I'm thinking of starting the game again for the god knows how manyth time and this time i think ill be an archer. However im not sure what to put the 5 skill points in. Should it be longbow, crossbow or shortbow?

I dont remember there being many decent longbows in the game although i may be mistaken. Could I have some advice as to what u guys think would be the best option. Cheers

In SOA the long bows aren't very good; i suggest the tuigan short bow for the attacks per round and the gesen for those harder to hit-enemies.

And I suggest throwing them into the longbow slots and wielding the fearsome Composite Longbow +0. But that's just me. Everyone else seems to think damage and THACO come before decent rangership ;)

I prefer to follow the Longbows route, and use Strongarm +2 as my weapon of choice. Later on, put some in Shortbows in order to use the Gesen Bow.

elven archer, 19 dex, longbow++++. My starting thac0 with a composite longbow in Irenicus' dungeon was 0. With a fifth point and the Heartseeker, you can kill pretty much everybody. If you have ToB and drop by the first level of the Watcher's Keep in Chp. 3 fairly early, you can grab the Quiver of Plenty +1, which will end all of your arrow shortage problems, too. And elves get bonuses to longbow and long sword, too.

Longbows rock.

I don't remember the exact numbers, but someone calculated it, and THE most damaging bow in the game is the Short Bow of Tuigan, and as such, it is, IMHO, the optimal bow for an Archer.
The Archer THACO will be so good, that it doesn't matter if he's using a +1 THACO bow or a +3 THACO bow - he'll hit the enemy anyway, so it is the rate of fire that counts, and the Tuigan bow has the highest rate of fire.