UNIT - Creature Balance + Visual Changes

Increasing the range is precisely what would be "over the top"; crossbowmen would simply become a flyswatter for high-tier creatures, as now, completely negating armor at a distance of 7 tiles (1 tile for the creature itself + 6). And in general, the ability itself is very unbalanced; -50% armor is still manageable, but 100% is too much.

1) 6 tiles (range without penalty) is 50% of the field; what 7 tiles are you talking about? You could even say 8 (1 tile behind when placed in the front row).
2) How is it overpowered if it's easily countered?
3) But you ignored the arguments that the alternate archers' damage needs to be reduced, where there is a real imbalance and true one-shot potential across the entire range (especially under Dugald), and instead, you propose an enhanced version of these archers (3-8 damage instead of 2-8).
And for 7-10 damage (alternate archers are resting), a serious upgrade is required. :D

It's easy to see that 6 tiles is 50% of the field if you need to place archers on the edge, but in such a way as to minimize the range of fire to the farthest corners. The archers are placed in the middle of the edge row, and the distance to both corners is approximately 12 tiles. If you look at the area, even when placed in the middle of the 2nd row, the number of tiles that can be targeted is slightly less than 60 (the total area of the field is 120). What more can be said about the classic placement in the corner (the safest), from where the archers can only shoot directly at 26 tiles (together with the melee zone, 30 tiles, or 25% of the field area).

In general, the changes you propose are very "over the top," because even in my mod (where creatures are balanced from scratch), crossbows/archers differ less from the original. And possibly other units as well; I was too lazy to check them all (that's why I only touched on the Arabs). It seems to me that the goal here is no longer to balance the upgrades, but simply to come up with new creatures.