms, for countering Mams, is that

1. arbalests aren't available to all factions, Skirms are available to all factions beside the turks

2. Skirmishers don't cost gold and are thus more expendable

3. Skirmishers do 7 damage, arbalests do 6.

4. they share similar stats: accuracy, speed, hitpoints only slightly higher for the arbalests and same melee armor for both.

Only really downsides of skirms I can see are -2 range and slower rate of fire. However, to see much of a difference this makes I think a test with 50 skirms vs 20 mams (or something similar) would need to be compared to an identical test but with 50 archers in place. Even then 1 on 1 between archer and skirm is not realistic for obvious reasons (the cost), so maybe 50 archers and 60 skirmishers or more would be more realistic.

Lastly microing makes a big difference here, as bringing the Mamelukes upclose with the skirmishers would disrupt their formation considerably, forcing them to move away. Archers would be advantaged here.