Doh, forgot, second issue with unit placement...  in a later fight, there was a lake in the middle.  One of my units was on the left flank, one was on the right, and my defender was in the middle, again unable to get to either flank before the large bear and teh smal bear came up to one of my units and kicked it's butt. 

Honestly... I know it would slow down combat, but I think allowing us to place our own units is probably the only solution to this sort of thing.  Give us a small strip to work with, make it vary for each map, but... otherwise, i sense a lot of frustration with damaged units being put in stupid spots, then finished off before I can even react.  (or undamaged units, in the case of my Mage from the first post..)

The difficulty indicators for quests have always been a bit off for some.

As for the OP, I think the placement is done purely on whether that unit is holding a melee weapon or a ranged weapon. Some staves are melee, some are ranged. The only real solution to this at the moment is to equip your mage with one of the ranged attack mage staves from the magic tech tree, or a bow.

I think the easiest solution to this problem would be a switch on the equipment screen where you can declare your unit as "Front Line" or "Back Line" regardless of its weapon type.

Yeah, I seriously think wolves need a bit of a nerf.  That's the point of the beta, give them feedback on this sort of stuff (and find technical glitches).  I REALLY like the front line/back line idea Ashnal.... just because my mage has a staff that doesn't do ranged attacks, doesn't mean I wanted her on the front line....

Yea with the new unit placement, I think that at least some spells should have their casting time reduced.

Some battlefields are much larger. 

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=133304111

It took me about 6 rounds to get to the archer in the back row.

unit placement wise, they also need to move 'non-combat' units to the back.

I just had the old woman (escort mission) get eaten by wolves as the game decided that she should be on the front line, rather than any of my other melee units.

I'll assume that pioneers will share the same fate.

I only played a couple turns last night, but I can say with assurance: watch out for wolves!  and everything else in this game.  Has anyone tried auto-resolve to see how it compares?

I throw my hat in with those that say that you should, in most circumstances, be able to organize your units before the battle starts.  Monsters/champions could have an attribute like "Ambush" or something that would prevent you from organizing if they attacked you, but in general, and especially if you're attacking, you should be able to place your units in a reasonable formation.

Exactly. Let units like the Shadow Cat etc still be able to engage before you set up, but most of the time, we should have a chance to correct our formation.

I like this idea, a unit with low HP being placed a bit farther back would help.  So maybe have a front line, for those with high HP and armor, a middle line, for those low on HP (or with almost no armor, or both!), and the back line for ranged still.  Or just move people very low on HP back by the ranged, but depending on the size of the map, that could keep a strong (but wounded) fighter out of range for a while.  Hmmm.... game design is tricky!  Or at least, having the AI do it for us automatically, and not pissing us off when it's stupid, is tricky.... 

Screw auto placement, let the players take the reigns, and give us an "auto place" button for those that don't want to do it, or feel it would be "cheating" to do it better than the AI....

Agreed. Mages should be considered ranged units.

A VERY simple fix to this would be to make ALL staves ranged weapons. The game would then place mages on the BACK line along with archers. Give staves a bonus to spell casting power.....

example: A fire staff has the equivelant to 1 fire shard. Thus the user of this staff would be granted the global fire shard bonus PLUS this staffs fire shard bonus. In addition, it shoots a small ranged fire attack so that when/if you run out of spells to cast, you can always STAY ranged in your weak cloth armour and pew pew your staff at them.

How about this?

The game places your units as it thinks is appropriate based on their weapon, HP, and armor stats and the player can swap any of them with each other before the battle starts.  That cuts down on the opportunities to game the system, but it lets you employ a little strategy in preparing for battle.

As an added bonus the developers don't need to spend much time worrying about edge cases.  Like the well armored battle wizard using a ranged buffing staff -- should he be in the front lines so he can use his 1-range spell abilities or should he be in the back to cast fireballs?  Or one-time-use spells -- if my ranged champion has a 1-range spell-of-doom he should be in the front line if I plan to use that spell at the start of the battle.

If they were really ambitious the game could learn from the changes the player made and try to emulate that in future battles.

It IS the same for every aspect on everything. Before turning new stuff over to players, let the ai do it well.  Once no one has any complaints other than "let me do it " the ai is ready

Have any of you ever played an old xbox game called Gladius. If you haven't I suggest you do despite its age. I think that game has some of the best and funnest turn based tactical battles I have ever seen or played. I would really like to see FE's tactical battles become more like Gladius tactical battles.

As a matter of fact I challenge Derek and the rest of the devs to play five or six hours of Gladius. It will open your eyes to the potential of FE's tactical battles and just how inferior they currently are in comparison. Combining FE's strategic game play with better tactical battles, that are reminiscent of Gladius, would bring this game to a whole new level of gameplay and fun.

Note: If you do play Gladius I would strongly recommend that you play as Valens simply because you will gain access to a better set of recruits early on which you will be able to upgrade to your own preferences which matters a lot.

I strongly agree that one should have the option to manually place ones units, within limits, before the battle begins. Gladius did this well, among other things, and it made tactical battles much better.