A Wilding Rider with a high initiative is supposed to be able to strike first.  That's the advantage of a high initiative.

There are a lot of counters for it.  Equipment and traits that increase initiative is a big one.  More defense to negate the advantage of that attack.  Not attacking unless you are tough enough to take the army is a big one (if you are being attacked by the wilding army all your units will start defending, giving a big defense bonus that will help negate their advantage).

By intent high mobility units like wiling riders are supposed to represent a threat by being able to close immediately (sometimes even with units the player may not want), and high init units are supposed to put the player on his heels reacting to their advances (instead of allowing the player to always control the battle).  Combining both in units like the wilding rider is a special challenge.

Lastly its possible that the wilding riders bonus may be to good for his approximate level, which makes it a balance issue.  We could reduce his init or attack.

Thanks for the quick response.

I noticed this in the scenario...there was a spawn spot to the west of where I settled (which was the area Porcipinee wanted me to cover for the Kingdom). I am NOT the best player in the world , so it may be that I ventured west too quickly.

All of your explanations make sense to me...I do like the fact that there are battles I shouldn't take on without being prepared or properly leveled for. I guess there was surprise on my part seeing the wilding rider start off directly in front of me and then smacking me in the face. I guess I'll get used to it . But I suppose that there will be no tweaking to add just a little more space between the opposing armies? I can live with it as it is, it's just that it SEEMS like placement sometimes favors the AI (this could be entirely due to observer bias however. I am totally willing to concede to that).

This and/or that you could move through your own units to get to a tile rather than needing to go around them.

That would be a nice tactical option. Heroes of Might and Magic had it and I used it pretty often, especially when you had units that you couldn't move at the time, but it would only use up half of their turn (or so).

..Or the 9 tile grid used to represent armies on the strategic map could be made to relate directly to a 9 tile grid on the tactical map, with the top row being the back, bottom the front (middle - middle).

What bothers me the most is having an important unit placed in front where it gets immediately attacked and  I would like to decide what units are important.

Wilding Riders have high mobility and initiative so their placement near my units is not really an issue. 

I would like it if my Great Wolf is not placed in the front line where a dragon will kill him on first move.

OK, here is a graphical representation showing my suggestion r.e. tactical unit placement.

The base location of units would be determined by some function (Side A of map, somewhere near the middle, etc.) that the game uses.  This base location would not always be the same, to reflect fog of war and such.  The game would do it's best to place the formation into the squares available, shifting units out of impassible terrain, which would of course disrupt the formation a bit, as it should.

I'm envisioning a Button below the 9 unit ovals on the interface, which would display the current formation pick (Say, Wedge).  Clicking on this button would open up the chooser, allowing you to select a different formation.

Prioritizing unit order could be implemented fairly easily without formations.  The unit order would determine which units are protected (placed towards the back) and which ones are closer to the front of the player's position/initial placement.  I.E. if you had 7 units, units 1-3 would be towards the back, and units 4-7 would be towards the front.

The only wild card on this would be additional city defenders.  These could be placed based on their use (bowmen added to the rear, militia placed at the front, next to the stack formation).

Note that formation options do not automatically place unit #2 in the back, for example, if there are a lot of units.  So players would need to be mindful of each unit's placement in the formation order (i.e. if you have a 7 unit stack in the wedge formation, position #2 might not be the best place for a bowman, #3 or 4 might be better).  The alternative to this is to assign different formation assignments based on stack size, but I think that as long as it is clear where each unit is placed based on it's priority, players will pick up on this fairly quickly.

how about making this an option on the battle preview screen?

you could also see the formation your opponent is using.

as an aside, have I mentioned how much a loathe the battle preview screen?  it's like they went out of their way to design the least informative, most confusing and often misleading dialog.  I wish there was more useful information on there.  But Stardock thinks it's far more important to show portraits of bears and anonymous spearmen.

Argh.  Thinking about the dialogs in FE/LH makes me grumpy.

Another issue to consider here is the shape of the maps.  I find the default ordering is alright on most of the tactical maps, but there are a couple that really cause problems.  In particular, the dark-forest one with a single large rift in the middle causes problems, because the "front" units are trapped between the edge of the rift and the "back" units.  Since melee units with high initiative get put in the front, the first unit to act is generally unable to move, meaning that the "lead" unit basically looses its first turn.  While having some actual control would certainly be nice, just going through the tactical maps and making sure that the starting locations don't "pin" anyone would be a good start.  Just shifting the whole formation one tile in the right direction will generally fix the worst issues of this type.

I love  tjashen's idea, please make it happen.

Having your units so badly placed at the start of tactical, really drags the enjoyment down.