Quote Originally Posted by Musashi
Well, to me, it's better to have my shielded units a little nerfed in melee than completely remove the value of flanking fire from the game.
This represents a gross misunderstanding of the problem. The archers, who are far less numerous than the shield units, experience at most a 6 point difference in flanking fire from this fix, as the shield value instead becomes armor which applies against missiles from the right and rear (that's if I correctly recall the maximum shield as 6 points). Left and front archer fire should be entirely unaffected as shield already counted there.

The backwards melee shields, OTOH, affect the units in melee twice as much as the fix nerfs any flank archer fire against them. In a great many cases that is to say the 6 point flanking archer fire difference instead is a 12 point deficit from what the shield should be doing for the unit in melee. 12 points is not "a little nerfed," it is "absolutely destroyed." It's much worse of a problem too even ignoring it having a twice as harsh effect on stats and breaking more units than the fix does, as it applies to any normal melee from the front or left where the shield is supposed to be applied, situations that happen far more frequently and are more integral to the function of the game than flanking archer fire. That is not to downplay the usefulness of flanking archer fire working right by any means, but simply to say that standard melee combat is far more important to the game and thus makes the fix a good trade to make since melee affects all units that aren't archers, and archers too sometimes.