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.
I wouldn't mind seeing units running past smaller infantry in the front to get to archers. Lets say if 2 inf are before you while there are other archers farther back then maybe your army should leaving twice as many men behind to wipe that enemy infantry units while the rest moves forward. I think the game already does this to a certain extent though.
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.
Sorry but I think infantry is good where they are. If we lower this too much, we are back to the good old inf best type era.
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.
I don't think this is a major problem. Archers tend to panic when infantry units start hitting them anyway.
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.
Trust me. They already suck in melee. You will be able to slaughter them quite quickly if you can get to them.
