There have been a few posts recently by devs stating that the UI will indeed be cleaned up.  Here's one from the other day:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/389846

Scroll down to the bottom of the message and read - What’s going to be better than Beta 4? What isn’t changing?  You'll see that the UI is definitely one thing they are planning on revamping for release.

A better alternative; have a tactics phase where players get to choose the formation of their units by placing them within a rectangular starting zone before combat starts (and without seeing how their opponent is placed).

Like Total War games, or from Tactics skill in HOMM.

You mean that the last unit in the stack is always targeted first in fast combat? I'm not in the beta, but if it's true it's a bad idea. It encourages the players to place heavily armored (or expandable) units at the end of a stack. Fast combat should emulate the tactical battles, so units should choose their targets. Maybe not always all targets should be available, for example melee units should be able to block the way to ranged units or heroes etc., but always targeting the last unit in the stack doesn't seem right to me.

Actu

Actually, yes, at least for auto-complete battles, the unit that is listed at the bottom of the unit list is always hit first.

No big deal, but you are correct about the unit placement for the tactical battles.