Armor and Numbers

Currently, the way the game attempts to handle combat is frustrating. This goes in three directions:

Armor is useless, according to the game. I cringe every time I see a fu****g peasant defeat a knight in plate armor with a knife or hammer. 3 militias (about a month of training) are numerous enough to defeat any fully grown and equipped professional soldiers (knights started training at 6 yo). Sorry, this is not how this works. Any knight SLAUGHTERS unarmored peasants and militias, that is why the were such a terror as rulers. The game should / needs to implement a damage reduction and mitigation mechanic, making weak attacks pointless against heavy armor.
Shields have no downsides and are the most vital upgrade to any troop. They add a ridiculous amount of hp, they allow each and every unit to block any attack at least once and there is no "punishment" for keeping block up the entire time.

Archery. How do I put this in nice words .... You dont need to be tier 4 in order to hit your target. The difference between a young archer and an experienced one is not "does he hit the target". It is more like "the young archer hits his target in 90% of all cases and good circumstances, the master hits 95% of his targets under any circumstance". Archers are really weak and unprecise in general, fians included. Also, the difference between crossbow and bow are minor and not distinguished enough. CB: Slow, high damage, good for beginners, no good scaling with level, Bows are quite fast, damage depends on skill, high learning curve).
Also, the range of a longbow is slightly bigger than 200 m.

Mount And Blade Game