UNIT - Creature Balance + Visual Changes

As mentioned before, dealing 2-8 damage without any penalties is incredibly high.
The ability to deal area-of-effect damage is a very minor ability, much less useful than even a precise shot. Nevertheless, the damage is set so high (6-10) that even an alternate unit would be impressive, considering the initiative bonus as well.
So, I would say:
- Basic archers have been significantly strengthened (why?)
- Alternate archers remain as powerful as they were.
- Upgraded archers have received a huge damage boost, plus initiative.
Overall, due to the upgrade, the human archers (already top-tier) have become even stronger. It's scary to think about how they will perform with the Unicorn Bow.

Before the release of TOE, many experienced players didn't even upgrade archers, precisely because of the area-of-effect attack. By calling this ability minor, I think you rushed to judgment. The area-of-effect damage of archers often outweighed the single-target damage.

Now, let's analyze each creature separately:
- Archers. The creatures have lost their main feature, essentially becoming ordinary ranged attackers, just like skeleton archers, which in turn reduces their value, unless this is compensated by increasing the damage.

- Crossbowmen (formerly archers, alternate upgrade). The creatures were given high, but also very random damage, not just like that. The faction as a whole lacked decent ranged damage. Besides the Tier 2 creatures, only Tier 5 creatures could deal ranged damage, but they are casters, and different types of priests, which, for logical reasons, cannot be associated with strong damage against enemies, so Tier 2 should compensate for this.

- Imperial Archers (formerly crossbowmen, upgrade). Since the creatures "requalified" as archers, a slightly increased initiative is a standard attribute for them, by the way, simple archers have a similar initiative. As for the damage, it's not that simple. The initial goal was to bring the upgrade to the level of the alternate upgrade, so that the player would have a real choice of upgrade, and not just an alternate upgrade by default. The alternate upgrade has very significant damage due to shooting without penalties, so it is not enough to outweigh this ability with just one area-of-effect ability, especially since the base damage will be divided by 2 when it is used, which in turn was the reason for increasing the damage for the upgrade. If you compare the upgrade and the alternate upgrade in ranged combat, the upgrade has about 30-35% less damage, but the upgrade has the ability to deal area-of-effect damage, which in turn makes it no less valuable.

Special attention should be paid to the artifact "Unicorn Horn Bow", which removes the shooting penalty for all archers. This artifact itself introduces a significant imbalance, because archers are different in strength, for example, Titans, for whom shooting without penalties simply turns into a one-shot kill. But that doesn't mean that now we need to reduce the damage of Titans by half? This is more of a problem with the artifact itself and its mechanics. There are plans for artifacts in the future, but since I haven't touched on this aspect yet, I don't think it makes sense to discuss it now.

I didn't understand the weakening of Ents at all. Especially, why exactly in terms of hit points (because it was an outstanding unit in terms of hit points).

That's the point, Ents were incredibly durable. Of course, they had low initiative and speed, but their durability outweighed all these shortcomings many times over, and that's not even mentioning the usefulness of the "Entangling Roots" ability. + If you take into account the fact that their weekly increase is 5 units (with a built structure), then... there's nothing more to add...

Alternate Minotaurs were stronger than the upgraded ones, and they still are, the difference has even increased, due to the stun.

Overseer Minotaurs. The creatures had slightly increased durability, but a huge difference in outgoing damage (twice as much, lol), and they were given the ability to stun, thereby increasing their potential durability, i.e., the key feature of the alternate upgrade.

Guardian Minotaurs. The unit has quite good damage due to double attack, but it simply lacks the ability to "take damage". If you consider that the minotaur increase was slightly reduced in favor of proportionality, then it was fair to slightly increase their durability.

Regarding Hydras, as I understand it, regeneration returns to the upgrade, and acid blood to the alternate.

Yes, that's correct. The thing is that by previously swapping these abilities, I wanted to prepare the "ground" for subsequent changes, but later I decided to abandon them, so I returned everything to its original state, except that I changed the name of the alternate upgrade. I think the name "Acid Hydras" suits them better, based on the color and the "acid blood" ability.

The reason for reducing the hit points of Erlings is unclear, because the Jarls have a great ranged ability (unlike the Erlings), which was previously compensated by the Erlings' hit points.

The situation here is the same as with Ents, only on a smaller scale. If you compare them one-to-one, you can see that Erlings have almost the same extreme durability, but they also have a 100% chance of area-of-effect damage. Plus, it is worth considering the fact that all Tier 7 units in the faction have very high survivability, and they don't lose in damage either, there are also bears. Isn't there too many "tanks" for one faction...

Added 7 minutes ago

As I see the upgrade of crossbowmen (archers and shooters remain unchanged relative to the classic):
option 1) increase the minimum damage to 7;
option 2) increase the initiative to 9, and the range of the precise shot to 4;
option 3) increase the range of the precise shot to 6.
I personally lean towards the third option.

Thank you for the suggestion, but all similar changes have already been made and tested by me and several people interested in this. Unfortunately, opinions on the benefits of such changes were divided, but most of them still did not support them. But rewarding the upgrade with bows was very much appreciated by many.