Protectorates

[soibean]

unless of course they're firing into the flank of heavy infantry, which would decimate them if they're being attacked already
but on the other hand Ive only seen the AI do this once in a battle... not through maneuvering, but because they had archers as reinforcements and appeared behind my guys

[nikolai1962]

I think the bug you get with archers (sometimes) is not them choosing to shoot at less-armoured guys instead of heavy-armoured guys. The bug is when they see their arrows are no good against the unit in front of them so they charge instead.