Probability wise, who is more probable to miss, scout or barbarian?
Scout of course. Did you know barbarians have the same armour as leather troops, and the same hit points as a mounted unit? They're monsters. In fact they're basically the same as a scout, but with more than 2x the chance to injure.
Chance of scout injuring barbarian: (35/2) = 17.5%
Chance of barbarian injuring scout: (75/2) = 37.5%
Before you say "barbarian is OP!": Yes barbarians are OP, that's the point of them. They're super powerful units that can't be equipped, you only get them at the start. Remember how tough they were to fight in the campaign for the first time?
Seriously though, you're right. People shouldn't be able to exploit it. On the other hand: out of range is out of range. Maybe arrows that hit the unit on the next tile shouldn't count as a hit? It would just be a miss then. Or a combination between your idea and my idea: arrows 'prefer' to scatter further in the opposite direction but IF they scatter to a tile that should be out of range, it doesn't count as a hit...
It's not ideal but I can't come up with anything better now.
Edit: actually using archers at maximum range is already stronger because they will all focus on a couple of units, whereas their targeting will be much more random if they can hit more units.
That's a neat idea, if the unit is further away than the maximum range the hit is ignored
So it doesn't matter if the arrow scatters out of range, it won't do any damage unless the unit it hits is standing within range. I can't think of any downsides, since archers will only aim for units within range, so the only case this will happen is if either the unit steps out of range before the arrow lands, or the arrow scatters and hits a further away unit it was not intended to hit. I guess it could make bowmen vs bowmen face-offs tricky, because as soon as the bowmen step the tiniest amount out of range they cannot be hurt. So you won't take so many casualties when stepping your men away from archers when you were just in range of them. Hardly a big deal though.
I've implemented it
It sometimes happens that they take many hits without dieing, thats bad luck, but most of the time they die fast. Ed he did deserve to live after 12 blows!
The knight has a (55/3) = 18% chance of killing the crossbowman with every strike, if the crossbowman is facing him. If he's facing away it's much much more likely. So on average it takes 5 blows, and could take up to infinity in the worst case