There are 3 types of “desert” outlaws for African civs. Desert warrior and cavalry are quite useful units, while desert archers are awkward.
They have a ranged attack mode in 16-22 range: higher attack, longer ROF. And within 16 range they do normal attack like other archers/Aztec slingers. But the ranged attack has a CRAZY animation time: it’s about 3 seconds! Why? The native firepit warriors used to have ~1s animation time, which is already quite annoying, but that’s nothing compared to desert archers.
You can snipe down enemy infantry from 22 range, which doesn’t sound bad, but 20 attack doesn’t seem to be that scary. (Think about British longbowmen.) There is no reason to give them such a huge nerf. And you can’t even cancel that mode: even if you put them in defence mode, they still stand there aim aim aim and never shoot an arrow. You have to micro a lot to put them closer to enemy, just to let them do some damage. Desert archers are designed to counter heavy infantry, but in 90% of the time they are just overwhelmed by sand warriors in ANY SITUATION.
This ranged attack may be designed as a charge ability, with higher damage every 30 seconds. Another option is to let them do fast attack automatically in defence mode.