This topic came up a lot of times.

Clearly this should be addressed in some way, but I imagine it could be difficult without also changing some core mechanic of the actual combat system.

In my opinion the problem can be addressed in two ways:

1 -  drastically reduce the movement points of units in battle, so the attacker cant cover the distance to the defender in the very first round (with not mounted at least)

or

2- alternate moves between players for each unit (basically like chess) so moving first wont be a big advantage anymore.

The defender already gets a small 'defensive stance' bonus (as if you didn't spend your attack action on the previous battle turn), but I agree that this is often not enough. 

I do like the idea of the attacker having 1 or 2 less MP on the first turn of battle. That might be just enough to balance it. 

Another option could be letting the defender place the flag during deployment, so he could choose a defendable position. After all, he has to hold it for the entire battle while the attacker only needs to capture and hold it to the end of the turn.

Tenjix wrote:

Another option could be letting the defender place the flag during deployment, so he could choose a defendable position. After all, he has to hold it for the entire battle while the attacker only needs to capture and hold it to the end of the turn.

I really like this.  A lot of times the defender can be at the mercy of a bad flag position like at the bottom of a river valley.  A more defensible position may discourage attack.

I haven't paid close attention to this his, but I'm assuming the flag is where your army was standing when attacked?

Bridger wrote:

The defender already gets a small 'defensive stance' bonus (as if you didn't spend your attack action on the previous battle turn), but I agree that this is often not enough. 

I do like the idea of the attacker having 1 or 2 less MP on the first turn of battle. That might be just enough to balance it. 

In my experience, that's not really enough. Even if it takes 8 units of mine to shoot at just 1 unit to take that out. If the battle originally was an 8 vs 8 with all other things being equal, I can force an 8vs7 and get a guaranteed win at that point.

Tenjix wrote:

Another option could be letting the defender place the flag during deployment, so he could choose a defendable position. After all, he has to hold it for the entire battle while the attacker only needs to capture and hold it to the end of the turn.

I don't know if that would change much, or even anything really. From what I played, a lot of fights end in one turn. Hell, a lot of the large fights technically are decided on the first round already. Even if the battle lasts 5 turns, if you both have equal amounts of units, whoever can kill a unit first, gets a huge dps advantage and will snowball out of control. And generally speaking you're almost always able to kill at least one unit on your first round as the attacker.

Of course this is mostly about ranged units, melee units get retaliation so they don't have this problem.

The other thing is, some units get insanely higher benefits from going first, like Hunnic Hordes are INSANELY strong in the hands of a good player. As long as they get to go first that is.

lbasil wrote:

This topic came up a lot of times.

Clearly this should be addressed in some way, but I imagine it could be difficult without also changing some core mechanic of the actual combat system.

In my opinion the problem can be addressed in two ways:

1 -  drastically reduce the movement points of units in battle, so the attacker cant cover the distance to the defender in the very first round (with not mounted at least)

or

2- alternate moves between players for each unit (basically like chess) so moving first wont be a big advantage anymore.

The more I think about this issue the more I think option 2 here is inevitable. It's the only good solution to this problem really. I mean okay yeah I'd like ranged retaliation too, that could fix it as well, but this one seems way easier to implement.

In Endless Legend, each unit has an initiative score (among others) and each turn consisted of each player assigning instructions to each unit, and then those units acting in initiative order, so there very rarely did sides take turns acting all at once as they do in HK.

Adding an initiative to all troops seem to be an overcomplexification and impractical.
Playing one troop at a time may be the easiest way to deal with that problem.
Ranged retaliation looks too much like playing too often (melee permanent retaliation is a bit odd too, nope?)
Amputing movement from some troops may end up buffing too much ranged ones.

It is logical for the attacker to have advantage if terrain is plain. It all comes down to reinforcement mechanics. I think if the attacker is not allowed to use reinforcements during the first turn, or is allowed to use only one extra regiment, the issue could have been fixed. Because if a defender survives the attack and is better prepared for war in general, he could easily turn the tides with reinforcements.

I had an afterthought about my idea and came to a conclusion that its even more logical, because the defender is at attacker’s mercy of blocking reinforcement spots. So the defender needs to spend a lot to slice through blocker units. If reinforcements are limited to 1 regiment 1st turn for an attacker that could be healthy for the game.

Siptah wrote:
Hm... I'm not sure if a free placeable flag would be fair in any way.  Maybe give the defender a choice between a few options? I mean, when you are defending a city, it would be fine to choose any hex of the city for example. If it would be freely placeable, you could choose a hex that isn't reachable from within the battlefield, put in in the middle of water or on islands to bait the enemy to water their troops when there really isn't a need to do that.

I would prefer a higher defense CS against non-siege ranged attacks in the first round for the defender. The +2 clearly isn't enough, maybe +10ish as with dug-in?

When defending a city, it would already be a improvement if the flag was  guaranteed to spawn inside the city walls.

Since currently, this is not always the case.

And in Multiplayer expirienced players can use this to there advantage 

neprostoman wrote:

It is logical for the attacker to have advantage if terrain is plain. It all comes down to reinforcement mechanics. I think if the attacker is not allowed to use reinforcements during the first turn, or is allowed to use only one extra regiment, the issue could have been fixed. Because if a defender survives the attack and is better prepared for war in general, he could easily turn the tides with reinforcements.

Is it logical? A defending regiment of musketmen would shoot at anyone running at them, probably shoot before the enemy if anything. Unless it's an ambush, but then, is every battle an ambush?

Even if the attacker 'has the advantage' the defender would still be shooting back when they're getting shot, but that's not happening right now. The attacker can shoot and receive no damage in return. Unfortunately this isn't a case where logic or realism matches the gameplay, turn based combat will never match reality, because reality isn't turn based.

StorytellerDave wrote:

neprostoman wrote:

It is logical for the attacker to have advantage if terrain is plain. It all comes down to reinforcement mechanics. I think if the attacker is not allowed to use reinforcements during the first turn, or is allowed to use only one extra regiment, the issue could have been fixed. Because if a defender survives the attack and is better prepared for war in general, he could easily turn the tides with reinforcements.

Is it logical? A defending regiment of musketmen would shoot at anyone running at them, probably shoot before the enemy if anything. Unless it's an ambush, but then, is every battle an ambush?

Even if the attacker 'has the advantage' the defender would still be shooting back when they're getting shot, but that's not happening right now. The attacker can shoot and receive no damage in return. Unfortunately this isn't a case where logic or realism matches the gameplay, turn based combat will never match reality, because reality isn't turn based.

With an initiative or one troop at a time system, the attacker would still have the advantage of moving their piece first, so it wouldn't be the unreasonable move entire army shoot and kill everything in one round at no cost to them situation. It'd be a better simulation.

But a battle is not only of infantry troops, but of siege engines and artillery! Of air and naval support. Attack can accompany some sort of artillery bombardment and force the defender to hide or dig in. It all comes down to the fact that war is not won or lost in a single battle of a single regiment. For me this discussion is a bit weird cause its like if losing a battle of equal forces means losing a war immediately. 

neprostoman wrote:

But I agree with your statement that running into gunfire should come at a cost. Mb giving a "dug in" status to all defender troops can be a good idea? +10 CS can sink a poorly thought out blitz attack.

When you research dug-in, eligible defender units for it have "dug-in" status on the first turn instead of the +2 cs defender bonus.

StorytellerDave wrote:

neprostoman wrote:

StorytellerDave wrote:

neprostoman wrote:

It is logical for the attacker to have advantage if terrain is plain. It all comes down to reinforcement mechanics. I think if the attacker is not allowed to use reinforcements during the first turn, or is allowed to use only one extra regiment, the issue could have been fixed. Because if a defender survives the attack and is better prepared for war in general, he could easily turn the tides with reinforcements.

Is it logical? A defending regiment of musketmen would shoot at anyone running at them, probably shoot before the enemy if anything. Unless it's an ambush, but then, is every battle an ambush?

Even if the attacker 'has the advantage' the defender would still be shooting back when they're getting shot, but that's not happening right now. The attacker can shoot and receive no damage in return. Unfortunately this isn't a case where logic or realism matches the gameplay, turn based combat will never match reality, because reality isn't turn based.

With an initiative or one troop at a time system, the attacker would still have the advantage of moving their piece first, so it wouldn't be the unreasonable move entire army shoot and kill everything in one round at no cost to them situation. It'd be a better simulation.

But a battle is not only of infantry troops, but of siege engines and artillery! Of air and naval support. Attack can accompany some sort of artillery bombardment and force the defender to hide or dig in. It all comes down to the fact that war is not won or lost in a single battle of a single regiment. For me this discussion is a bit weird cause its like if losing a battle of equal forces means losing a war immediately. 

Couple of things and this might be different in your experience because you play differently or on a different difficulty setting or maybe you play multiplayer:

1 - Battles are very often  just infantry troops in this game. Early game has the highest unit diversity in that you get 2 types of melee infantry 1-2 types of cavalry and 1-2 types of ranged units. But after that a big shift happens right when you unlock gunpowder units. Once you have gunpowder, you need no other unit, just your best gunpowder unit with maybe a bit of cavalry if you have one of the unique ones. You won't have artillery yet, because it unlocks WAY later. And late-game it's usually already pointless because the game is basically over by then. By the time I get artillery or aircraft I already won 20 turns before. It's extremely rare that special units get into the battle. Ships are probably the most common, but even they're rare and many ships can't actually attack land units, you only get that ability after gunpowder.

2 - Many small battles (4 or fewer unit battles) are won in one or two rounds. Hunnic/mongol hordes often win in the first round with the enemy not even being able to damage my horsies. Musketmen can kill 2-3 units in one round, and gain a 25-50% damage advantage. In small battles every unit lost is a huge % of the damage they can retaliate with. Meaning I take little to no damage.

3 - Wars in the mid and late-game are very often won in the first battle. What I mean isn't that the war is over, but that the loser has no chance to recover. Usually it's a very big battle and it decides who wins the war. While in larger battles a single unit dying doesn't give as much of a % damage advantage, attacking with 20+ units can destroy a lot of units at no cost, because there is no retaliation. Being able to hit simultaneously with 20 units, and not receive any damage is a bit of a problem. To some extend the 'move or fire' option was made to counteract this, but it's removed later and some cultures don't even get it because they get unique units that bypass it and even when you have to use arquebussiers with 'move or fire', depending on the terrain you might be able to deploy in a way where you can hit on the first round or the neither you nor the enemy can hit on the first round and you get to hit them on the 2nd one. It does take some tactics knowledge to manage this, but if you have that, it gets really boring really fast.

3 - Dug-in doesn't really matter, because it just raises the defence, and defence alone will never fix this problem. Dug-in doesn't do any damage and it doesn't raise the damage that unit deals on its turn. As an attacker, all I need is to kill enough units to gain the dps advantage. After I have that, I will snowball through the battle and win.

I've explained this before, but in a battle between equal forces, whoever kills the first unit, will get such a big snowball effect that you basically cannot lose. Let's say it's an 8 vs 8. How hard you win that battle depends on how many units you can kill on the first round.

Each unit killed gives a 12.5% dps advantage at no cost, since there's no retaliation. And because dug-in gives no damage boost, even if it's the worst case scenario happens and you can't kill a unit on the first round, odds are, they can't either. At which point in the 2nd round you can definitely kill at least one unit, at which point you gain a 12.5% damage advantage compared to their army. Even if they kill a unit at that point it's too late, because you'll be able to kill another of their units first, and the longer the fight goes on, the more damage advantage you can amass, eventually snowballing to a point where you will vastly outnumber their army and win.

 Dug-in is a patchwork solution to this problem that was hastily cobbled together and fixes nothing. Plus, it only comes in way too late into the game too. Medieval era and before, you only get a minor defensive bonus, essentially the same one for not attacking with a unit, and let me tell you, horse archers really don't care about that extra 1 (or 2) combat strength, horse archers can get so much from just standing near other horse archers (which they can always do because they can move in increments and even after attacking) that it makes no difference.

The best balanced bit of combat in this game is melee vs melee, because there's retaliation and you can't take units for free.

So, are you concerned only about the battle of equal forces scenario and no backup? Because, as I've mentioned before, any battle can be reversed if you are better war-prepared in general with the help of reinforcements. Ok, lets say you kill 7 out of 8 Line Infantry units first turn. As long as the last one lives, they can deploy 20 halberdiers and 10 mortars and crush you in a turn with raw numbers. That whole scenario indicates that problem lies within the ability to completely destroy the defender 1st turn. It is logical to retreat to a safer position and take the battle in a place where you can survive a turn and get the upper hand with extra troops stationed nearby, by surviving behind walls or in a terrain supported bottleneck. I don't see a core mechanic problem, but of course it is based only on my experience. I play on humankind difficulty vs AI and/or a couple of my friends.

neprostoman wrote:
So, are you concerned only about the battle of equal forces scenario and no backup? Because, as I've mentioned before, any battle can be reversed if you are better war-prepared in general with the help of reinforcements.

Reinforcements implies that you left part of your army outside of the initial battle, which would be a misplay. Either that your you managed to build a few more units while the battle was going on, which mostly comes in if you're being declared war on and it can counteract the snowball effect somewhat, but doesn't really change much in my experience. I had only a few battles where we both had to reinforce constantly until I eventually won, but those were usually born out of me making a mistake beforehand, in that I declared war on an AI that was way too far from my territory and they attacked first because the AI can always do that due to their insane APM. Also I got a research milestone notification blown up in my face that resulted in me not being able to move my units in time. I love it when that happens.

neprostoman wrote:
As long as the last one lives, they can deploy 20 halberdiers and 10 mortars and crush you in a turn with raw numbers.

Why in the seven hells would you not have the 20 halberdiers and 10 mortars near the main army to begin with? Why would you leave just 8 line infantry alone to die?

neprostoman wrote:
That whole scenario indicates that problem lies within the ability to completely destroy the defender 1st turn

Partially, but also with the attacker getting a snowball effect by killing units before their opponents can retaliate. Even if you don't kill all the units on the first turn you still killed some units for free. Literally doing damage at no cost, because again, there's no retaliation. If you have 20 musketmen and the enemy has 30 and they left 20 of those outside the main battle for some unknown reason, you can kill a bunch of musketmen for free and when the enemy brings in their reinforce you'll be on a better footing than if you had gone up 20vs30 initially. Leaving units out of the battle is not a good idea.

Though you can reinforce within the same turn when it's your round, so it wouldn't even be 1 entire turn, just 1 round. So I don't know why reinforcements would be relevant. Also why would anyone attack an enemy that has 20 halberdiers and 10 mortars if they themselves don't have the same? Or are you implying that you also have 20 halberdiers and 10 mortars and only managed to kill 7 line infantry out of 8?

neprostoman wrote:
It is logical to retreat to a safer position and take the battle in a place where you can survive a turn and get the upper hand with extra troops stationed nearby, by surviving behind walls or in a terrain supported bottleneck

Absolutely, yeah it's safer to retreat rather than fight a losing battle, but you know what's even better? Getting both the terrain AND the first round. Which the AI used to do a ton before the devs decided to nerf their ability to immediately attack out of a city when you besieged said city. They had to do that, because having both the walls AND the first round was insanely strong and felt horrible and unfair for the player.

neprostoman wrote:
I don't see a core mechanic problem, but of course it is based only on my experience. I play on humankind difficulty vs AI and/or a couple of my friends.

I mostly play on the highest difficulty too, but I don't do multiplayer.

StorytellerDave wrote:
Why in the seven hells would you not have the 20 halberdiers and 10 mortars near the main army to begin with? Why would you leave just 8 line infantry alone to die?

I usually have my armies spread out between cities to have extra stability, because every unit gives +5. When a surprise war is declared I can reach the front within 1-2 turns with the help of roads and later train stations and airports. Also you can fall a victim to a surprise attack by another foe if you concentrate all your troops in one place, but it is more often exploited by human players than AI. Also when you reinforce, you can choose the spawn point by engaging from different angles. That way you can make a flank attack which is especially important for melee units because of a rear attack. You can also engage from an unprotected wall-adjacent tile and enter a city immediately after spawning.

neprostoman wrote:

StorytellerDave wrote:
Why in the seven hells would you not have the 20 halberdiers and 10 mortars near the main army to begin with? Why would you leave just 8 line infantry alone to die?

I usually have my armies spread out between cities to have extra stability, because every unit gives +5. When a surprise war is declared I can reach the front within 1-2 turns with the help of roads and later train stations and airports. Also you can fall a victim to a surprise attack by another foe if you concentrate all your troops in one place, but it is more often exploited by human players than AI. Also when you reinforce, you can choose the spawn point by engaging from different angles. That way you can make a flank attack which is especially important for melee units because of a rear attack. You can also engage from an unprotected wall-adjacent tile and enter a city immediately after spawning.

Usually you can tell if a war is about to break out a couple turns before it happens. Scouting is important, it's useful to have eyes at your borders.

But generally you will know who's the biggest threat out of all of your neighbors. So I tend to put my units near the border of whichever country I think is most likely to attack or would be the most threatening if they do. Sometimes I have to split my army in two, but it's not very common and if I do have two separate armies, usually it's either a case of me being able to reinforce immediately when the battle starts or me not even bothering to reinforce because either it would be a lost battle, so I retreat and try to get the attack first, or if I can win the battle with the units I have there then there's no reason to reinforce and instead go on the offensive with my other army.

It is important to underline that if your unit can get there in the same turn your army is attacked, you can bring those in on your first round.

But honestly this scenario is also odd from the attacker's perspective, even if the defender has their units all split up around various cities for stability, why would the attacker go in with fewer units than their opponent has? And if the attacker also has 20 halberdiers and 10 mortars, then the battle would be over turn 1, or hell, round 1 even. And if they don't have 20 halberdiers and 10 mortars, why are they attacking someone who does?

I haven't really used reinforcements for flanking, I tend to be able to do that regardless, just based on unit movement.

This might not work for everyone, but my favorite way of dealing with footsies on open terrain is to pick the Assyrians.

Here's a battle - Enemy has 6 galleas, 8 Man o war, 8 transport ships and 2 cogs.

I have 12 ironclads and 2 transport ships.

First round of combat, I killed 12 of their ships. Not turn. ROUND! By the time they got to retaliate they had half their ships and I lost literally nothing at all in that battle. Despite having 14 ships and them having 24. Sure, ironclads are better than man o war and galleas, but even so, the fact that their retaliation damage was about 70% weaker than what they could've done if they attacked first is absolutely INSANE.

got on the forums just to post about this same topic. Every time I return to Humankind I'm driven mad by the very obvious attacker's advantage, and the AI wins every even fight unless you mad click to micro-manage every army at the start of every turn in this TURN-BASED strategy game. Honestly I've wanted this game to be good since release, but it feels unplayable every time I give it a go.

AI definitely seems very familiar with the meta, which isn't right.

If I wanted to have to metagame to compete I wouldn't be playing against AI.

Another vote for the "reduce battle movement turn 1" idea. Cavalry being actual shock troops would be cool, currently they don't have much reason to exist within the battle map (but are useful outside it).

I've been really taken with the discussion in this thread, and thought i'd put another idea out there, if only to keep the interesting counterpoints coming.

Perhaps to blunt the first turn, first round advantage of the Attacker being able to eliminate units without retaliation; in the first round the defender gets to retaliate in any situation where it could be feasible. In addition to this, the Attacker's Roll is calculated on their health remaining after the Defender gets their free retaliation. Effectively, the defence gets one, out of sequence hit for free on the Attacker, before the normal rolls are made. This does not remove the CS bonus from Defending or subsequently, Dug in.
This Status on the defending units, call it 'Prepared' for now, clears after the first attack against them is made; but it really hurts that first unit that engages.

This is interesting to me for a number of reasons, it could be applied or excluded from other units to enrichen combat in the game.

For example,

Units attacking defenders from outside of LoS aren't retaliated against.

Anti-Tank Guns may always have this function versus Tanks. (Perhaps it is not 'Prepared' but 'Ambush'?)

Certain units don't lose this Status after the First Round, such as Pikemen, or Hoplites, as long as they don't move.

Keen to hear your thoughts.

Wow this became an essay really fast. These are my thoughts on the issues of attacking and defending. Here goes.

Terms & concepts

Firstly, I'd like to draw a distinction between attacking and defending in a natural sense (what happens before/outside of battle) versus attacking and defending in battle, lest they be conflated. The former I will call attacking and defending, the latter going first or going second. The going first player will be G1, and the going second player will be G2 because I got tired of writing it the long way.

In the natural sense, the advantages of defending are:

⦁    Stationing armies on advantageous terrain

⦁    Proximity to cities for reinforcements and retreat

⦁    Using defensive structures (city terrain & garrisons) to prop up defenders, thereby needing to invest less economy into units

In the natural sense, the advantages of attacking are:

⦁    Choosing which cities or armies to attack, or evade entirely

⦁    Choosing which angle to attack at; outflanking and seizing the terrain advantage if possible

⦁    Not having to spread out armies; concentrating forces to defeat defending armies in detail

⦁    Opportunity to attack enemy economy, e.g. ransacking and siege

Generally, the attacker is G1, and the defender is G2. This is not always the case, as, for example, you can be attacked by a defending army and end up playing G2 while advancing on a city, or vice-versa. However, because of the general case, it can be said that the defender's advantage is often G2's advantage.

Ideally, the above natural factors should be the greatest factors in determining an advantage, allowing asymmetrical (or "imbalanced" as Jeremy Silman puts it with regards to chess) but equal opportunities for play on both sides. Applying artificial bonuses to either side can overshadow the natural advantage to an engagement and make the game feel unfair or contrived. However, HK's battle system is turn-based, which adds a different layer of advantage.

How HK deals with going first / going second

Since it's pretty much inevitable that the player going first in a turn-based game will have an appreciable advantage, some intervention is needed mechanically to give the going second player a fighting chance. HK has only two such mechanics that I can think of; namely: 

⦁    the flag system

⦁    the defending bonus being applied on round 1

I like both of these bonuses and think they should remain as is, which I'll justify briefly.

The flag system is brilliant in concept as it singlehandedly provides the requisite asymmetry or "imbalance" between the two players to make the engagement interesting. The matter of going first or going second does not have mere tactical implications, but the two players have completely different win conditions: G1 is playing for checkmate, while G2 doesn't have to do anything at all. This changes the strategy needed by both players to achieve their goal and can make you think twice about whether holding ground or attacking the approaching enemy is a better call.

The defending bonus is, superficially, a highly artificial mechanic that would probably be unfair or unfun if it were implemented differently. Say, if it were just  a +2 bonus to all units of G2, which would be dull and probably broken. Or, it would not even be a benefit to the G2 player had it not applied on round 1. As it is however, it is a universal mechanic that both players can make use of, while it being applied on round 1 perfectly supports G2's win condition, which is merely holding position, and blunts G1's first strike advantage.

An ideal practical example

So the flag system provides the win condition for the going second player, and the first round defense bonus provides a means to that win condition. Conceptually, it works out. But what about in practice?

Let's consider a battle between equal strength melee units in equal numbers. Say, a battle between equal numbers of Tribes or Scouts.

In this case, I think the system is perfect. G2 has no need to attack G1 on superior terrain, so the inherent attacker's advantage of choosing an angle of attack is checked. G1 gets to attack first, so they can choose to focus on a single unit to thin G2's ranks, but they will trade HP inefficiently against a defending unit without superior terrain. So the battle will be decided by whoever has the tactical advantage in terms of terrain, unit configuration, etc., which I believe is ideal.

Because the system works in this case, I don't think it is fundamentally broken or unfixable. Obviously this is not how the game works most of the time however, so there is something to be desired.

Where the problems lie

As I see it, there are 3 main problems with the current battle system that work to undermine the asymmetrical advantages that can be enjoyed by playing the G2 side. I will also provide what I think is the best solution to address these problems. 

1. Ranged units

In my example, I placed melee units against melee units, since I think the system works great for them. All of that falls apart as soon as you introduce ranged units. Furthermore, there are two identifiable sub-problems with ranged units that I will outline separately.

1. A) No retaliation against ranged units

The fact that melee units cannot retaliate against ranged units is entirely sensible and an important part of the balance of combat. While it is true that unretaliated fire from ranged units is a large part of what makes the G1 first strike advantage so powerful, ranged units are pretty much the only thing that prevents the G2 advantage from being overwhelming. Without the fear of taking unrealizable damage from ranged units, there would be nothing that could prevent G2 from holding decent terrain and spamming End Round.

The problem really occurs once you advance to the 4th Era and beyond, where the primary form of combat is ranged attacks. While the defending/dug in bonus still applies to G2, without the threat of taking a bad trade, there is zero counter-incentive to attacking G2 with every unit possible. Sure, they will take less damage, but no compensation. They will just begin their first turn down material with nothing to show for it.

The solution for this is very easy: ranged units should retaliate against ranged fire. This preserves both the balance between ranged/melee units in early eras and the going second compensation for G2 in later eras.

1. B) Indirect Fire

I've really got a bone to pick with this one. The "Indirect Fire" unit specialty alone breaks combat for the first 2 or 3 eras of the game. 

Most strategy game players probably know this implicitly, but there's a theory  known as "Lanchester's square law" that proports that each unit in an army provides an exponential benefit to the strength of that army - meaning every unit lost in a battle exponentially reduces that side's chances of winning. Having fewer units means fewer adjacency bonuses, fewer tiles that can be held, and fewer attacks by your opponent that need to be spent picking off weak units. If G1 can focus fire a single unit to death in the first turn, they are immediately at an exponential advantage. The Indirect Fire ability makes this possibility a reality in almost any situation.

There is pretty much no fix for this ability either; with the way damage is calculated, no degree of combat strength penalty from no line of sight can really offset the power this ability provides. It ought to be removed from all ranged units, excepting mortars and artillery and the like.

I play pretty much exclusively with a modded version of the game because I don't like the base game's balance, and this is unit specialty is a large part of that. Removing this tag from ranged units alone brings so much more life and interest into combat.

Back when the mod tools launched, removing this tag made archers pretty unusable because of the awkward LOS mechanics. However, since they updated the rules, I find they add a whole new dimension to ranged combat. Placing archers on higher ground guarantees a good vantage point, and now you can actually shoot between friendly units! The new rules make you think carefully about the configuration of your army, and force players to distribute ranged damage across the enemy army where possible rather than focus down single targets. Sadly, in the current state of the game, there is little reason to use or understand LOS rules.

Without Indirect Fire, good spots for archers become a massive advantage, and they are much easier to exploit while defending (which usually means playing as G2). Placing units as G2 in spots where they can be killed on the first round by archers becomes a mistake, rather than an inevitability. Taking away this ability transforms archers from the lead weights on your deathball beatstick to a powerful but situational risk/reward unit with huge potential for players who can exploit the terrain.

The one place I think Indirect Fire or Exceptional Accuracy can be kept is for ranged units standing on Garrisons. It's not necessary, but it would keep the bonus in some form and makes building Garrisons more worthwhile. Limiting this ability to cities with Watchtowers would also give a great reason to actually build those otherwise fairly useless things - I haven't tried this however since it's not possible to do with the current mod tools.

2. No army reinforcement cap

If you can remember back to my example, there were equal numbers of units on both sides. While having more units should be an obvious advantage to either side, the current implementation of reinforcements grossly benefits G1.

The reason for this is that, because there is no limit to how many reinforcements can be deployed in a single round, there is nothing stopping G1 from deploying all reinforcements on round 1. G2 may not even get a chance to deploy reinforcements, because with a higher volume of units G1 can devote some to blocking reinforcements at little cost.

You can see how this also exacerbates the problems with ranged units. As many ranged units as G1 has, they can deploy on the first round to inflict unretaliated damage. If this were not the case, and there were a limit to how many reinforcements could be deployed on the first round (if any), then even with Indirect Fire in play, every archer brought to the frontline would be one less melee unit to hold the line, so even then G2 might have some counterplay against the squishy archers.

As previously stated, every additional unit on a side constitutes an exponential advantage; without a cap on reinforcements, who can wonder why G1 is evaluated so highly by the AI? 

What's mystifying is that the game already has a property for army reinforcement cap on each empire, meaning this feature was planned and probably implemented at some point. However, the game never reads the value, so modifying it does nothing. I can't fathom why this feature was cut, given the implications.

I think there should be a limit of X reinforcements allowed per round, where X is the army reinforcement cap, starting at 1 but upgradeable by technologies and/or civics and the like. G2 should be allowed to deploy X reinforcements to the deployment zone before the first round so as not to get overwhelmed by G1's first round reinforcements.

3. Large differences in Combat Strength between units

Going back to my example one last time, I said the units were of equal strength. Between units of equal strength, the only advantages that can be gained are utilizing superior terrain and tactical bonuses (adjacency, defending, rear attack, etc.) After maximizing your advantage in these areas, it's all up to the dice. It's a very fun and rewarding system when it works, but I rarely feel like these advantages matter because of the chasm in strength between most units. It's hard to be specific in a brief way but I think the whole game needs adjustment as far as Combat Strength and bonuses go.

Firstly, the base Combat Strength between units varies wildly. There is a 1 tech and 45 Industry difference between Scouts and Warriors, but a cavernous 6 points in Combat Strength difference between the two. Even if your Scouts are on high ground, they will lose decisively to an equal or even lesser number of Warriors. Moving into the Classical Era, there is a whopping 7 point difference between Warriors and Swordsmen! Differences in terrain or tactical bonuses melt in the face of military superiority.

The game also has too many sources of universal, situationally-agnostic Combat Strength bonuses. The +2 defensive bonus completely melts if your opponent has +3 Combat Strength from 2 tiers of Homeland ideology plus the Professional Army civic. Fighting the opponent on a river is nullified, and high ground will barely do you any good.

Universal Combat Strength is not the only problem however, as even situational Unit Specialties feel overtuned and/or disproportionate to the effort it takes to employ them. A few examples:

⦁    It's not the easiest unit to use, but a Javelin Thrower on a Forest tile is a +8 Archer. Yikes. And they're still worse than Archers with Indirect Fire.

⦁    The Teutonic Knight is 3 stronger than a Knight, and gets a +6 bonus if you're of a different religion. Surely there should be some counterplay besides converting?

⦁    Carthaginian Elephants get a big +4 if you have the audacity to be a weaker unit (they are the strongest base unit of their Era with Mauryan Elephants).

⦁    Jazayerchis have +1 range over Musketeers, are unlocked earlier, and get +3 as a hard earned reward for... attacking.

The first two are examples of effects that are fun to use but simply too strong, while the latter two aren't really even situational and give a large benefit for not really doing anything.

Now these issues affect every player, and are not a unique problem with playing the G2 side. However, I said in the concepts section that the defender's advantage, meaning terrain and so forth, is often G2's advantage. Often times choosing to play defensively and leaving your armies open to attack means you are leaning into economy more than military, and using defensive advantages to your benefit. Those advantages really don't mean much if your opponent is specializing in military, which makes playing G2 feel that much worse.

Ultimately, these large bonuses overshadow the fruits of terrain advantage, tactical play, and defense, and reward brute-forcing the military option over intelligent positioning and maneuvering. This almost always benefits the attacking militarist player, and neutralizes the benefits of defense.

Conclusion

⦁    Remove Indirect Fire from all ranged units, except optionally as an effect on Garrisons. This could be an effect of the Watchtowers infrastructure as an additional prerequisite.

⦁    Allow ranged units to retaliate against other ranged units.

⦁    Implement Army Reinforcement Cap.

⦁    Reduce universal sources of Combat Strength (Homeland ideology +1 Combat Strength on Unit/+2 Combat Strength on Unit -> +25% Experience Gain on Unit/+50% Experience Gain on Unit

⦁    Reduce differences in Combat Strength between units within eras, between basic units and Emblematic units, and between upgraded units from one Era to the next.

⦁    Reduce Combat Strength effects of Unit Specialties in proportion to their situational benefits.

Some other nice options to have:

⦁    Allow repositioning of Defender's Flag in Deployment Phase to another tile in the Deployment Zone

⦁    Add "Ambush" action to armies - Target an adjacent tile (or "half ring" of 3 adjacent tiles) - Automatically attack any unfriendly army that arrives on those tiles, regardless of whether they tried to attack first. Cannot be deactivated and reactivated in the same turn (to reward flanking the ambushing army).

There's honestly just no good means of making going first not a major advantage.
Even in a system where only one unit from and army goes, and it alternates back and forth, having that first attack is still a big advantage.
Less than your entire army going, yes, but still significant.
The go-first advantage is just to inherent. Too automatic. It's just has inevitable and unpreventable as the advantage of outnumbering your opponent, if not even moreso.
And, if we're being honest, it's probably the most realistic thing about the game.

Some of you have been saying it's crazy the defending ranged unit doesn't get to retaliate, regarding round 1.
It's really not. That is realistic, very realistic. In a real battle, the start would be every ranged unit on the attackers side firing at the exact same time, at enemies who are not ready to shoot back, and most likely without the defenders even knowing they're about to get shot. And that's without it being an full and proper ambush. In real ambush, in turn based terms, the defender just wouldn't get a round 1. It would be skipped and go straight to attackers round 2. Which people would hardly enjoy, so ambushing doesn't exist in this game.

As for the flag, anything we do with the flag would be pointless, because frankly, the flag is pointless to begin with.
If there's anything you don't want as the attacker, it's to capture the flag.
Taking the flag just lets the enemy retreat before you can finish your attack, to continue being a nusiance on the map, and force you to waste (an) extra turn(s) dealing with them.
You don't want to capture the flag as an attacker, you want to avoid capturing the flag so you can finish killing off the enemies units in less turns.
As defender, if you aren't already wrecking the attacker, you want the flag to be captured asap so you can retreat with less damage and then be the attacker.

I think its the combination of the large attackers advantage and the real time micro that occurs before battle to determine who will be the attacker that makes this such a bother. 

Attackers advantage would be more acceptable to me if it was not the product of who was fastest on the campaign map clicking their army into the opponents.

In other turn-based games, one solution for this is to make the first round of the first player olny half of a round or something like that. The idea of limiting the mp of units in the first round of combat goes in this direction, but I feel it is too weak of a change... But would it make sense to limit the number of units the first player can use in the first move? 8vs8 will not be an immédiate win if you can only use half of your army and see the defender using all he has left afterward? You will have retaliation in this situation. It may still let an advantage to the attacker, but not in a "If I'm first, I win without loss" kind of way.

Tbh honest I find it strange that the first player is always the attacker. What is the motivation for this choice? Except that it is easy?

I would like to see a proper limit for how many reinforcements can be brought into battle at once, just not sure how well it would work with battles in which more than one army is called into deployment zone straight away due to proximity to each other. And I'm a bit afraid of widening tech/quality gap that way, thinking here mainly about units like elephants that have no real counter aside of getting swarmed, they'd have easier time charging into battle knowing that they'll be able to take the enemy on piecemeal.

And now with Metternich we will have an additional layer of trying to bait your enemy into walking into your Stealth units, because Ambushed armies cannot be reinforced.

Just bring back the Initiative system from Endless Legend

This is a critical problem with the game in ship battles - because the attack / defense ratio is so high, the attacker can take out most of the defending army in the first turn. I've switched to Pangea maps to avoid the ship battles, since it's almost trivial to win against AI by building a big enough navy to destroy anything that moves between continents.  

Alternate unit turns would really make a world of difference there.