battle initiative

[siegefried]

You can't attack a stack, the stack always attacks you. The key to getting the first move is a unit with a high value for initiative. For example, the sprites + Agna's Ruby combo (You can get sprites early as a mage). Horsemen are decent enough in Darion + Freedom Islands (I've only gotten to this point, can't really say for those much further) for getting the first turn, but they don't always start first.

[easytarget]

Ah, understood. Thank you for explaining that.

So, early on I had sprites amongst my troops, when they all got killed eventually I didn't replace them with more I replaced them with another unit and apparently doesn't have good initiative numbers.

Thanks, I'll have to keep working on balancing my troops, which is really one of the better parts of the game anyway, fun to work through the constant trade-offs.