I frequently find myself in a position at the end of a turn where I want to either start or avoid a combat, and whether I'll be able to do so or not depends on whether the other guy's army reacts before or after mine at the start of the next turn. AI players usually go faster than me even if I click on the "carry out existing orders" arrow button as fast as I can, but sometimes they react much more slowly, and once I actually started moving away from an enemy but they somehow caught up to me half-way through my move and started a fight anyway.



This is dumb. I haven't played multi-player, but I bet it's even more frustrating there. I understand that simultaneous turns are important for keeping multi-player fast, so you don't want to make players take turns, but key game events should not be controlled by who has a lower ping time or whether my computer stutters for a split-second at the start of a new turn.



Suggestion: All movement/attack instructions issued within a small time window at the start of a new turn--say, 3 seconds--should not be executed immediately, but rather should be saved, and then all executed in some deterministic order that doesn't depend on which ones were issued first. I don't know, nor do I particularly care, whether that order favors starting fights, or avoiding them, or follows some other rule, but it should follow some impartial rule that isn't based on split-second timing.



Everyone who's trying to do something important right at the start of the turn should have an equal opportunity to do it, whether they're human or AI, whether they're running the server or a client, and whether their hardware specs are high or low.

Alternatively: Add a take turns option for unit orders.