Interesting. I've never found samurai archers to be that unbalanced, but perhaps that's because I'm more used to Medieval's archers (who are woefully underpowered). Whenever I jump back to Shogun, I always think to myself, "Yes! This is how archers *should* be!"

I would advocate nerfing SA's melee abilities, but that wouldn't be terribly realistic. Perhaps they should be more expensive to recruit instead?