Let's even look at your archer-infantry example. Why should the archer necessarily have lower melee skills then the infantryman?
All other things being equal he will have less melee skill simply because his training focused elsewhere, if your 'why' is seeking that sort of answer, and because otherwise the infantryman is superfulous, if you are seeking the other kind of answer.
A high level archer with better sword prof than a low level swordsman is ok, but when you are comparing troops at the same tier it doesnt make sense from a realism point of view or a gameplay point of view either. Someone who focuses roughly the same attributes and exertions entirely on melee will be better at it than someone that focuses on archery and uses the sword as a backup. And for gameplay why bother training swordsmen if they arent better at fighting than the archers?
If he were a specialized trained bowman - maybe. But what if he's a member of militia (say, Elven)? He could be equally trained to use both.
But he should still not be as good at one of them as someone that focuses completely on it. The warden line are generalists - their archery skill should be lower than dedicated archers, their sword skill higher, but not higher than that of a dedicated swordsman.
And again, this is all about making allowances off a baseline and you need to have a baseline defined to do that.
Neither is anybody asking you to make this version compatible with RCM, or something.
I'm sorry, but don't bullshit me, ok? I could pull a dozen quotes where you and others sigh over the fact RCM has not been embraced by the dev team as the native model.
It's getting on my nerves a bit, that's all. I am also not so fond of your condescending remarks towards our balance. Like, come on, dude, we're right bloody here. We read this stuff.
I dont think anyone is trying to hurt your feelings or in any way belittle the work of you or the other dev staff, Merlkir. Are we supposed to guard our tongues so carefully we cant even talk about what we are doing to avoid offending you?
Obviously if we were happy with the standard TLD game balance we wouldnt be doing the sub mod, but if we werent on the whole completely enchanted with the rest of it we wouldnt be bothering to try and fix it either.
I think the arguments are all done and no need to rehash.