upgrade unlocks

[Archer]

Hey guys, just wondering, what upgrades do you guys recommend and in which order??

[balint]

Well, I reccomend the castle and the spartan. they are very useful

[Mairon]

Lemme see - Blacksmith, the best of them all. I love the sweet bonuses, so I sometimes build two blacksmiths.
Second - I can't decide between longbow, samurai and missionaries.
Third - Either dock, siege workshop or church.

The worst - Horse archer, because of low damage output compared to cost.
Elephant and elephant archer - good idea in theory, but they are the only expensive unit that can be coverted. It is quite easy and then, not only you don't gave it, you have an elephant against you.

[RBD]

I'd disagree on Horse Archer being bad. They're my favorite scouting unit in the game--5 move speed and 7 sight range (plus the 5 attack range is a nice bonus), added to the fact that unlike falcon, it doesn't die to a single arrow. My score for the "Hungarian invasions of Europe I." is 177,579 and it's thanks to Horse Archer that I was able to achieve that. Alone, a single Horse archer is useful for scouting. As seen in the two "History of Hungary" campaign maps, a large group of them (with a small handful of supporting cavalry) is a devastating force that can sweep across large distances faster than basically any other army composition.

That being said, they do lose a lot of their value if the map has no Fog of War, especially if you don't start with a large number of them to begin with.