E. Albright is also very experienced: [They were] playing Dominions multiplayer prior to multiplayer on this forum.
Lies and balderdash. My entire MP Dominions experience is as follows: 3.01, a 2-player blitzy thing with slMagnavox, 3.02 for the first 20 turns or so before RL made me drop out, 3.06, 3.15, 4.01, 4.04, 4.10, 4.11 as a sub for a turn or three, 4.15, 4.16 as a sub for a turn or six, and now 4.17. So this is somewhere between my 7th and 12th game, depending on how and what you count. Now OTOH, I have an obscenely buggish little mind, a very solid grasp of game mechanics (which has only been made worse by working with Elmokki on NG), and have been playing SP Dominions on and off since Dom1 back in... say... 2003? But I'm not "very experienced" at MP in absolute terms, and my first game of MP Dom was the first Bay12 one, and not before.
EDIT: Oh, hey Albright? Mod question: is "Formation Fighter" something units can have, and if so, why isn't it more common?
It's possible, yes. It will generally (possibly exclusively?) only show up on troops with equipment themed "formationfighter", which would be various flavors of spears and polearms. It didn't seem like it was excessively uncommon compared to its occurrence in vanilla, but I could probably do some tests to check.
EDIT: As for Disciples play, I'd probably prefer 2-player teams. It's like a Superhero and their Sidekick, plus it removes most possible interteam bickering and politicking. No third wheel.
Mrmph. It's more interesting with at least 3; that way you actually have to work together and do actual planning and coordination. With two, it doesn't feel like a team, it just feels like a guaranteed ally.