...I notice you're not even mentioning R2 archers.
I think this is probably a good idea; I have felt for a long time like the tradeoffs of shorter-ranged archers were not worthwhile. I would like to make it more of a strategic choice, such that the shorter the range of your archers, the more damage they deal.
Not sure exactly what the right way forward is on this, but I do agree that something needs to be done in this vein, and making starting archers all R4 is probably a good step in the right direction.
Thought you already do more damage in the shorter range? I mean shorter range is usually bad because how the game is designed. Because you fire before you move, if your target is out of your range, you waste that turn completely. If you have archers with R2, you get to shoot only once before you get hit by cavalry units unless they move from outside of your range. Even worse for R1. R1 is essentially useless. I don't even know why we are even seeing R1 archer options.
I can think of one quick way to change how much damage you do with ranged units. Maybe your overall damage is the same. Let's say you can do 1000 damage across all of your range. If you are range 4, you will do 250 each row. But if your enemies are 4 rows away, you will do 250/4. Maybe you get an option to focus your fire so instead of doing equal 250 damage per row, maybe you can focus 700 damage on row 3 while doing 100 damage per row on your remaining rows.
That way if you have a unit with 1 range, you will do 1000/1 damage to the row right in front of you. If your range is 2, you will by default do 500 damage in each row.
This will make archers attack multiple units like infantry units but they will do more damage on a specific row if you get an option to adjust the ratio of damage. Otherwise, their damage will be spread out across all their range.
Just a quick thought. Numbers might need to be readjusted and with arrows having different ratio across hit or miss you might need to make archers do more damage overall to adjust for that.
