UNIT - Creature Balance + Visual Changes

And you call this balance... when crossbowmen will heavily tip the "scales" in their favor? What did they do to deserve such an advantage? And what's the point of the alt.upgrade then?

I didn't suggest that; that was a comment on the other extreme. My suggestion was to raise the armor-piercer's range to 6; that's called balancing with minimal effort. Alternatively, you could raise the range to 4 and increase the damage instead of cutting it. Or use options from PTA, TE while simultaneously weakening the imbalanced alt.

Fine, and how exactly do you think they should be tested? Fully buff a unit-dummy, move them to the other end of the battlefield, apply every possible debuff to the crossbowmen, and only then shoot with them? Just so everything is correct...

Back in the day, I conducted tests in a 4 equal stacks vs 4 format (manually, not auto-battle). In most cases, this gave plausible assessments that didn't diverge from the actual practice of many players. Because it simulated a real battle: multiple stacks, focusing, etc. But again, you have to account for the artificiality of such tests and understand how this unit will actually be used.

Low literacy might be a factor, but my grammar is more than adequate.
Do you really think that a small typo in one word out of the entire text makes the material impossibly difficult to read? Or is your policy "Let's find something to nitpick"?

That's not a typo, but a typical and rather gross error. You can ignore it and feel free to keep writing "войны" if you don't respect your readers much. I'm not insisting.

For now, they provide adequate competition to the alt.upgrade version.

Seriously? Who else thinks so?

Added after 4 minutes

Shooters are supposed to outplay them in long-range combat, that's their main design, but in close-range shooting they lose by more than 2.5 times to the crossbowmen, and that's without considering buffs. Leaving them their "native" damage + shooting across half the field would be too much. As for health, the calculation here is that they should be able to survive melee damage and deliver a strong counter-strike from maneuvering.

I think you need to gain more experience in balancing.
How do you plan to use this maneuverability in a real battle? During the breakthrough, will you constantly sacrifice shooters, putting them in the line of fire? In the final phase, will you count on the opponent necessarily attacking shooters in melee instead of simply blocking them with some small stack and finishing them off at the end of the battle? Or perhaps by removing the retaliation with a low-level stack with near-zero defense?

I'm talking about the unit nerf because I clearly envision a classic breakthrough using crossbows. Against neutrals, 3 or 4 cells usually don't make a fundamental difference, but 60-80% damage means you'll only be able to kill 60-80% of the neutrals compared to the old crossbows before they start getting hit in the face (which leads to highly undesirable losses). And it's much more pleasant to break through shooters with 80% damage (fewer losses) than the old crossbowmen. This means that before the crossbows are blocked, they will have managed to deal less damage.

It is not stated anywhere in the thread that my mod is "tournament-grade," and I see no point in tailoring it to them.

You're wrong to ignore the experience of those who have already dealt with the issue of upgrade equality. "Tournament-grade" here refers to objectivity proven by practice. Simply because imbalanced changes have little chance of surviving in competitive play. You don't have to copy it exactly; it's important to understand why it was done this way and not another, and to draw conclusions.