Ranged attacks?

[gekobal]

Can't archers use their bow from a couple of tiles away? Why do they have to go right next to the enemy in order to shoot? Am i missing something here?

[Reality]

It's a conscious design decision.

It's point 15 on this list [wiki.wesnoth.org] and you can find it discussed elsewhere on the wesnoth forums if you search for it.

Personally, I kind of think that it's nice compared to have ranged units mechanically close to melee units both for the sake of simplicity, but also because it keeps out some of the shenanigans you can see in things like Master of Magic and Heroes of Might and Magic.... I think the biggest thing is that it means that Zone of Control and being able to move around the unit is equally important for melee and ranged units as opposed to only being so for the former (ignoring the usual ranged units forced to melee adjacent rule used in MoM, HoMM, and others)

Multi-hex range also tneds to make games really hyper-offensive, which can feel good against computers, but isn't really that interesting against other humans in my opinion.

[greenghost2008]

put simply. if a ranged attack hits a unit with only melee weapons they get not counter attack. Elf Archers are good at killing orc grunts.

[SilentScav]

This game needs ranged units. I loved it so much and grateful for playing it, but wish I had range units to better play tactical roles.

[RJJameson]

Ranged attacks would probably break campaign play. Imagine if--instead of the AI regularly ganging up 2-3 units on one of yours in order to get a kill--they regularly ganged up 4-6. You could compensate by making ranged attacks much weaker. But then you've opened up a giant can of Balance Worms.

The current approach is mechanically elegant--it is not necessarily "realistic," but then neither are single units occupying an entire village. As a long-time player of tabletop games, I really appreciate the fact that Wesnoth embraced being a game, rather than trying to be a simulation.

[Ruldra]

I can understand the idea behind ranged attacks in this game, and I think it works fine in open terrain, but it's an absolute nightmare on cave levels as you don't have much room for movement and there are lots of bottlenecks. It becomes a very slow and painful battle of attrition between melee units.

Anyone who played the South Guard campaign can attest what a slog was the cave level in there.