Another difference between EU 1-4 and crossbow-archery is that with the ammo you have, you can shoot for a much longer time with crossbows. That might be why in EU4 there are more archers (or they are more visible), simply because they can spam their arrows, or even go with just one stack, whereas in EU 1 archers run out of arrows quite early in the round if they spam them...
Also crossbows can be used to shotgun through shields, a pretty good bonus much easier to do than the get around and shoot method archers have...
Always archer vs crossbowman discussions remind me of
this old thread, always a good laugh. It discusses nearly all there is, reminds you of the difference,
and reminds you how my old friendgy crossbowmen are
.