Also there are some other changes I've noticed which make the swarming problem even worse.  Another change I've noticed is the distance between you and your enemies at the start of the fight seems to be MUCH shorter (half the distance on average?)  This makes it such that the slower army doesn't even get to re-position their units before being swarmed (this doesn't make any sense either).  Why would your units be so close before getting to take any action?

Also the current swarming system greatly undervalues archers and other ranged units.

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I wanted to post an example of an enemy where this tactic occurs and its estimated strength is completely out of wack because of it:

Stalker's Army Level 4:
5 movement / 13 damage / 0 defense / 24 hit points
Four of them are listed as "Medium" strength.

I made the mistake of taking my "Medium" strength starting Hero and army against them (One level 3 hero,  Three level 2 spearmen).  In the previous game I would have stood a chance of winning with maybe loosing a unit or two.  BUT with swarm tactics, no matter what I do the first turn one or TWO of my army members are killed and the rest quickly follow.

I see now with the current swarm tactics I have to look much closer at the enemy composition to determine how dangerous they might be because the strength tags no longer are a good reflection.

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Also I'm not bringing this up just because enemies are harder.  Someone else made the observation once they get their army rolling, they just face roll everything.  So the problem is two fold.  If your army is the faster swarming attackers, you devistate the other side.  There's no challenge   So what we're experiencing in game play, is a steep parabola, where either you win big or loose big and its almost entirely decided by initiative, movement and number of attackers vs defenders... rather than the choices made inbetween.

i don't agree with all your assessments. 

let me explain my point of view:

there's already a fairly efficient counter vs swarm - defense. the AI (mostly) doesn't use it properly, which is a shame, but the player can counter most early game "swarm" scenarios with defensive units (the basic "Defender" unit is all right, though i prefer a design with daggers instead of clubs and finesse instead of armor proficiency).

for the really early game, a custom spearman unit with the "defensive" trait can be very useful, too (i also like to give them the +1init boots and finesse to use them as a general purpose unit). don't attack immediately, go into def stance, let them waste most of their attack/special moves on your defending units, then attack the now defenseless units. if you attack them immedaitely, your 5 attack spears vs. their 5 defense will result in ~1-2 damage per swing. if you block their attack first and strike afterwards, you'll do (almost) full damage since they just lost all/most of their  defense.

i like that mechanic, since it rewards a sensible troop setup and maneuvering/flanking tactics. you can often win battles with a mix of specialized defenders and attackers that you would lose with a onesided setup of only attacker units.

the notable exception are high initative swarmers (such as stalkers and wolves ). they are hard to counter with trained troops, though a defender champ can work if you can bump his initiative to the point where he moves and goes into defense stance before they get to move and attack. (should have defensive I & II, though, otherwise he probably won't survive ). also depends on the tactical map. if you can move him into melee range of (some) of the swarmers or the map setup allows him to block their approach with his zone of control, they will generally go for the tank (who will just shrug off most of the attacks)

later in the game, both the defense and swarm mechanic lose some/most of their importance. +5 defense or +1 attack per swarmer is a big deal when the units have 0 defense and 5 attacks. not so much when you have units with 25 defense and 10 attack (or ~ 40-50 defense and ~ 15-20 attack with the highest level gear)

EDIT: to clarify the last paragraph: swarm is basically a non-factor in the late game; the defense mechanic stays relevant, since higher tier shields also increase the effect of the defensive stance. the whole balance is shifted towards offense units (init + att) since most monsters are easy enough to overwhelm them with T2 weapons with brute force and AI factions aren't competitive at the lower difficulties (below expert/ridiculous, that is) - they just fall behind and once you have the tech advantage, they get steamrolles just like the monsters of the world

I disagree.

Play any real tactical game with figurines (which are rather accurate representations of battles at the tactical level), and you'll learn that:

- flank attacks give huge bonuses
- rear attacks mostly mean your unit is dead
- overlapping units (your case) gives a serious bonus to the attacker

You should be happy that the game stops there in the bonus it gives for having more numerous units than the enemy lined up against yours!
Even a knight in a full suit of armor has trouble managing three lightly armored atttackers.

The problem at this point is: does the AI makes the best of the mecanism. I think it doesn't do that bad.

Of course, one can argue that the current units of one to 6 people hardly follow any known military rules (and certainly not the required discipline of real military units.) And so that all my point is moot.

Yves

I think that Swarm itself is, for the most part, quite balanced. I believe the real issue is weapon damage. Mid and High game weaponry cause too much damage and because they do, Swarm seems excessive or overpowered. (Granted a reduction in weapon damage would not address your stalker example, but I'm ok with the AI having a little bite.) I've been modding weapons so they cause far less damage and by doing so I have found Swarm to be not only balanced, but necessary, in some situations, do take down tough units.

Regarding stalkers, do they get a swarm bonus? I can't remember.

Also:

This sounds like you're understanding Swarm as a free full strength attack by adjacent units. This is not the case. Rather, the attacking unit gets a bonus to their attack based on friendly adjacent units. The animation where supporting units 'attack' just shows that they're providing the attack bonus.

They just need to remove the +1 attack and swarm will be perfect.

One thing I think needs to change is the maul ability's use of swarm. I understand the initial attack having that bonus but the maul attacks getting swarm kinda makes it overpowered in my opinion.

Adjusting swarm only addresses swarm. Adjusting weapon damage addresses a number of issues like the pointlessness of tactical spells, the worthlessness of poisons, the superior advantage of going first/high initiative, and the deficencies in strategic and tactical AI.

Agree that tactical spells should be on cool downs only if the AI stats using them more....

I agree with Anelyn - it is good that tactical spells are linked with your (global) mana-pool. That way the tactical spell-part of the game is direclty linked to the strategy part (if you wish to be able to use more spells (or spells with higher price), you should focus your empire (cities) to that goal). If you make combat spells linked only to cooldowns you would disconnect that part of the game from strategic part, which IMHO will not be good.

The same is true IMHO (to some extent at least) to the idea of personal mana-pools for every hero.

Anyway, on the topic - I like swarm mechanic and think that it should scale to some extent so to be relevant in midgame and lategame (maybe percentage based bonus - as was already suggested - something like 3-5% or +1 to attack for every swarming unit (with formula that takes wich of to is higher so the ability to be effective in early and late game).

IMHO ti will be good to have some kind of defensive formation (similar to the way swarm works). Maybe to unit abilities:

- shield wall - unit trait which i selectable only for shield-equipped units, with cooldown of 3. When activated it will give +5 defense. So if you have three units standing in line (unit - Unit - Unit) the unit in center will have +10 to its defense and the two units on the flanks will receive +5.

- phalanx - unit trait which i selectable only for spear-equipped units, with cooldown of 3. When activated it give 1-counterattack to that unit and +3 defense for every your spear-equipped unit, that stand next to that unit. The effect is active only until the units moves. To compensate the unit will receive -10 to its ranged evade. So if the formation is:

YourUnit - YourUnit - YourUnit

Enemy - Enemy - Enemy

it will be +6 defense for unit in center end +3 defense for units on the flanks (if they have the same ability and are activated it)

if the formation is

1st row: YourUnit - YourUnit - YourUnit

2nd row: YourUnit - YourUnit - YourUnit

3-d row: Enemy - Enemy - Enemy

an unit in center have that ability activated it will receive +15 defense (and for units on the second row flanks if they have this ability activated too it will be +9 defense)

IMHO this will be good counter to the swarm bonus, but it will have its negative sides (mostly formation will be veary good for use of fireball or other area effect spells).

I think that is the entire idea. Because of this all sovereigns start with 2 additional units and have to really strategize as to which group of enemies he approaches and when, whether he needs to train more cheap troops to utilize the swarm bonus or whether he needs to get the infrastructure going to not fall behind on expanding the borders and research. It adds quite a lot of interesting choices right at the very beginning of the game. As you said, later on the swarm mechanic loses its importance and I think rightly so. It still remains a factor you have to be taking into account, but other things get more important. If anything, late game decisions and mechanics are the things that can get quite boring.

I honestly don't see the problem with swarm. On the basis of wanting to implement moderately tactical combat that is not supposed to take too long and be too complex, the swarm mechanic is a nice addition. It needs to be communicated to new players much better though, but that is a general problem with several important concepts (XP Split).

This really depends on the playstyle I guess, because I never really have a problem to manage my mana. Some mana costs are still off though, especially when it comes to faction traits.

Both spells and melee / ranged power increases with 1 factor: strategic map control. Gaining access to new resources, building and upgrading improvements, advancing in research trees, leveling heroes / troops all reflect on how well you do on tactical map.

At start of game you don't have to engage in fights with enemies that have more powerful army or much larger than you. Instead of building your town you can train 2 more units if what you want is to fight that early in game.

The buffs are not meant to be used on every single unit in early game. You must manage your mana per turn. If your hero is ranged / spellcaster, he won't need an evade buff if you fight melee units, instead cast it for a specific fight on the unit you plan to draw attention of enemy troops with, then dispell it after fight.

If it's +1 attack per unit and you have seven units in a company, isn't that +7 to Attack?  Or is it just +1 regardless of size?