That depends a lot on the race you're playing. There are fast units that cover a lot of ground, like the necro's second unit, and others that fire long range, like the wild folks, so you don't need to move them much. You also do have direct unit control. Set them to stay put, and then click on the space you want to move them to. I employ this to save my near dead units all the time. Also make sure you set the combat to faster in the advanced options before starting a game. This really should be the default.
Re bolded: GAMECHANGER HOLY COW OMFG YES WOOHOO
Ahem. To be clear, there is no
direct unit control. You are
always telling an AI to fulfill your orders; if it cannot complete your orders, it will act on its own... and this can be troublesome. There are directives that limit the amount of mistakes they can make, but mistakes
will happen simply due to the nature of the combat.
For instance, say there are two paths to get to an enemy unit (that you've designated as the target) - a 3-hex direct path and an 11-hex roundabout path. If the short path becomes blocked before the unit moves, it will take the longer path even if it means moving in the
wrong direction to get to the target.... from the human's perspective. In turn-based, strategic combat - which is what Endless Legend strives to include - these sorts of problems can be the difference between victory and defeat, which is why it's so baffling that they set it up this way.
I can only assume they set up the combat in this manner for the benefit of multiplayer, which the Endless games are always very much geared toward.
I don't understand this. Unit leveling doesn't matter that much, but your hero abilities can make your units much stronger, and better equipment makes a huge difference. If you can get access to advanced materials before your opponents, you will destroy them utterly. While autoresolve is there for when you have an overwhelming advantage. In every game of this type, if the match is close you want to play it out.
Honestly, I got bored with AOE3's combat. I found myself doing the same strats over and over. In this game, you can actually look at the terrain, and decide from what angle you should attack from. In this game, I find that positioning matters more, and I find myself coordinating my melee units into walls to protect my softer ranged fighters. There isn't a ton of depth to it, but I find it better strategically than Civ, and the rest of the game isn't utterly empty as AOE3 was.
I'm
think you meant Age of Wonders 3, not Age of Empires 3. :3
The thing about AoW3 is that while it has much deeper combat, there's
a whole lot more of it to be had. Fortunately (at least in my experience) the autoresolve in that game is much better at being... reliable.
Anyways, in EL's combat the positioning, elevation, and terrain are important, yes, but ultimately become held back by the random nature of the combat zones. Thanks to the chaotic map design and lack of direct control, battles are as much about logistics as they are the strength of armies. This, coupled with the durable units and turn limitation, means that combat encounters often take far longer than they should, with only the
most decisive of victories lasting a single combat encounter.
Having higher techs and stronger units is only a band-aid to the problem at the core of Endless Legend's combat... which all comes back to the weird stats that units have. Their health, resilience, and inability to reliably damage units leads to very imprecise, nerf-bat combat that sucks out all pretense of strategy. It is a literal roll of the dice as to which unit will succeed, atk. vs. def., and harkens back to the dark era of Civilization where spearmen could (potentially) kill tanks.
The whole "spearman vs. tank" issue is why Civilization 5 enforced very rigid "Strength"-based combat power, HP, and strategic map combat bonuses - to make combat reliable and dependable, so nothing truly random ever occurred. This moved combat away from the whims of a computer's die, and into the realm of more traditional, 4X-style results that are ultimately decided by
the player... And, if nothing else, this is what Endless Legend needs to do.
