Shouldn't lack of animation or graphics make the way enemies are in a line even more of a non-issue? You can just imagine the one in front just making sure to move in front of you whenever you attack while others mill around vaguely somewhere behind.
No. Graphics and animations are a very effective way to streamline the player's thoughts and responses in a specific direction, and build immersion. And when they fail at that, they can serve as a source of mockery instead, making memeable material and providing enjoyment that way.
Text-based material has to rely on actual content instead, and unless you already have an image of what it would look like, each one's take is gonna be different. There is a difference between allowing player to construct their own image and requiring a player to construct an image to justify your design decisions.
The funny thing is, the way you visualized it would actually be a valid way to construct it, but you should still make it clear to the player what is going on. And then the code spirits would still be crying out for some enemies to not care about such things, while for others to rely on them, since it would also diversity the enemies and give them flavor.
The advantage of a text-based combat system is that such changes are actually easy to achieve compared to using animations. A change of a couple lines of code to give an enemy a guardian skill as opposed to new artwork et cetera.
Point is, a congo line is an objectively inferior way to do distance if you care about making tactical decisions. Positioning is an easy way to increase tactical complexity, even if it is easy to make it cheese fest if you make it wrong.
To make it clear, I did not write all that because I care so much about positioning. I did however feel that your point was legitimate and deserved a serious response.
btw DryadDev. I assume you noticed I edited my earlier posts shortly after posting them. Not demanding a response, just giving you a heads up.