a few fixes id suggest to improve archers and make combat more realistic:
1. in battle rounds where one side has archers and infantry/cav/anything that takes hits before archers in the same row, and the other side has melee units attacking that row, the attacking melee units will ignore the archers and focus all attacks on the melee units. this makes sense on its face as infantry would step forward to shield the archers and the archers would fall back a bit.
what doesn't make sense, and is a major handicap in favor of archer heavy armies vs infantry heavy, is when the melee becomes crowded in the above scenario and attacking infantry are apparently just standing around getting hit with arrows and waiting for their comrades to finish off that pesky inferior infantry force. this allows very small infantry forces to protect huge archer forces and actually fully negate a portion of the larger infantry force's potential damage.
what the attackers would do in reality is charge around the melee and attack the archers, forcing them either to stand and fight or flee.
so suggestion one is to allow infantry to attack archers in the "defending" row when the melee becomes crowded. this immediately allows melee heavy forces to run infantry-forward settings that actually stand a chance against the ranged middle, inf rear setup.
im sure i could have worded this better but hopefully you get the point.
2. nerf the effects of crowded melee slightly in general, ie allow more units to attack rather than stand around when the enemy melee force is smaller. nothing more frustrating as a commander of an infantry heavy army than watching an inf force a third your size hold you up for two or three rounds while their massed archers chew you up.
3/4: cap archer armor by range with longer range units having lower and lower caps. doesn't have to be a ridiculously onerous cap, but longbowmen in full plate armor makes no sense to me and i have been in many realms and seen more archer rcs with 70+ armor than infantry.
this will also help with archer damage by reducing their cs by range, which i think should be a consideration in how archers get rebalanced - longer range should have certain drawbacks. this will not only be better for balance but also open up some interesting tactical considerations - do we go for more powerful short range archers or the more tactically flexible but less impressive at close distances long range archers..?
5. make archers not hold up in melee combat nearly as well as they do now, i feel like they go toe to toe with anything but an overwhelming infantry force far too easily. they seem to actually get bonus damage in melee by landing hits in both the ranged and melee segments of each round.
6. give "breaking through the frontlines" a purpose or eliminate it as a feature, as of right now it seems to grant no advantage to the side that does it
