UNIT - Creature Balance + Visual Changes

Armor-piercing attack is devastating at all ranges, as mentioned above, and completely outclasses direct attack.

And is that what you call balance... when archers will heavily tip the "scales" in their favor? What makes them deserve such an advantage? And what's the point of the alternate upgrade then?

Also, I thought "without being excessive" implies minimal, conservative changes to obvious imbalances. This mod, however, seems to offer an alternative balance without restrictions, just like many others. Because the changes are actually significant.

Everyone interprets it differently. I mean that there won't be any "super" creatures - bosses... I don't see any alternative balance here; the original concept is preserved in each Faction.

Tests are tests, but tournament practice is tournament practice (a hint that test conditions may be incorrect).

Okay, so how should it be tested in your opinion? Should we fully buff a unit - a dummy - move it to the other end of the battlefield, apply all sorts of debuffs to the archers, and only then have them shoot? So that everything is correct...

Direct attack units already outperform in ranged damage (except for the armor-piercing range), on average by a factor of 1.6, and with reduced damage, the difference becomes twofold. And considering the blessing (divine power), the gap reaches 2.5 times. A slight increase in the ability's radius is good, but it doesn't compensate for such a huge gap. The "maneuvering" ability doesn't suit the "box" formation that is usually used when deploying archers, making it less useful. Extra hit points for archers are not a priority, unlike damage. It's even stranger to make human archers more durable than dwarven ones.

Archers should outperform them in ranged combat; that's their main purpose. But in close-range combat, they lose more than 2.5 times to crossbowmen, even without considering buffs. Leaving them with their "original" damage + shooting across half the field would be too overpowered. As for health, the calculation here is that they can survive close-range damage and deliver a strong counterattack with maneuvering.

Regarding grammatical errors, you may not be very interested in this, but readers definitely are - a low level of literacy directly affects the perception of the material.

Low literacy may affect it, but I am more than literate.
Do you really think that a small typo in one word out of the entire text really makes it difficult to read? Or do you have a policy of "let's find something to criticize"?

Added after 15 minutes

Added after 20 minutes
How the Arabs are balanced in the RoTA:
upgrade - 12 hit points instead of 10, initiative 9 instead of 8
alternate - damage 2-6 instead of 2-8

In the TE:
upgrade - damage 3-7 instead of 2-8, range 4 instead of 3
alternate - damage 2-6 instead of 2-8

As you can see, in both tournament mods, they understand that it is necessary to reduce the damage of the alternate upgrade, while the upgrade is strengthened without nerfs.

First of all, the topic doesn't state that my mod is "tournament-oriented," and I don't see the point in adapting it to them. Secondly, I agree that crossbowmen are still far from ideal, but that doesn't mean they should now be buffed so that they one-shot from across the field. Most likely, I will rework them in the next updates. For now, they provide adequate competition to the alternate upgrade version. They are just more situational, but in skilled hands, they can be MUCH more useful than archers.