I agree, and other bonuses should not stack.  I disagree in more general terms with separating tactical and strategic movement.  They should be the same, but strategic-specific traits should not affect tactical movement.

I think the solution I suggested resolves this.  If taking your full moves costs any unit a fixed amount of time, regardless of initiative, essentially no one moves more than they should.

I strongly disagree with specific rules depending on a certain weapon choice.  These kind of solutions are arbitrary and not intuitive.  The same rules should apply to all units.  Period.  Once you start goofing with the simplicity of the system, it gets ugly.

As I suggested, if attacks cost a fixed amount modified by initiative, you could give initiative bonuses/minuses to specific weapons to simulate faster/slower attacks and achieve what you are looking for in a slower ranged attack without inserting arbitrary rules.  Then if you don't like them, you can mod the weapon stats.

Back to the kiting problem, this should only be a big issue in 1 on 1 fights.  Multiple melee units should be able to corner a kiter by spreading out ( _ x _ _ x _ _ x _ ) to maximize the stopping power of their ZoC.  Once they have stopped the kiter, they should be able to close in and keep the kiter within 1 space of an ally, limiting his movement to 1.  If everyone just chases mindlessly after the nearest enemy, then the kiter wins.  You have to pick one target, focus on limiting his movement possibilities and trap him.

Kiting is the symptom.  The size and availability of intiative disparities is the disease.

Agree with malekith here; initiative disparities is the exploit.

Someone posted earlier about higher base initiatives for all units, this could work but would need to be done very carefully so that spells like haste remain useful - I hope that whatever changes are made dont nerf initiative into being an irrelevent stat

The problem is not just initiative, or movement for that matter.  They just aggravate the problem.

An archer with equal initiative and equal movement can kite/attack for the length of the battlefield (and if they are really large...)

Some good suggestions but the one I find simple and appealing is ranged units cannot move and attack on same turn.

Just to be clear, bows have different ranges:

Shortbows = 6

Longbows = 8

Yew Longbows = 9

Nerfing archers with a move then shoot will only solve half the problem. Weapons need some differentiation all around, but I am waiting until I have the Beta 2 to really go into it. A longbow would logically take longer to fire and move. Maybe shortbows should not have the move then shoot nerf, but longbows should. If you want to kite, you will have to suffer the penalties of shortbows: Crude -2 Initiative, -2 Accuracy, 6 Piercing Attack; Standard -2 Initiative, 8 Pierce Damage. There are a few magical options too, but they are a whole different balance issue. 

-20% Initiative feels about right for such a weak weapon. -2 Accuracy doesn't particularly matter with the current Accuracy system, but it helps. 8 damage is very weak for the tier it is researched at. That feels like a good balance because by that time in the game every player will have chainmail and be nearly immune to shortbows. In this case the problem is how to handle a battle where one enemy is too fast and can't do any damage. If we are keeping battles fast, just have Escape cast after so many rounds and call it a stalemate.

All of this is only in the case that one player sucks enough to only have mounted archers and the other player is terrible enough to only have slow melee units. The burden should be on the general to field a multipurpose army. 

Kiting, if it's really a problem (I don't think it is too much- yet), isn't going to be solved by weakening kiting.

Weakened kiting is still kiting, it just takes longer.  You'd have to make it outright impossible.

I don't think of Melee kiting as a problem.  Why?  Because it takes significant amounts of bonuses to achieve.

If tactics are properly employed the kiter (who has greater movement) needs to be able to move three times to get a free attack without retaliation.  With only double the intiative proper tactics will force the situation of the 'kiter' getting two attacks per one from the non-kiter (non-kiter maintains kiter's movement range +1).  If the non-kiter is a less bonused unit this is not inappropriate.  If the non-kiter has double damage, or twice the chance to hit with the same damage then it's an equal chance battle.  If it is generally not possible to get bonuses to effectively double dodge/accuracy/damage as easily as getting double initiative (which gets harder if the opposition also has some initiative pluses) and +1 movement then that is a balance issue rather a kiting problem.

So that leaves ranged units.

Yes but the attack and run away (hence no retaliation) can only work repeatedly (and hence lead to 'excessive kiting') if it is triple the initiative and +1 movement, or double the initiative and twice+1 the movement. 

That's a lot of bonuses and probably a much superior unit which is losing many of its attack opportunities.  I don't have a problem with this.

There is another side to the problem that seems like it is being missed, which is what happens with small amounts of initiative.  Champions are already playing a different game than trained units (or monsters) and making initiative less powerful would only make this worse.  Limiting how much initiative is potentially available might help.  Some form of diminishing returns might help.

Having 1 more initiative point than an opponent won't matter in most combats because combat is over before any extra actions are gained.  This is why I suggested randomizing when combat starts.  Combat could still be quick,  it would give any initiative value a chance to matter, and high initiative units wouldn't always go first.

Some suggestions seem to be favoring a tick system (like in Exalted) where actions have a time cost associated with them and initiative lowers that cost.  This could work, but would require more frequent input from the player, would slow combat down, and seems unnecessarily complicated (any action would have the potential to reorder the queue, for starters).

There seem to be three different meanings of Zone of Control being bandied about:
1) ZoC = moving into a tile adjacent to an enemy uses all remaining movement.  This seems to be how it functions in game.
2) ZoC = moving out of a tile adjecent to an enemy requires additional, or all remaining, movement.
3) ZoC = moving out of a tile adjacent to an enemy triggers a counterattack (basically the D&D attack of opportunity for moving out of a threatened tile).

None of these would help against a unit that can act 3 times as often.  <insert Gilden Silveric quote here>

Yes, these are good points. 

The trained unit could have horses themselves, or have been hasted, etc.  So it is not 'every' trained unit  which is automatically overpowered at level 5. But the general point is a good one.  It will be a question of thresholds and capacities to get bonuses, and what we think is reasonable. 

One on one a unit can be pushed back into a corner - then only double inititative and +1 movement is needed, assuming other units aren't involved.  If it is a multi-unit battle then all sorts or other things kick in - including opportunity costs.

How about allowing any unit which entirely skips its turn get one counter-attack?  This would prevent any Melee kiting (no point moving away any longer) if the unit is prepared for it. 

On further thought forget about the "stances" part of the proposal. Just implement the rush as a special ability (available to nearly all units) and be done with it.