Cavs/Bows?

I've heard talk about cav/bow armies but fail to see how they are better then pure cav armies or cavs/cats. In other words, what strategical advantage to bows give with cavs compared to cavs with another army type?
Thanks in advanced

U can get tons of archers instead of little cat

Ariki is right, you can have a ton more archers that are more easy to sustain than you can have cats, although archers are weaker, if you see 120k archers ridin with 50k cavs comin at you you would hide your troops, i know i would, it all dependson how much time you have to feed your army and take care of your troops.

Personally id stick with cav/cats.

only stick with archers if you can build enough to start fort farming level 4+ because otherwise your army is so small you cant touch anyone for awhile.

i just did some basic logic and 8 archers kill 1 cat 1v1 with max range for cats
6 archers kill 1 cat 1v1 with max range on archers
8 archers if both are maxed
but then you must think about the fact that cav are taking the hit.
lets say you have 25k archers and 50k cav you get a good hit of about 5k cats dying without your archers being touched each round:)

Thats all fine and dandy, but 1 cat only kills around 2 cav per turn, archers hardly do as much damage, simply, dont think about an archer army unless you can maintain at leas 70k of them to do any real damage otherwise, its a waste, because honestly in my opinion if commanded right cavalry are the king of the game. and bows dont have the strength in lower numbers to cut it.

it is up to u of whats best to you i have all types if things

hmmm, i am going to try out this cav arch combo. i personally think, this arch is there to clear away those blockers that ur opponent is planting on ur routes to buy turns to impede ur cavs and let their cats kill ur cav. the arch element is just a way to minimise ur loss and also to complement full cav army weakness. also in term of speed and amount, arch is definately more sustainable. what they lack in attack power is complemented by cav.

I started this archer thing I think, lol. Anyways, archers are best for:
-clearing small unit armies that your opponent is using to block for extra turns with cats
-with timing, archers can hit cats first. 5 archers equals the same attack as one catapult and even has the same crop usage with multiplied by 5. Cat armies tend to go attack and archers will need some attack and if combined with a cav army, you'll need some defense.
-archers are the only unit that have the potential to hit decent level turrets on turn 1. Meaning instead of sending cats at high level turrets, send the cav and archers, cav with higher defense and health to take more hits before losing prestige plus they're worth less.
-with a 1350 field range, archers move 343+720 range (these numbers are with maxed speed and range) so their movement provides for a total threat range of 1063. If the field range is 1350, then the highest range on the field with range tech, is 1050, which is only obtainable through turrets which are spread out. Notice that high level turrets will hit cats as soon as they leave the back row... means the front row of turrets is at about 300 into the field. This all means on first move, archers can hit turrets. Though for some reason sometimes I can't hit level 10 turrets on move one sometimes. Though I did experiment with 64 speed once bc that's the max speed my archers can have with maxed equips and techs, but still be under 300 movement. (this setup negated several advantages of archers) Even then they still hit cav first whereas if they have 3 rows of turrets, it's likely that the cav will clear two rows of turrets with an attack if that's all they have and the archers will finish, meaning less damage.
-they have higher speed than cats. This doesn't mean they will always hit cats first. You MUST time the attack. to hit them on turn one, you must wait for the opponent to be within your one move potential threat range (determined by movement per turn plus your range with range tech)
-for those of you wanting archer/cats, a cav can't hit a retreating cat. keep 1 of every unit in each city for when someone sends a cav army at you, recall your cats and have them move as far forward as possible. Right before they hit, you move backwards. The cav will chase you until they hit you after your cats can no longer move backwards. The archers will be awaiting for their cats to reach within their threat range, but while waiting for this, the archers and cats will be beasting on the cav.
-You can lower speed so that your archers can't be hit by cats after moving once, but then turrets gain an advantage and it slows down your attack, hurting two advantages to using archers.
-when I drop someone with a cav/archer/inf army, the opponent generally has about 12 seconds to figure out which city i'm attacking and put those troops on hunt. This is considering that they are not surrouning themselves by oasis's, alts, friends, neighbors, forts, and other people so that enemy attacks take several minutes to hit no matter what.

Archers will slow down your cavs travel speed, but will lessen the damage your cavs take by quite a lot if used properly and won't slow down your travel speed NEARLY as much as cats do. Using only 50k archers and about 15k cav, I was able to gain about 700k within about a weeks time. I scouted returned hunts, farmed inactives, plotted my neighbors crop loss per hour, etc.

Hope this helps and sorry the post is so long.

what ever is best for u different people like different things

Mitch u posted something exactly like that a couple posts up, kinda redundant lol

Im changing to cav/bow just for the fun of it, much more excitement. Archers r nice for taking oasis if u want them hid in war time for a chance of being cropped. Sending 10,000+ can take an oasis with no losses, even tho its a lot more than the 550 cats needed, you can be there 2x as fast. And if you send some 3,000+ cavs along with 4,000+ bow that also lets you take the oasis with no losses, u just gotta command right and hit the cats by moving archer forward on turn 6