Quote Originally Posted by Puzz3D
How is this an argument for reducing archer effectiveness? On average you got 3 kills from each archer.
Considering these were bottom end archers with no experience or missile upgrades, they inflicted substantial casualties when used frontally against one of the best protected units in the game. From the flanks and rear they of course completely slaughtered them (I let the guys march on through after the test and let it run out without giving any more commands.) Of course, we have the old problem of men firing at extreme oblique from the end of a column as well.

Those archers should be next to useless against these guys frontally. Historically, archers did not have that much impact vs. a formed phalanx. Even the compound bows in use by the horse archers at Samarkand had trouble vs. the phalanx. It was when the men broke that they were cut down.

The problem is not so much with the heavily armoured, as with the moderately/lightly armoured, where the kill rate gets out of hand in a hurry. A couple of volleys, and a unit is useless. In my last 1.3 campaign I found it rather easy to cut down Spartans with a single unit of Cretans--who now have the same missile attack as Roman archers, though more distance.

Vanilla archers should be very ineffective. They represent novices with indifferent equipment.

In RTW, the shape of the formation doesn't matter very much. If one man can fire then all the men in the unit fire even if they are out of range and all with apparently the same effectiveness. I guess men further back might be a little more likely to miss since they are farther away from the target.
Yes, I understand the weakness of the missile model with respect to formation. I don't believe there is distance attenuation; accuracy is not directly modified for distance (there was not any noticeable in 1.2.) The slight attenuation observed was explained best by the angle of the arrow strikes vs. the target--it appeared to be solely a hit box issue since the profile is smaller at and angle than perpendicular. I did some tests with various spacings, ranges and missile velocities and such to confirm this.