but than again ballistas will be placed on walls i think if you get attacked.
Nope.
Are these same problems in CoE5? Because wow is it painful watching your men be like "O shit, we put the ranged units too far away from the walls to actually be useful".
hmm i never used siege engines much in CoE4, so never noticed if they are placed "too far away"... but it could also just be the "problem" of having a giant army, so the 10 infantry rows have to fight eachother first till the archers can get in range after most of the infantry died. but armies the size of 200-400+ "work better" in dominions5 than in CoE4/5. still teh combat in CoE with the grid is fun to watch.
here a pic of the sleep spell setting the enemy army to sleep while the two golems are basically the only things that squeezed through that tiny gap and cleared out the enemy units.
after the fight it seems that my two animated ballista are placed right on the front walls... than the blob of infrantry to hold the gates and the archers in the back. but there isnt alot of "walls" to place ranged units on. ofcourse all the bows cant hit anything till the whole infantry is basically dead.
here another random army i found... seems there they did place the catapult behind the walls and not in the far back.
so far i havent seen "weird placement" of units in CoE5... i noticed the terracotta soldiers are set in rank "front-" (the last front row) with their range 2 pikes. (well that is not weird but i found pretty good its set up like that)
not sure how usefull the two units in the back tower are over on this one... but than again not like i have many units here... i guess mages would go on the back tower? and archers would fill the front wall first and then get added to the back tower?
but i like all the new bits added to the combat maps like bushes and rocks and trees and houses, like here in this port town the extra houses make some little choke points after the walls: