Ranged unit attacks

[Charles]

It seems to me that there is still a bug in the ranged unit attacks.  If this has been left to be fixed later, I have a different solution that may be interesting:

Title: Limit Ranged Volleys

Summary: Instead of limiting how far an archer can attack from, limit the number of attacks they have to use.

Details: The range for each ranged unit would be converted to number of volleys.  My suggestion would be to use the current numbers but addapt them as follows:  MI 1:1, Archers 1:2, SF 1:2 or 1:3.  So a range 1 MI would have one volley before they would be left to mellee, range 2 MI would have two.  Archers would have double the volleys as their current range, 3 range to 6 volleys etc.  The Range 5 SF would basically have unlimited volleys as I have never seen a battle go to 10  or 15 rounds. 
In the settings for the ranged units there would need to be an additional two settings:  Range at which to attack (1-max) and what to do once out of volleys (retreat, defend, attack).   
The efficacy of the attacks would decrease with the longer distances (and wind) as per usual.  The rate at which the attack decreases with distance may need to be tweaked.

Benefits: Realism.  Units only have so many things to throw/shoot.  This gives TLs the option of using attacks earlier on to weaken their enemies with less effective shots.  Or only attack once they are close ("see the whites of their eyes"), but have the risk that the enemies will reach them before they manage to use their ammo.

Possible Downsides/Exploits: An army of weak archers may be able to decimate a larger infantry army by attacking when they are far away and retreating before anyone reaches them.  This could be interpreted as guerila warefare (not sure that is a downside or a benefit)

[Anaris]

The bug with ranged attacks has, indeed, been left to be fixed later, because it falls within the fiendishly-complex combat script, which I plan on completely rewriting as the final stage of the War Improvements Package.

As for this suggestion...I don't think it's worthwhile to nerf ranged combat at this point in time. It's already significantly weaker than melee in many ways; I don't think it's a good idea to give people the idea that after they've shot once or twice, their ranged units will become essentially meat for the grinder.

[Andre]

Why make it complicated, just think that our archers dont fire enough shots to run out, or that once they do we have camp followers who bring extra ammo, thats a thing.
And i personaly saw a battle last 14 turns quite recently, tho the reason was that my 2 friends, 1 SF the other archer ran away, so the undead reached my archers, and we just hit eachother for low hits each turn, they had only about 5 left so they did minimal damage, and archer suck at meele so we did minimal damage, like 1 kill every other turn :P