I agree with a good many of your points here.

I think the real issue is how damage vs armor scales. Basically as I under stand it a units attack damage is attack value (weapon + any bonuses) times number of models in the unit. So a unit of 3 armed with spears (attack 6 I think?) does 18 damage a hit (modified by some random factor I don't really under stand.) Meanwhile a units defense is simple the defense of any member of the group, so a unit wearing all leather has a defense of like 5. Now I know theres some randomness in this, and also that the unit has to hit, another factor. But the base is, while at low tech its not such a big deal, as the tech goes up, so does this disparity. For instance a company of 6 men armed with spears now does 36 damg, while a six man unit with leather armor still only have 5 defense, though its hit points go up also. So the while a weapon might always do more damg then the same level armor give def, at higher tech this spread gets more, and then add in growing unit sizes, and it gets a bit rediclous I feel.

I don't if dropping damg is the way to fix late game boringess, but I think it might help, your right, I'm tried of trying to cast a spell with a one turn casting cost only to have the battle end before its cast.

Can't the AI make use of the same units you design in later games?

A unit of 6 basic spearmen doesn't do 36 damage it does 6 damage 6 times, each hit being reduced by armor separately, so the gap you are talking about doesn't exist, in the way you described it anyway. The problem is they nerfed armor really badly when FE came out (or maybe it was late WoM), it used to be a flat reduction, but now it's only like 60% effective on average or something. Before 6 units hitting for 6 damage each against a unit with 5 armor would have done 1 damage 6 times, 6 damage total. Now that 5 armor only reduces damage by like 2-4, some randomness to it, so those same units hitting the same target do like 12-24 damage. Then they added armor penetration, so if those units are spearmen they do maybe 18-30 damage. These aren't exact numbers, I don't remember offhand what the formula is, but bottom line is armor doesn't mean that much anymore unless you get it extremely high.

Compounding this issue is the offensive degradation of units losing members, so whoever hits first can cripple the enemy even without killing them by just reducing their numbers.

I definitely agree that most tactical battles are decided on the first turn and are over far too quickly for many game mechanics to have any worthwhile effect. Spells with casting times definitely, pointless to use when the battle is over before they cast, but even instant cast spells aren't worth the wasted turn in many cases, why cast a buff when you can instead kill an enemy stack or three with a weapon skill. The 5 turn cooldowns they added to skills I also find amusing, there's no balancing going on there, they are only important on the first turn anyway. Send your units in, they all cleave, any survivors are going to have only 1 or 2 units left that do piddly damage and are easily finished off next turn with basic attacks. I don't think cleave is overpowered, I think general unit survivability sucks. I don't know if units need more base health, more armor, or less effective weapons, but yes currently battles are won with the alpha strike, especially once you get into repeatable techs. This is only bad because so much of the game is built around longer battles, there's so many spells that are just useless right now because they sped up combat. I think we are more likely to see said spells adjusted or removed instead though, they appear to be trying to make things faster paced, maybe to appeal to the ADHD masses, or the 5 people that want multiplayer.

If you want to do this, you can adjust some things in the CoreUnitStat.xml file.

I've gone through and modded the weapon damage values. Lower level weapons didn't change, but the higher level weapons are at about half of what they were. I'll let you all know how it goes.

I often see that too.

@DsRaider - good suggestions.... agree with all of them.

I think that the weapon damage is balanced if a hero fights against a hero or a group fights against a group, but if a hero fights against a group the weapon damage is unbalanced.

- impulsive should be replaced by graceful

- charge should increase the movement during the first round by 3

- ambush (new ability) should increase the attack during the first round by 3

- decimate should be a passive commander, defender and warrior ability to make the paths useful against groups

- executioner should increase the damage against heroes and single monsters to make the path useful against single targets

- medium sized heroes and monsters should have evasion (new ability) * to make them less vulnerable against groups

* Reduces the number of lost hit points (not the damage) of an attack by an enemy group by 50 %

entire character system is long jump to casual BS and stupidity.

+1 for awesomness as only stat for heroes and units, everyone will be happy with high awesomness... 

Multiple skills with same effect inside single skill set is just

You have some good points bigduncm24. Your point about how tactical buffs are pointless due to short unit lives is really true. I hope tactical battles become a little longer and not just about using high attack and initiative to one shot armies.

Agree on all points Dsraider.

My two cents: Mounts are too numerous and easy to equip too units, allowing entirely mounted armies to cross tactical maps. Reduce the amount of mounts we get and add some production or wage cost to them.

The - initiative seems like the best way to balance + attack traits. Good call.

I really hate how removing the encumbrance system has made traits even more limited, we need more traits and traits that buff impale and cleave seem like a good idea.

another radical idea: what about removing the techs for larger group sizes (4/5/6 guys per unit) and instead give the units increased (base) HP instead (with options to upgrade legacy units to the new health levels). i realize that armor is basically there to counterbalance better weapons, but armor is fairly expensive resource wise, while high powered weapons are rather cheap, so it happens quite often that troops have powerful weapons, but only baseline armor (leather/monk robes). by adding extra health instead of extra units, you get tougher units without giving them additional firepower - which also results in longer battles with more interesting tactics. this also affects fights vs. monsters - an endgame unit with the highest tier weapons would still deal about 3-4 times the damage of a basic starting units, but not 6-8 times the amount of damage (from double group size).

hope that makes sense

Good suggestions.  removing impulsive from the fortress improvement should be a must.