Crushing Blow! Boom Dead! 

Try making some charge horses with hammers, and get back to me with your puny archers

Though seriously, try making some high initiative troops, and see how many shots you can get off before they crush you. If you have high initiative archers, yes they are going to crush. But there are spells (mass Air dodge), equipment (trinket for +20 dodge available for troop design), and other stuff to counter archers as well. If you are complaining about AI, well then I am all with you, their troops suck

But, your own troops? You can counter archers easily. Create high armor and high ranged dodge troops and they will barely scratch you.  So don't worry about any game balance. 

(oh, and if you think archers is bad, try mages with double strike, they are pure nightmares compared to archers)

Archers are pretty awful overall, imo. Look at the tech tree and compare any bow to melee weapons at the same tech level. Bows have:

> Less damage than any melee weapon

> Less initiative than any melee weapon

> No passive or active ability (unless you count simply having range as their passive)

> Two handed, so no shield either

> No swarm bonus

Crossbows have a (weak) special ability and allow a shield, but their damage and initiative is even worse than bows. Now, staves are amazing and arguably overpowered, but that's another discussion, I'm assuming that one could not mistake bows for staves.

The only thing they have going for them is range, and that's not too much of an advantage given how small battlefields are - all it gets them is an extra couple attacks as your troops charge to melee range (and likely only one attack if you have cavalry). That could be devastating against low level or unarmored troops, but against decent troops it just won't make enough difference; as long as you make it to melee range in decent shape you'll win, you have more damage and more initiative no matter what melee weapon you choose, likely more armor and dodge from a shield (or armor piercing from a spear), and you get attack and accuracy bonus from swarming. In the battle OP describes, it sounds like the enemy's troops simply outclassed you, if their archers had been mace+shield instead you would've lost even worse.

.. Setting aside the relative merit of archers, however, the OP's afterthought is very true - there's rather little specialization among weapons. I've never thought "Aha they're using swords, I'm sure glad I brought my spearmen to counter them" - even though spears are a little better against swords than other weapons, it's not that big a difference, spears are just generally good weapons. Same for mace, the special ability might be slightly better against low armor enemies that you can nearly wipe out with that first hit, but then again the higher damage penetrates heavy armor  better as well, there's no situation where you don't want it - just all around good.

Swords and bows are the closest thing we have to specialized weapons at the moment, but unfortunately they're not great weapons overall, so in this case "specialized" means "only decent in certain situations, otherwise weak" - they can be good, but the spotlight is stolen by weapons that are pretty much always good.

It's not hard to counter archers. As others have noted, when you get into melee they will have fewer attacks because of lower initiative, no swarm bonus, lower damage, no shields and no special ability. If you've got the very cheap Air spell which massively increases dodge against ranged attacks, they're almost toothless.

If you took so much damage being shot at while killing their melee defenders that you died when you engaged them, well then you had a worse army than they did.

It could be implemented that melee weapons do more damage to ranged troops, but I don't actually think it would be terribly realistic. Melee troops beat archers at close range because their weapons can actually hit the archers at melee range, they generally wore better armour than archers, they trained for melee, and their weapons were more effective at close range than bows, all of which the game handles fine. Similar costing melee troops in melee with archers will kill them very quickly in the game, because of the higher damage and initiative, special abilities and swarm bonus.

You'd have a better case for spearmen vs. cavalry, but in any case the game doesn't try to be realistic. The current spear special ability is not realistic, but it is reasonably fun, simple, and creates tactical possibilities.

High defense = 1 trait not spent on a damage or initiative one, and another big hit to your total initiative. (good luck killing melee troops before they get to you then) And Crushing blow.. well that high armor you have? It doesn't matter as much when it hits for 200+ fronted fully upgraded. Most likely archers have chainmail at the most, and that barely stops any hammers. (even low level lightning hammers will probably crush them as well)

And for reference, I use mage troops with high dodge, that 20 range dodge trinket etc. and they beat archers handily. Don't underestimate dodge and lack of accuracy/initiative from the opposing archers. 

have to agree with the majority here - archers are useful, but far from overpowered. an army of archers combined with something less squishy (maces or swords with def traits) can be pretty good, but without a solid frontline that keeps hostile melee units away they won't stand long against melee units. if you outnumber or outclass the enemy, they can win battles with little effort, but the same can be said for every other weapon type.

they generally won't stand a chance against mid game melee units since the melee units will have chain armor while the archers probably won't (they are slow enough already - slowing them down even more by adding armor makes them just about useless - a bit harder to kill, but too slow to deal solid sustained damage)

in my experience, archer heavy armies work quite well with a high level  commander - battle cry is very a big boost for slow inititative units.

archers used to be worse in the early beta when melee weapons were quite a bit more powerful, but after the damage nerfs to most melee weapons (which didn't affect ranged weapons at all) they are a decent option now, imo. i like to use them from time to time, but armies without ranged units work just as well.

Do you mean fire/cold resistance? I didn't think spell resistance helped against elemental attacks.

Obsidian Guard makes no difference whatsoever to anyone who isn't a spellcaster. Spell Resistance has no effect on elemental damage unless it's a spell effect which can be resisted. The attacks from staves are affected by the attacker's accuracy and the defender's dodge, just like any other weapon.

Defenders are neither better nor worse than any other champion class aside from mages at protecting your army from elemental damage, though the Defenders themselves can become very well protected against Fire and Cold damage. The Mage champion class is the best for countering elemental damage since they have a trait which provides spells which grant increased elemental resistance to the whole army. Earth Magic on any champion makes that particular champion better for your army's elemental resistance, if you develop Earth Magic to get Nature's Cloak, but that has nothing to do with the champion's class.

Vanilla archers are hardly overpowered.

But Archers with the Ram's horn longbow and glyph stones, on wargs and trained in a city with 3 essence, aura of grace and heart of fire - THOSE are overpowered!