I disagree with the swordmen being Op.  Sword just seem weak.   The bows I agere with in that they are a bit UP.  Especially when targets can DODGE arrow shots.  

Suggestion to fix is remove maybe 2 to 3 points of the initiative penalty and see how that goes.  Slightly more useful and still not machine gunners.. 

I think the weapons are pretty well balanced as is. 

Blunt is very powerful in early game to wipe out a stack before they can counter(I lose units to those little guys with clubs all the time) and later it is good against armor.

Bows are still almost overpowered. The archer is not getting hit back when he fires, and if you a want lower initiative penalty take the archer trait for your kingdom or empire.  Initiative is also really easy to stack to get bowman a shot before the enemy even moves. If you design them right and give them some of the +3 attack items they are pretty nasty.

I really like the changes to the axes.

A nice change would be to classify staffs with spell casting bonuses as ranged weapons so our squishy mages do not get set in the front line. Or make a change somewhere else to accomplish that.

Maybe crossbows should be the only bows with unlimited range, and normal longbows and shortbows should have less range (eg 5 and 4), but better initiative.

 my 2 cents on weapon balance:

axes (cleave) are the best weapons now. don't know if it's fair to call them overpowered, but i think they could use some limitation; very little reason to use other weapon types once you get to battle axes; maybe cleave shouldn't do full damage to all affected units

spears are similar to axes. impale is a bit harder to pull off with foot soldiers; mounted spear troops with charge are very strong though, since the high movement and extra damage on turn means you can often line them up for a devastating alpha strike that takes out 2 units at once.

I've had some great success with a mix of 2 axemen and 2 speamen (all mounted and with charge); on hard difficulty they had very little trouble wiping out most monsters or AI stacks on turn 1; the combination of charge and the force multiplier attacks (multiple targets) is very dangerous. 

swords are nothing special now; the lower tech version have a little bonus initiative; they have solid damage and a bit extra damage from the counterattack, but since counterattcks now only deal 50% damage, it's close to useless against armored targets; 

blunt weapons suffer from the low init; otherwise they are very good. stacking with impulsive trait from fortress makes them borderline overpowered though; they can oneshot almost anything with the double damage crushing blow, so if both armies are the same size (roughly) and your army goes first (impulsive) it's almost irrelevant that you lose the next turn after crushing blow - there's noone left after the first turn anyway.

ranged weapons are really weak now; between the swarm mechanic and the special moves,brining archer units seems kind of pointless; they are too slow and deal too little damage to compete with melee, IMO

another random comment: get rid of the impulsive trait at fortress level 3. that trait is way too powerful to get on very trained unit. replace it with a free "fast" promotion (+2 initiative) or maybe a free "graceful" (immune to prone and +2 initiative; stacks with the "fast" trait) 

The only thing wrong with ranged weapons is they start too late in the game. Their damage and speed are fine, you just have to design your units around them. Pretty easy to get archers/mages with like 30 init that always go first (without impulsive) and decimate the enemy without ever being hit.

Swords however, suck. A single counter attack at -50% damage is just garbage, and the small init bonus doesn't help. Cleave, Crushing Blow and Impale can all decide the battle on the first turn, severely weakening multiple units, or outright killing them, causing the enemy's turn to be significantly less dangerous. Swordsmen however walk right into the enemy on the first turn, do at best half the damage the other weapons do, then get hit with a retaliatory phase that can do two to three times as much damage to them. I think swords should have unlimited counters and a dodge bonus, their first turn lacks the power of the other weapons so they should have increased survivability and "long-term" damage.

I also think Impale needs to do 1.5x damage to each target, spears are a lower damage weapon than axes, and anti-counter doesn't really matter much when most of the battle is decided by uncounterable weapon abilities. At 1.5x it will still do less total damage than Cleave, and still be harder to use, but have more of an impact against "medium" strength units. Cleave will clear out swarm units, Crushing Blow will topple big single units, Impale will be more for standard troops in a line.

I also agree that the impulsive trait needs to go away

yeah playing with self imposed rules works fine for individual players, but on the other hand, there will be enough players who play the game once or twice, find an overpowering strategy, win easily and stop playing the game because it's too easy to win. imo, if the devs can improve the balance to avoid that problem, they should do so. 

How are you designing your archer units?  There is a heafty init penalty on the bow itself, but that gets countered a decent amount just by not loading the figures up with armor causing encumbrance.  You can do the same thing with a melee unit, but it is dangerous.  If you don't do enough damage to wipe out the target unit,  you can expect to get clobbered when they get their turn.

If the init penalty on bows were dropped down, then a maxed out for init archer could kite your armored up melee units forever.  Not fun. 

i think swords got nerfed too hard, otherwise weapons are very balanced.

If Swords Counterattack had a "First Strike" ability that applied potential damage to the attacking unit before damage is received, I think this would balance out how swords work now without making them OP again like in FE

Swords are generally UP - EXCEPT - some of the 2H rare champ weapons are ok.   Longsword with a jugg is ok - just since you'll rarely use cleave with a jug.  Otherwise, I'd rather use a spear in general with a few Axe troops.

Axes were OP I think, making them 2H seems to be a good move.

Spears are good above average, multi-target anti-counter attack.   Defensive (1H spears) + shield works well too.

Bows could use a bit more love, but really I'd just want them earlier in the tech tree - I'd take shortbow at blacksmithing, longbow at weaponsmithing, and some badass bow at siege or something.   Having separate technologies is kind of a pain and they're at odd points in the tree.

Staves could use some all around love as well.

I just don't like blunt weapons, slow and I hate daze.   I'll use a champ weapon if I need to but don't think I've ever intentionally built a blunt unit.

@OP Bows are not underpowered at all.  Ever notice they can be used at any range?  That is a huge mechanic you are completely ignoring.

(Sorry if this was addressed in previous posts, tldr right now)

Godlike? Not really. I just started a new game, not very far in, made a beeline for bows and wargs. Picked Amarians (no fire shards yet >.<), archers, quick, lucky, enchanters and rebels. Very early fort is now creating warg riding archers with 26 init and 17 (19?) attack x3, no metal cost, no crystal cost, just the weak bow, a couple pieces of leather so as not to encumber, and the +15 weight +1 atk, +2 init, and +3 attack vs lower init traits. Groups of 3 are hitting for close to 50 damage, even against targets with some armor. It's extremely effective. Nothing closes the gap, it takes most units 2-3 turns to reach your ranged units, nothing survives that long.