This is my best attempt at addressing the current ranged meta. Right now ranged units are the ones that decide almost all battle outcomes. The main strength of melee units is their armor, with their attack being less impactful. This is why melee units are thought of as a shield rather than a damage-dealing soldier.
just compare a consular bodyguard champion to a citizen soldier cavalry skirmisher: 17.3 to 14.4 damage per second.
or a champion swordsman to a citizen soldier skirmisher: 14.6 to 12.8 damage per second. Comparing citizen soldier melee units to ranged units makes it clear that ranged units have excessive damage and that melee units have excessive armor.
This huge damage difference between melee and ranged units is made up for by a huge amount of armor for melee units.
So, my approach has been to increase melee damage, decrease ranged damage, and slightly reduce melee armor. In addition, melee infantry are made slightly faster to reduce their losses when approaching ranged units.
The armor reduction and ranged damage reduction mean that ranged units do roughly the same damage as they currently do vs melee, while melee units do far more damage to other melee units than they currently do.
The speed change for melee is to ensure that enemy ranged units will be more pressed to retreat when the enemy melee units are dead.
The result should be that melee units are more impactful, which will be a nice change of the meta.
- Melee units: 1.5x damage, reduced armor.
- Melee infantry: 9.5 move speed (from 9.0)
- Buildings and siege: increased hack armor to compensate for higher dps melee.
- Ranged units: 0.75x damage.
- Clubmen gain a small hack attack to increase their usefulness (not exclusively for destroying buildings)