DaveyBaby,

I'd be very surprised if CA went to all the work and effort of doing as you suggested. Were I the programmer, I'd just spawn the arrows going at a pre-defined angle with a pre-defined speed from each bow. Each arrow would have an "Affected by gravity" property which would simply be incremented every second. This would tell it by how much to deflect the arrow down. Then simple collision detection would ID who (if anyone) it hit and you can then do the “Did it hurt them” calculation when it hits.

That way you don’t have to worry about updating arrow paths as the target moves and it does explain why units besides the one you’ve targeted take casualties. Much easier than trying to figure this all out ahead of time then hope the player doesn’t do something to mess with your predetermined results.

If you tried pre-calculating the results, you’d have a nightmare of a time if you have more than one unit at the same location, let alone what would happen if the target gets hit by a cavalry charge before your arrows land. Much simpler to do it dynamically.