Agree 100% this is one of my main problems at the moment.

Some times I use it to make a unit with a lot more hitting power than the designer makes automatically.

Right, there are a few minor things you can do with the designer, but they are all "gimmes."  That's not how unit design is supposed to work.  Let me illustrate how it should work, with MOO2 as an example.

In Master of Orion 2, I would spend a long time in front of the ship design interface.  After all, how you outfitted your vessels had a huge impact on the outcome of a war.  Did I want to load my ships with one shot missile batteries for one big punch and risk losing out in battles that required long term sustainability?  Or should I give my ships smaller salvos but extra ammo, giving me that sustainability element but risk having them plucked out of the sky by point defense?  Should I use neutron guns to kill their onboard marines or a fusion cannon which gives me better accuracy?  Should I make them heavy mounts to add extra damage to capital ships or leave them standard to give me the option of firing on enemy missiles?  Should I give my ships heavy armor at extra cost or just build extra ships?  There were countless decisions like this to make and each one had bearing on your overall grand strategy throughout the game.  If your race thrived at ground combat, you could build a fleet that specilized at boarding and capturing ships.  If you had a race that could repair their ships quickly in combat, you could design a fleet of ships that piled on extra armor.  You might build a fleet that had nimble frigates, capable of zipping ahead and locking down enemy ships with tracter beams so that your larger vessels with oaffy, innaccurate heavy mount weapons could pour pools of plasma death onto the enemy with impunity.  The possibilities were endless.  Weapons had functions, not piled on, tedious percentages.  Every weapon you ever researched stayed useful throughout the entire game.  The "best strategy" changed with every new landscape of every new game.

What does Elemental offer in unit design that enhances the game?  Shiny new swords that you have to squint to see on the battle map that does X percent more damage than the slightly less shiny sword you had equipped your soldiers with before.

There is a lot to this post.

In addition, the worst thing with Elemental's unit design system is that all units look and feel more or less the same. All are human with more or less same weapons and abilities. It is just too realistic and down-to-Earth, kitchen-sink boring. Not enough flavor, fantasy, special abilities, different functions in the game. Already when the idea of designing only-human units this way was trumpeted out by FB on the forum way back I cringed and complained. As of today's version, it seems SD didn't find any solution to the drawbacks pointed out to them back then. If ever they were taken seriously. But why not copy the other great strategy games like MoM and AoW where these worked well? 

Maybe make weapon types like slashing and piercing be more obvious wouldn't hurt either.

As far as I can tell there are 3 damage types in the game, blunt, slashing and piercing.  These damage types need to be more distinct with obvious strengths and weakness.   From what it seems right now the big difference are

Blunt - does the most damage, slowest

Slashing- does medium damage, quickest

Piercing - does least amount of damage but better suited against armor

I'm not saying they should do what they did in Galciv2 (have a certain armor that affects a certain weapon).  However there just needs to be more obvious benefits/weaknesses to using certain weapons and armor rather then just cost and materials.

Maybe even adding in duel wielding along with 2 handed combat as an option (offhand weapon would do less damage of course and be limited to daggers and such making those weapons still useful).

Adding on with added unit combat abilities would go a long way in making real heavy choices when it comes to unit design.

well, yeah i can see you point.  i love the game, but there really isn't much in the way of choices beyond attack/def/cost balance.  i think they need to assign certain abilities to their weapons and armor. such as resistances to armor, damage types to weapons. i made a thread about getting polearm units to have first strike. add in a bunch more kits(like medic, and ranger kits).  stuff that makes the battles more about tactics than maximizing your defense bonus by picking the right tile to stand on and making sure you always get that first hit in.  i mean i like that stuff too, love the terrain bonuses.

since this isn't the beta i am not sure however if they will make such changes to the game.  here's hoping!

At the moment, there are only really two major decisions to make: "Melee or ranged?" and "How far are you willing to go to get up to 2.1 combat speed?".  Apart from that, every unit functions exactly the same as every other unit regardless of what equipment you give them.  It's going to wear thin in a hurry, and I don't think it's going to change as long as the game sticks to the "every unit is based on a peasant" design.

I'd way rather have a set of fixed unit types like Master of Magic than this "design anything you want except it doesn't actually matter" system.  I think it's possible to work out a compromise if the matter is given enough attention, though.  You could give swords, maces, and spears active and passive abilities that affect a lot more than just basic stats.  You could have multiple starting archtypes...like in addition to peasants, you could start with, say, a Berserker or Templar representing an individual who actually had some combat experience before being recruited.  They would still need to be equipped, but they'd have different base stats and stat multipliers, unique active and passive abilities, and of course a higher training time/cost.  And different factions could have access to different class types (differentiation between different factions of the same allegiance is something else that's currently lacking).  Way more monster types available to both the Kingdoms and Empires would help too, as long as they have their own distinct abilities.  Right now, spiders are functionally identical to human swordsmen and shrills are just mace-users, which is no fun.

The way damage, defense, and grouped soldiers are handled could all use an overhaul, too, but that's largely a separate issue.

If your idea of unit customization is the ability to change your units' hairstyle and clothing appearance, then yes, the customization of units in this game is satisfying.

However, if your ideas around customization extend more into actually affecting gameplay substantially, you'd see how this game's unit design options leave a lot to be desired.

As DragonRider682 put it,

All units must have a special ability. Special abilities should also be trainable in the unit designer. That would make both unit design and tactical battles more fun. As it stands right now, there really isnt much to do other than just pump up the attack value or maybe combat speed. The only units I control that have special abilities are summoned units and a demon unit that I managed to build towards the end. Both the special abilities were pretty bland to boot. 

Actually the only 2 types of abilities I've seen so far are deal x dmg to everyone, lose next attack, and a spider webbing someone. Thats it.

Same as Gal Civ 2, designing is more of a customization feature than changing actual gameplay.

I have been expressing similar concerns throughout the entire beta but no one really cared to listen. I speculated that Elemental game design was too spread out into too many different areas and not focusing on one single mechanic. My personal opinion would be to have eliminated tactical battles altogether and polish and make the rest of the game fun. Instead everything is watered down.

I also suggested making all the gameplay elements interact with one another. As you say what is the point of unit design if it is only fluff? What is the point of questing? These various gameplay mechanics don't interact and play well with each other. There were tons of feedback about how to make all these elements fit together and have meaning but not much was used.

For example I suggested getting rid of inns altogether or improve them. There was so much discussion on inns, magic, questing, but to me not much really changed from our feedback. I wish they kept the game actually more simple and made what work polished and fun.

The customization has its heart in the right place but as others mentioned, it really need to provide tactical variation to be interesting. Simply adding more and more powerful weapons and armor is just too boring. Fortunately, we have a world with magic, so a lot of stuff can be added along that principle.

The MOO2 ideas as some of the best, we need to have weapons or special abilities that work with some kind of theme. For example weapons that prevent counter-attacks, weapons that stop movement, weapons that reduce armor etc. One needs to be able to form an army that works together as a unit with some strategy.

For example, lets say that I equip a unit of mine with a weapon that does immense amounts of damage, but reduces defense also quite a lot. Obviously I don't want that unit to get hit, even with counter attacks. So perhaps I include another unit in my army that carries nets. This is an ability that when used on a unit, prevents them from moving or counter attacking for 1 turn. Or perhaps I use another unit which I've equipped with a lot of armor and given items which increase their combat speed. Then I attack a lot of times with it to spend their counter-attacks before bringing in my heavy hitter.

The current system, like any system that allows making your own combat units, like the MOO series, can only make sense if it allows you to built units with very diverse abilities. At the moment it is left lacking. Fortunately it seems that Stardock also wants to go that direction. Lets see how soon though.

I think part of this was the way that Space 4x games limit what you can load on a ship, this really makes you think if you want offense/defense or special abilities. Unfortunately EWOM doesn't have such limit. Any soldier can get any armor and any number of magic items. I think the unlimited magic items on a soldier is by mistake and it's meant to be limited. Once it is, and we also start to get some special abilities on armor and weapons then customization will start making more sense.

I beg to differ there in Galciv2 you had to worry about 3 types of weapons and 3 types of defences. You also had to balance out versatility (range, sensors, armor, group effect).  It's much more fleshed out but it was worked on for 3 years (if you include the expansions).

Right now the current system in Elemental is basically quality vs quantity.  The real choice I make is based on "should I use hordes of cheap low XP units which are faster to make" or should I go with "Hiigh quality fully decked out troops".

I mean technically you could just give a peasant the most powerful weapon you have and no armor (maybe a helmet), then build them en mass as a first attack unit (make sure they hit first).  No need to give XP bonus cause that makes them take longer to train, this allows you to pump out a huge amount of cheap conscript armies.

The other side of the spectrum involves really well trained and armored soldiers designed to take a beating as well as dish it out.

I guessthe 3rd type of soldier someone can make is a tower soldier.  One with lots of defence but poor offence abilities, designed to draw fire but I don't think that would be effective.

This combined with the soldier types like melee, range, magic basically means I do have options but I want more distinct differences between even weapons of the same type.  More kits and armor options (like chainmaiil giving better speed but plate offering more protection with slower movement).   Even abilites to make our own magical weapons like I make a sword with leech abilities that steals restores 1hp for hit or multiple enchantment for items.  Things like that could really spice up the unit designer.

Also just a pet peave - How come my banner isn't on my sheilds?  I loved in Galciv2 I could give all my ships flags or faction emblems, I want to give my horsemen a Banner that boost morale with my crest, or when they are armies we have a flag holder in the front.  Little touches like that go a long way.