Agree. Only happens the first time during a particular tactical battle for me. I'm guessing it is a animation or sound loading issue.

i click on the defend... and then it just sort of do nothing... but you can see all the other abilities are crossed out. (i guess that's the delay) after pressing a bunch of right clicks (on anything) and passes.. it all by itself finishes the move.

you can see a shield icon floating above the head of the units..

skill description says defend for 1 move or some such? but the thing is.. you can still see the floating shields on the same spot after the units have moved/attacked/etc for a few turns.

Still there in .77.  I know there is a lot of stuff being reported, but this one is kind of ugly.

I had it happen with a mounted cavalry unit that I custom built as well. Essentially medium armored with a shield and defend had an epic lag time.

i have seen this too

Bump!  Hope someone in development sees this.  I like to give units shields and use the defend option, and not being able to do it with mounted units is a real limitation.

will talk to our animator tomorrow about this, this usually means a cast animation is missing for a particular unit (mounted ones here)

yea talked to our animator, he's getting this fixed... sounds like it's still not going to be functioning ideally in the next patch, however, no more broken/long delays