Battles: Formations ... BUG or wanted ?

Well, I dislike it either, I fought against a group of 8 soldiers (I have groups of 4). I was able to reduce the number of hitpoints to 1 by spells and than I was screwed. No unit (even strong ones) were able to take it down.

I hope it will be fixed sooner or later. When you have a group of four soldiers, it should be possible to take it down by four group of similar soldiers (I mean one quad against four singles).Now when you encounter such groups, your fighter heroes become useless no matter their equipment.

The problem are spells. No matter the armor of the opponents unit, spells can make fully armored soldier dead instantly. The numbers shall be adjusted somehow (the unit shall be weakened). At least the attack value. of the stack, but I think both.

It would also be nice, if you can make formations from your old soldiers (let us say in case you already have such technology). I have bunch of veteran units, that became completely useless, when formations appeared.

... strange that nobody from beta found that unrealistic or not okay ....

at the moment they are easy to fight ? FEAR and moral down to 20 so they run and don't fight nback , as long as they are in red moral ... so my 4 squad with best weapong cut that 12 squads down ... also not good !

lot of tweaking needed ...

but has good potential

Well, as for me, I was not able to move past few turns due to crashes.

I agree if there is a squad of 8 peasants, then 8 attack rolls should be made based on the attack value of each peasant.  Each time an attack roll does damage, the target makes a defense roll to block it, based on the defense rating.  If a squad it being attacked, then one unit from the squad is targeted by each attack, unless it is area of effect damage, then each member of the squad is targeted, and each sustains damage based on the attack power, and each gets a defense roll to mitigate the damage.

If one peasant dies then it is the same thing but with 7 peasants.

I've never liked army "stacks" in these kinds of game and would like to see a new innovative game buck that trend.

I don't think you can blame the beta testers here.  I only tried earlier betas where there was none of this, and if tactical combat came up in later betas, those flew by pretty fast.

I agree Fearzone. While it's trying to mimic the idea that a team working together is more powerful, straight stacking of values doesn't always produce the cleanest resolution, at least with the mechanics most 4X games use.

At any rate, I thought one of the patches fixed it so it was individual rolls. Or is that the upcoming patch?

I'm not so sure, it seems to me the "group of 4" (or more) is actually a new unit type.  It happens to be one that is represented by an icon of 4 individuals, but it isn't actually that.  It's a new singleton.  It's an equivalent of an Ogre or Dragon unit.  Or should those unit suffer a reduction in attack/defense as well with a reduction in HP?

The problem of attacking was explained in a different thread. If each unit in the stack attacks as a single unit a deadlock may happen, when both sides make miss rolls. I like it that way, however the attack and defense value of each stack shal diminish when soldiers fall.

^^So, if two sqauds of knights in enchanted plate mail face off with small wooden clubs, I can see there being no resolution.  Same thing if two real life people wearing plate mail fought each other with sticks, the winner would be the one that didn't succumb first to dehydation or sleep.  Can't the same thing happen without squads?  Anyway, a short-term solution to deadlocks: hit auto-resolve and after 500 turns if both sides are still alive the battle is declared a draw and surviving units are ejected back onto their original positions on the map.  A longer-term solution would be more complex battle mechanics where there is always a chance to fail a defense roll.

That's assuming there HAS to be a winner for every tactical battle.  I wouldn't mind a surrender option where, if someone attacks you with a clearly overpowering force, and you have some units in the army that you want to keep alive, rather than reloading your last autosave you can try to negotiate with the stronger army and pay guildars to buy your way out of hot water.

Fearzone: boring! The next logical step after 500 turns that you attack again. How many times would it be fun to just click - missed, click - missed....

that is, why there is always a critical MISS and HIT possibility in any RPG ...

and you should be able to attack from side or behind ... even higher chances to HIT ... of course you still couldn't destroy a stone golem with a stick ... but say even with that stick maybe you have that 1% critical chance to hit that crack in the stone and it makes the golem feels unpleasant ... he still has 99% hp left ...

So critical hit chance and miss and attack modifiers from the side and back ! That would solve that, never hit ... so the advantage goes to the 12 men squad, as it tries it 12 times from one square side ... otherwise only once ... so percentage is higher , even if it is only 1% per try ...

How it is now, it is terrible nonsense !

you are missing the whole point of squads if you believe that.  4 on 4 is not at all the same thing as 4 against a squad of 4 that is trained to fight as a unit (both in real life and the game, training makes a HUGE difference).    those squads are NOT the same units as 4 single-man units.  (although they should get weaker as they lose squad members)

If I remember, the 1.07 patch was supposed to make individual attack rolls for each unit, but that doesn't solve defense.

I like the idea of a cohesive squad. I also agree that 4 peasants fighting together are stronger than 4 peasants fighting separate. I think a simple solution would be for the individual units to retain their original stats and receive a Squad Bonus to attack and defense. Something like +1 for each member of the squad or +1 attack for each even member, +1 Defense for each odd member. This can make the unit as a whole stronger but still let that lone troll warrior be a significant threat.

Agree. And it shall be possible to create stacks from original units. At this point I have a horde of very experienced units, that are useless. Action like this shall cost money and perhaps some resources  and the units should be unavailable for some time, however it should be included in the game.

To the OP, I'd like to direct you to this https://forums.elementalgame.com/394530, combat is getting considerably reworked. The changes do look pretty awesome.

According to this thread: https://forums.elementalgame.com/394974 attacks are based upon the number of people in the squad who are still alive. The error then would be the lack of an update battle stats. Also the way damage is calculated, it seems that the attack numbers themselves are misleading.