That's pretty much how it worked in real life back in the day. Then it was all about skirmishers until they ran out of ammo. That said, yes, it could be rebalanced a little bit to make it a little more fair and fun.

A good change would be that attacks are mutual, unless a unit has the "first strike" ability.

Yes, simultaneous, sorry.

They should just make it the way master of magic does. No need to reinvent the wheel

If I understand it correctly, the attackers have less morale then the defenders, so the defenders are allowed to wait and the attackers must attack unless they want mass panic and retreat.  Unfortunately, the AI is an idiot so it attacks towards me even if it's defending.

You know I agree with you on this about first strike is an advantage and what they should do is if the character or unit is going to die on the strike that it gets last strike before the final blow. So as each unit gets the same amount of attacks as the other. The kind of combat they use now is too much like sudden death NFL football which I hate and the one that scores first wins. But if they programmed it like COLLEGE footbal everyone gets the same amount of chances. This way both units could actually die in the last attack of each.

I agree, it's quite awful that my units always have the first strike. It should be like in King's Bounty or Heroes Of Might & Magic, where a high or low "initiative" decides whether you strike first or later.

even in KB it was easy to "cheat" this mechanic

there is no solution, a good ai should place itself at moves+1 tiles and wait the opponent to move first

the real difference between elemental and KB is that in KB 90% of units have cooler skill very funcional

so wolves can sprint and get you, snakes have a small ranged attack, flying units have a lot more moves than you, some humanoids have sprint, drakes have break, there are many nore magical units and many ranged like archers catapults, imp goblin etc etc

this my friend is the truest truth out there

unfortunately, most companies want to do sth "original" and "unique" and that's why things like unfinished and buggy EWOM happen.

truthfully, the same is with homm series. part III was the best imo, and they should have sticked to that, just improving it graphcally, improving ai and maybe making it a bit more challenging and complicated.  

anyways we will see how patches and mods change the current gameplay, whic is just too easy. getting over 100 def on my soverein, and 90% creatures (apart from those huge trolls with 150+ attack) just miss when attacking me. and having 60+ attack myself, i 1-hit them. this is wrong, as with 5 heroes, each having a mount and a couple bands granting +1 move (having ~15 moves  turn), it's just too easy :/

I agree, but the IP police might not.  Sigh.

100% agree.

If we had simultaneous attacks, a squad of peasants with Lord hammers but no armor would take the damage they got coming to em. It's the only way that makes sense; 8 guys with hammers managing to continuously 1-shot 8 other guys wearing plate mail and carrying shields, all without taking any damage themselves just doesn't make sense, and not making sense really hurts strategy, gameplay, and immersion.   

So true!

I admit I too love MoM and it's combat system. But it had some major flaws as it was very easy to make an unbeatable army. Heck some units with various immunities could simply walk over whole cities by themselves. There were more then a few rush tactics based off of these units. In fact I recall one of them basically taking advantage of a unit that had "first strike" ability. The problem was the AI often had no way to counter these rushes and thus wouldn't put up much of a challenge.

I do think units need more HP in general though. It's way to easy to get enough attack to one shot quys really early. The first thing I always research in Military is Party so I get units of 4. This means I can field a peasent party with 12 ATK and 20 HP. Next I got for basic weapons so I can get the axe and now I got a unit with 4x6 ATK = 24 Attack and 20 HP and the game hasn't been going for that long. These fairly cheap units are easy to produce in mass and easily own anything I encounter early on. They put my SOV to shame and I only keep the SOV in the group to leech XP. 

When a lot of early monsters have 2-8 HP but have 3-6 ATK it only takes 1-2 hits to take out an unarmed unit with 5 HP. And as for as your SOV and heroes they only have 10 HP and can go down in 2-3 hits vs those early monsters unless you bought armor. But even with armor when units start showing up with 9-24 ATK a little into the game that 10 HP means your got be real careful cause getting high defense is EXPENSIVE.

So far I've learned caster heroes ROCK, while all others are just XP leeches unless you get a couple levels increase their HP and spend several hundred gildar on equipment. Basically the price to field a large army for a single unit that's not that great when the army you bought for equal cost would own that units.

And the talk of heroes that use the clearly broken system of unlimited magical item equip to get uber high defenses is kind of a pointless arguement. I garrentee you that for the thousands they spend to make that ONE unit I can build an army of Company units (12 guys) with at least 72 ATK fairly easily because that's the basic attack of ones that simply have an 6 ATK Axe. There are better weapons and their total HP of 60 for basic troops (90 HP Vets, 120 HP Elites) means they could easily stand up to that single uber unit. Plus just add some basic armor and they can have better damage resistance thus greatly increasing survivability. Since they also cost a fraction of the price you can field several of them and easily take on that one unit.

Its seems that the problem is that we are ironically playing a fantasy game that is too realistic. An army should be able to wipe the floor with a "hero" in all logical worlds. The issue seems to be how much fantasy we are allowing into the game. I leave it to the devs to balance.