Im having fun playing this but it first of all seems die rolls seem skewed to the enemy. I cant even get past the second mission because the enemies archers will pick me off. I try and go toe to toe with their archers with mine, but mine always seem to miss and the enemies always hit.

Another issue Im having is with superior tactics. Isn't the ability suposed to be optional? I have lost a few games that cam down the the last round where i needed to light the last beacon. I would have a group of 2 on the beacon space, with another adjacent. I only needed to wipe out the 1 blodd reaper, but i would end up rolling superior tactics, pushing them away out of the reach of my other attacker and if i move off the space using persue i will no longer have a unit there, and the enemies turn the reapers rage and just decimate my units on the beacon space. If the reapers wouldn't have been pushed back my adjacent unit probably couldve killed the last reaper thus giving me the victory. This has happened so many times. Yes its about the same as retreat but in these cases I never rolled the retreat only tactics.

Im actually not liking superior tactics, it has cost me some advantages. In the boardgame are the retreat rolls and superior tactics optional to apply?

As far as I understand, superior tactics is very different in the video game with respect to the boardgame. In the latter, superior tacticts give the citadel guards the possibility (but not the obligation) of transforming hit results (double swords) in retreats. In the video game instead the extra-retreat generated by superior tactics seem to be in addition to the hit results and they always apply. The boardgame version is surely more "tactical",while the online version is more straightforward and essentially transforms the citadel guards in killing machines against cornered enemies. In any case this is in line with the general "streamlining", end the consequent, unavoidable, loss of depth, from the boardgame to the video game.