Indeed, they are broken...

It says is "one of the strongest units in the game," so good to know this. Did you tried Olympics?

Since I was told that “creating a dedicated post for a specific feature” is a good idea, as is including “diagrams or mockups to make communication with other community members easier”, I’m going to do that for my idea of how to better deal with selections, formations, groups and battalions, explained here: In summary, selections automatically define battalions, which override groups and can be disbanded by breaking formation, making all these concepts unintuitive and entangled, when they could be useful and independent. I proposed for battalions to be defined and selected with ctrl+alt+number and alt+number, respectively. I mentioned battalions to appear as a box surrounding group icons, but I’m going to invert that since battalions are a more “compact” concept than groups, thus icons will be battalions and boxes with labels will be groups. The following figures are edited, I did not code anything Figure 1: this is how battalions would look like, with battalion 1 for hoplites and battalion 2 for javelineers. Battalions must have exclusive definitions since their function is just to treat the battalion as a unique unit. Each would have the little flag, and the icons on the left are representing them with their number. A formation has been set for them. Figure 2: this is how 3 groups, group 1 for hoplites, group 2 for javelineers, and group 3 for all of them, would look like. The boxes around each icon with a label indicating the group they belong to are shown on the left. The icons themselves don’t have a number because in this example they are not part of a battalion. No little flags. No formation is set here, but it could. Figure 3: this is how battalions 1 and 2 belonging to group 3 would look like. A formation is set for the whole group 3. Clicking on the icons would select the battalions, while clicking on the label would select the group. The label is thinner but one could smash the cursor against the side, and when a label is there no sideways movement should happen. Right clicking on icons or labels would disband battalions or groups, respectively. Figure 4: same as before, but if one were to use alt+formation instead, for each battalion to acquire that formation. The same could be achieved by forming each battalion independently, but it would be slower, particularly when having a lot of battalions in a group. Figure 5: splitting battalion 1 into battalions 3 and 4 to better show the advantages of the previous concept. This is how Total War games work. It would be good if 2 digit numbers were allowed, not to run out of single digit ones (for group labels maybe they should be written vertically). Figure 6: now to something TW games don’t do, groups inside battalions. Battalion 5 has been defined for all units, with group 1 for hoplites, group 2 for javelineers, and group 3 for all of them. When a group doesn’t include the whole battalion its label should be shown on the right. This is useful to sometimes have different parts of a given battalion do different things, for situational flexibility. This is the last case, the following figures are considerations and variations of this. Figure 7: to show its versatility, this is what would happen if group 1 includes more units, mostly Skiritai in this case, and group 3 includes more units besides battalion 5, mostly surgeons in this case. Clicking on the label 1 besides battalion 5 could select the onscreen units from group 1 belonging to that battalion, clicking on the Skiritai could select the onscreen units of group 1 not belonging to that battalion, using alt would also select the offscreen units, and double clicking any group 1 label would select the whole group 1. Similarly with battalions, clicking once on battalion 5 with label 1 would also select the onscreen units from group 1 belonging to that battalion, but double clicking it would select the whole battalion 5. Figure 8: an option or alternative to have for Figure 6, show an icon for composition of the subgroups. This also increases the area for clicking them. They don’t need to have a number 5, because the parent already has that number, and it would be redundant, there cannot be sub-battalions, by definition of what a battalion is. There can be subgroups of subgroups, just that for now they would appear as new groups (just as 1, 2 and 3 appear here, 1 and 2 being subgroups of 3), but there could be another way I’ll describe at the end. Figure 9: an alternative of how to represent Figure 6. I like this more, but wanted to show more intuitive things first to be clearer. Figure 10: final figure, using the previous concept, with the icons for composition of the subgroups to expand the area to click them, and considering that more units, mostly surgeons, not belonging to any battalion, belong to group 3. With this fleshed out representation there could be an alternative way to represent subgroups of subgroups and so on, just by attaching them horizontally (vertical multiplicity of icons and labels for parents will also increase, but I doubt anyone would need so many subgroups). I hope this was clear and be considered as a possible way to comfortably use groups and battalions at the same time, and if there's a weird case you think this wouldn't work let me know, it would be fun trying to figure out what the representation should be.

Ah yes, it seems they did use tight formations, I mixed that up with what I read about the Iceni.

One idea could be a more beginner-friendly way to identify lag issues. There’s already the top-right message and the F11 overlay, but not everyone knows how to read the overlay.