Current "Swarming" tactics are out of control and aren't fun or rewarding. The problem is roughly as follows. Swarming works in a overly aggressive way for the attacker to a point of not making ANY sense at all.
Example If you have three units lined up to one enemy as follows (A = allied attacker, FA = far ally, CA close ally and E = enemy).
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FA CA A
E
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When A, the allied attacker attacks the enemy both the far attack and close attacker get to assist. I've seen where even allies who aren't touching (just flanking) get attacks aswell. So essentially when an attacker attacks an enemy, all touching allies also attack.
What this means are two things. Larger numbers will often overtake smaller stronger foes, and damage occurs at a MUCH faster rate. So much faster that both allied and enemy units die in a blink.
This is not strategic at all. Its pure madness. I'm currently playing the game on challenging and this swarming just makes the game insanely frustrating because the fights just end a blink. Every fight goes dramatically one way or the other. If one side gets the slightest edge the other side is destroyed with very little options to recover.
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I can suggest a few things that would help:
1) First make swarming an optional feature in the game. I suspect many people would opt out, because its just not balanced well. And it plays drastically different from the original game such that you may drive people away from the game.
2) Adjust swarming in two ways. First only allow swarm attack assist to units that are BOTH adjacent to the target and initiating attacker.
3) Adjust swarming assist rate such that the first assist has a high chance of occurring ~50%, the second assist has a much lower chance of ocuring ~30%, and any remaining assists have only a ~10% chance.
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Please read this and take an honestly look at how the feature is misbehaving. Good tactical combat lasts longer, allows users to attempt to correct mistakes (or when lady luck goes badly), and puts the power in the players hands to ultimately have a chance at making decisions which feel significant.
Swarming as it currently exists does not promote tactical combat. It promotes SWARM tactics... or zerg tactics... which are some of the most mundane and boring tactics in existence today.
