I liked the variety and the use of spells is critical to success in many maps. Combat itself does not use spells and has at most 12 units involved. Each army has two rows, you can only attack units in the front row unless your attacker has a ranged attack ability. So, despite the fact that there are only a few units and they don't ever move in tactical combat, there is surprising depth to the tactical combat. This is accentuated by the use of different attack types.
Some units are resistant or immune to certain types of attack.
For example, werewolves can only be hurt by magic. This means you may need to bring different units into battle depending on what you are facing or use spells on the main map in cooperation with a direct assault. It's an elegant, well thought out system that makes you think even though it looks trivial on the surface. Most maps were challenging, even on the easy setting, at least at first. The difficulty level seems to impact only the costs of things for you rather than the way the enemy AI works.