Everwar shall have simultaneous turn based combat.  This is to add a strategic element to the fight, and places the success and failure on character stats and player decisions rather than the player's ability to click fast or have a fast internet connection.

There are only 2 "places" you can be in combat.  "At Range" and "In Close".  Anyone joining a combat is always "At Range" from everyone else.  Distances are relative to each combatant, so if you move "in close" to another combatant who is already "in close" with a third person, both will become "in close" to you (assuming neither of them moves away).

Movement is literally restricted to these options:
Flee < --  At Range < -- > In Close

(Fleeing requires all other combatants to be "at range")

Each combatant gets to choose their action by inverse order of Observation.  ie, the person with the lowest observation skill goes first, so that those with higher observation can "see" what is being attempted before they react.

What they see depends on their intelligence.  If they are less than 50% of the intelligence of the target they are observing, they see only the category of the action (Defend, Move, Attack, or Cast).  If they are between 50% and 99% of the target's intelligence, they can see the type of action (eg. Parry, Lunge, Move away, cast fireball).  If they are equal to or higher in intelligence than the target, a feint will be revealed.  Any combatant can pretend to do a different type of action than what they're truly going to perform (but can not feint between different categories).

Meelee damage is calculated as a factor of weapon + strength - (target armour + target strength)

Defensive moves' success factor depends on agility statistic

When building NPCs, you can choose between increasing levels of aggression for combat:
Timid -> Defensive -> Strategic -> Aggressive -> Suicidal

Timid basically means the NPC tries to run from any fight.  Deer would be a good example.
Suicidal means the NPC stops at nothing to try and win.  Rabid dog for example.

This is what I expect the interface will look like.  I want to maintain the ability to play without having to resort to using the mouse, so all combat choices will be selectable using keystrokes just like in Everwar conversations.  The arrows to switch between targets can be mouse or keyboard.