[Pocus]

but PvK, friendly fire was and is a reality. Just remember the examples we saw in Afghanistan and Irak. Even with precise armaments, there was still casualties from friendly fire.
The problem is that most of the games gave us the bad habit to fire at will, and magically our troops would not be harmed.

You find your archers too stupids? Aside from the fact that the AI in doms II is augmented when it comes to targeting, the problem lie perhaps because you ask too much of them. Historically, a commander would ask his archers to rain arrows upon the enemy, and stop when melee start. In dominions you could just do that, and this is not workarounds IMO : ask for firing at commanders (rear area), or ask to fire and flee (so they fire 2 rounds). I must recon though that the best order would be to fire X rounds then stop. Dont know if it will be available in doms II.

the main forum (most Posts) about dominions is a newsgroup, for those interested :
comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic

you can also fire google (dejanews) and search topics in this newsgroup, for example 'ermor pretender'.