It's darn near impossible to hit high-defence units

Apparently miss could mean you did 0 damage.  Should show 0 instead of a miss to avoid confusion.  Also maybe there should be an actual miss vs minimum damage dealt (so you can scratch stuff to death)

I see a lot of misses too

I also think the damage spread is too wide

Sometimes hitting for 4 dmg and sometimes hitting for 100 dmg with the same unit vs the same unit kinda kills strategic planning in tactical battle

I agree that something needs to be done with high defence I'm not sure simply "minimizing damage" is the answer either.  Take some of the named drakes with 350+ defence for example; if you hit them and it minimizes damage it most likely is going to minimize down to "1", which for all intent and purposes is about the same as "missing" because you would have to hit them 55+ times to kill them and you wouldnt survive one counter-attack.  I can understand the need to make some monsters such as the drake or a dragon imposing and very difficult to beat, but at this point I think it is overboard.

I don't think the high defence is a problem. You can get ridiculously high attack values in the late game, and of course you also have various spells and abilities which ignore defence altogether (came in incredibly handy for that headless hermit on the master quest).

But then what do you do for 90% of the game until you unlock that stuff? The battle I was describing was less than 100 turns into the game. If every major battle from that point onward plays out like that I'll be bored to tears.

Besides, to add to Archon's statement, shouldn't defensive units -be- hard to hit? That's kind of their hat, after all. You need a offensive powerhouse to overcome them and probably other tactics to go with.

As for such creatures early in the game... avoid them. You're not going to be able to tame the wilderness in one fell sweep. Some things you will simply need to avoid until you're more powerful. And this is where level 1 cities can be useful - helping to tame the wilderness and provide a safe haven; maybe you simple take a champ with a bow and use hit and run tactics; hit, retreat to city, rest, repeat - creeps don't heal, after all.

Just hit auto resolve.  This game isn't DnD, where if you "hit" you do at least 1damage unless the monster has damage resistance.  If the defense roll is higher than the attack roll damage=0 and "miss" pops up.  It is a carry over from GalCivII I think.  I know I would make some ships with only 1-2 attack and max defense and if they got in battle it would take 100s of turns for the battle to finish.  That game didn't have tactical battles though, and I would just fast foward or auto resolve. 

Does the system work in a game with tactical battles , magic and skill use?  Maybe not.  Over time the units with the higher stats should win more often than not.  But I am not sure if that is fun.   

I found it helps to look at attack and defense as a range rather than numbers IMO.

Instead of thinking 30attack/50defense think 1-30attack/1-50defense.  Or average them 15attack/25defense.  In a mirror match over half of the attacks would do zero damage.  Just understand you can hit really low/high rolls too.

And yes if you took two units with 50def each and only gave them clubs, and told them to smack each other till one fell over - it would on average take 100s of turns even with only 5health. 

They really need to change zero damage hits so they do not say miss.  It is a terrible design feature right now and must be changed ASAP.

Did you actually read the OP? This was an attack on one of my cities - I couldn't very well avoid it unless I wanted to surrender the city. And then the next one, and the next one, etc.