Quote Originally Posted by Peacenik View Post
I believe defender shoots first, killing some of your archers. You'll then have fewer, so will shoot, and kill a smaller number of his archers. Back & forth until your troops are all dead & he's left with some.

In other words, you lose.
Archers both attack at the same time, there is no "shoots first". If you were right, then putting 1 archer for both sides into the exercise would result in the defender keeping his one archer because...they'd shoot first, but they don't.