Dominions 2 and 3 (both extremely excellent games, IMHO) dealt with this by reducing a unit's Protection value (which had the role of Defense in Elemental) for each consecutive hit in a round. Something like that could work here too. Or make armor only reduce damage to 1hp, rather than provide complete invincibility. That would also give more value to dodging ability, since a dodge with no armor at all would mean 0 damage, while any kind of hit, even in Elementium armor, would mean at least 1 damage. I would suggest scaling this, so that if the Defense value was not more than some degree larger than the attacker's Attack you still get 1 damage minimum - only if Defense is significantly higher than Attack would there be no damage at all (say 1.5 or 2 times higher).

Or just put an attack multiplier on consecutive attacks made against the same unit, so even a small Attack value would become much more than 4 by the time rat # 10 takes a swing at you in the same round.

Or, to throw out another idea - give units a steep defense penalty once they run out of action points to counter incoming attacks with. Even the best armor wont keep me nice and comfy if I am out of action points and the third enemy to attack me has time to come right up to me and take his time to get a very nasty swing in.

This is all just brainstorming, but I definitely agree that something needs to be done to make single units vs hordes more realistic. Numbers should mater more in battle, and even force the strategy of employing your units in battle so they must support each other better (by keeping too many enemies from getting at one unit, or preventing flanking on the sides of your lines where the enemy can make it 3 v 1 on the end of your line). Adding a Zone of Control around units to restrict movement in tactical battles would also help with this.

You just have to realize game balance is geared for combat between races not creatures.

I think the devs have decided to stay super tight lipped about the future of tactical combat. I am sure we all have different ideas on what tactical combat should be like, but it is ultimately their decision. However, I will give my two cents on the subject and hope as always that I can strike a chord with the community. I shall lay this out like most of my thought posts as a list of ideas, which makes it easier for me to flow from one thing to the next.

- Elemental currently lacks a kind of rock, paper, scissor quality. While I find that this mentality for combat can be taken much too far, without this quality, the combat simply devolves into picking the strongest guys at any time and mass producing them. Without some form of rock, paper, scissors, there is nothing to stop single units from gain too much strength and dominating the map. In GalCiv 2, there were three weapon types and three armor types, meaning that a unit which was strong vs one type would be weak against the others. The problem with damage and defense typing is that the player is incentivized to simply build tough fleets for each type. A better approach for Elemental would be something closer to the RPG idea of classes, giving each unit a combat role. This way players would be promoted to build armies which combined the various strengths and weakness of each combat role, and the actual combat would promote tactics over some form of min maxing numbers.

- Most combat units in Elemental have only two possible actions in any given combat turn. You can either move or you can fight. Since fighting comes down to straight number crunching, the tactics of Elemental moves towards simply min maxing each turn. If this were expanded so that each unit had more possible actions, then players would be given a lot more tactical possibilities. For instance, units could have multiple grades of attack, some of which might have cooldowns, thus allowing the players to decide how to approach each unit's turn. Players would be forced to choose whether to use a powerful attack immediately or perhaps to use a block/parry move, or to wait and use weaker attack until their opponent is out of position.

- Expanding upon the last point, units should have some kind of fatigue/readiness rating. This could be tied to all combat stats so that as a unit engages in combat, it becomes weaker and weaker. This would prevent solo attackers with amazing stats, like a late game champion, from solo killing entire armies without breaking a sweat. In fact, the rating could even carry over while out of battle so that a single army can not simply hold back overwhelming odds simply because they never tire of battle.

- Regular units should level up more than their hp and some accuracy. If I have a club dude from the beginning of the game and he has reached level 10 or 11, this unit should be fairly powerful and have gained some kinds of bonuses due to his combat experience. Yet, this unit will find himself weaker and more useless as time wears on since his weapon becomes more and more useless and his stat does not keep pace with the other units. Some have stated they would like some kind of upgrade system, but I think that if this unit was classed and gained real bonuses for leveling, upgrading would be ultimately unnecessary and not as interesting.

- Champions should be given combat buffs based on their charisma. This would allow them to act more like generals in the sov's army instead of merely glorified units.

- Tactical maps should have interactive buildings. This is something that was absolutely amazing in the AoW series and would be a welcome addition to Elemental tactical combat. Walls which the units could hide behind, or perhaps houses capable of concealing troops.

- Tactical Combat should allow players to set up their troops. This is something that is long overdue and I think everyone who has found themselves in a battle with their strongest dudes far behind a layer of crummy dudes can agree with this.

- Reimplement moral to effect combat stats, yet broaden it to allow for things like fear based on being overmatched or unhappiness due to fighting troops of a certain type. I think it would be interesting if some of the monsters could actually have an inherent advantage simply because the units were afraid to fight them, like pack drakes or shrills.

As I said in my previous post, I think that it shouldn't even be considered this way really. It should not be that unit x > unit y > unit z > unit a > unit x. This would end up simply with the same problems you have in most other TBS games, where you just have all 4 units and you send the right unit after the right guy. The best idea I have is more like you have 4 or more roles and each one has weaknesses but is complemented by another role. For example, one unit could be a defender, with abilities like taunt units to attack, and then you could have a buffer, with a buff attack skill, and a DPS'er with high damage skill. Then, each army would have could have different balance which represent the various tactics the players are attempting to use.

Just thought of a simple, therefore better formula.

Multiple the defense time the number of adjacent friendlies (including self) and divide by the number of adjacent enemies.  A completely surrounded soldier would suffer a 89% loss to defense.  While soldiers in a line facing each other would lose none.

Wow, way to completely not read a post. You really should actually read the posts before you go off all crazy with every tactical buzz word you can think of.

Just to clarify my ideas without a crazed rant about the failings of RPS. This is what I actually did say about the matter.