[HoneyBadger]

I'm playing early age Ermor now, which has loads of tower shields, and I agree, while they do seem to shrug off more arrows than any other nation, I regularly suffer some damage from archers, and possibly more damage from short range attacks like sticks and stones. I suspect there may be another factor at hand. One thing to keep in mind though, is the random element-with 100 arrows each having a base 1% chance to hit, that's 1 arrow hitting, but the random rolls in this game add a whole other element there. I don't know from the above formula whether or not there's randomness involved in calculating whether a striking arrow actually penetrates and hits, but I'd bet on it, and also on range having an effect.