So after playing with Cretans. Is it possible to reduce archer attack to 4.5 ish instead of 6? Roughly a reduction of 25%? 1/2 my shield cav were dead because the cretans could just shoot into the cavalry in melee. :\ It runs counter to your reasoning that arrows couldn't do that much damage back then.

I'd also like to propose differentiating military archers and skirmisher archers/irregulars. One of them should have more ammo and lower accuracy (area of effect fire) with no skirmish while the 2nd category should have lower ammo and higher accuracy and skirmish (skirmishers). This would of course apply more towards the cretan, bosphoran, syrian, persian archer, heavy archer, and the archer/spear units.

Basically not all archers are meant to fire from big giant squares.