There is no real/not enough combat balance between units

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)

Not if the archer is using good armor and has high defense.

Now that I think about it, the problem isn't just with archers. As far as I can tell there doesn't actually appear to be any difference between units other then the weapons and special abilities they use. Archers aren't weak against melee units, cavalry isn't weak against spearmen, etc. 

In my opinion this makes the game unbalanced. Archers should not be able to go toe-to-toe with melee units and expect to win, just like cavalry should not be able to go toe-toe with spearmen and expect to win. This game really needs to give different kinds of units bonuses as well as penalties against certain unit types.

For example, units armed with spears should get a 50% melee bonus against mounted units, while archers should suffer a 75% defense penalty when attacked in melee combat. It would make combat much more logical.

Now that I think about it I think I will add this post to my OP and change the thread title.

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.

Archers only work well if you curse and slow opponents. Otherwise, they are too slow and can't penetrate armor.

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.

I don't have any problems with archers as they currently stand.

Melee troops may not be specialized to beat archers, but statwise they are still superior. Melee troops have a better attack, better initiative than their archer counterparts. They also get swarming bonuses, and they penetrate defense easier because of their higher attack.

Archers have their uses, but they are not the end all be all.

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. 

Yeah i think that is a part too, mages are just better than archers. Why worry about defenses when my attacks can negate them? And the ai doesn't use enough resistance gear imo to stop me doing it.

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.

The key difference between mages and archers is that mage damage is fixed, you can't increase it with bloodthirsty etc. So when you get high hp stacks and some spell resist they aren't as good anymore. Mages start out awesome, but will lose some momentum as the game goes on. (they are still good don't get me wrong ) Defender champion with Obsidian guard can be a pain as well for your mages, so that defender champion can be useful later in the game. 

As for AI stacks, up the difficulty so you can't one shot stacks as easily anymore, when the AI is too stupid to counter, brute force works wonders ^^

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

Don't make your whole army archers if you're going to fight those annoying little fire spitting guys.

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.

I think Fireball and Blizzard and other damage spells can be resisted for half damage, but it doesn't seem to happen all that much (I guess enemy units don't generally have high spell resistance).

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! 

rush+horses = dead archers.

I feel like archer damage is pretty underwhelming, but early game they are champs.

I like using ranged units with the wraith blood, cult of a thousand eyes, and death magic. Round 1- infected + web= free shots for three rounds