What does a broken arrow mean?

When hovering over an enemy in combat it changes your cursor to an arrow if you're making a ranged attack. Sometimes the arrow is broken, and other times it's unbroken.

What's the difference between a broken and an unbroken arrow? What causes an arrow be broken?

There are two types of penalties that can take place when performing a ranged attack.

1. Ranged penalty occurs when you are trying to attack a stack of units more than 10 hexes away.
2. Obstacle penalty occurs when you are trying to shoot through an object such as a wall.

These penalties are cumulative, so you may be doing only 1/4th of your actual damage.

These penalties can be mitigated three ways:

• Sharpshooters naturally do not incur a ranged nor obstacle penalty
• The Golden Bow on the hero will eliminates all range/obstacle penalties
• The Bow of the Sharpshooter does the same and allows ranged units to use their ranged attack on adjacent targets.