An interior? That is pure double rainbow!

Be afraid, be very afraid.....  love it!!!

LOL at the mouseover description.

That is fricking awesome!

Looking great! Bodes well for modding support.

some caves have earatating consequences

I like the idea of not every tactical battle being basically the same 20 x 20 square tile map like EWOM.  Hope that's what we're seeing here... some crazy variety in the tactical battle maps.

I'm 99% sure that this has been confirmed as not being in. It's my impression that the work needed to the engine to handle heights would be substantial at least, and more likely prohibitive.

Ya even getting maps with some impassable tiles, and that actually reflect where your fighting, is a big move forward.  I'm pretty confident combat will be fairly fun from the journals I have seen so far. In a perfect world their would be more dynamic tiles such as mud and hills but I am happy with what we have. Since their is a mud tile spell and since stat boosting tiles existed in WoM it might be possible to mod them in though.

Uh... So you're saying "it's often just fluff, and that's bad" and then saying "I don't need crunch". So what the hell do you want?

 

Look at the post again. He wants some super basic stuff. It's not a new dimension, it's a small addition that, together with a lot more, could make tactical battles worth caring about. As far as reach weapons, well, we should have some concept of that already. That we don't just reveals how bland tactical battles really are.

The two examples that came immediately to mind that do this pretty well are Lords of Magic and Final Fantasy Tactics. The latter is isometric, and has pretty much exactly what Climber describes. It works very well. Lords of Magic has deformed terrain, with non-incremental elevation. Speed on a slope is decreased, and you get combat bonuses for being elevated. City walls also use this; they have stairs in the back for defending missile units to ascend but otherwise can't be scaled normally, and thus you must use flying or missile units to clear the walls, or destroy the gate and go up the stairs. That's a lot simpler than a good siege system in Elemental should be, but it illustrates the value of height well enough.

If you say 'height differences is meaningless' to you, you really miss the point.    Try 'Final Fantasy Tactics' or the Disgea Series, play some FPS, or ask why snipers like tall buildings, this may tell you why height provide more tactical option/variety.   It will make the customizing units more meaningful, initial positioning more meaningful.  How about ability to attack from 1 tile behind (if at the same height) with long spears?  

I have not asking for many levels of height level that makes it look Minecraft.  I just ask for a minimal of 3.  The level B acts as the stairs to your own castle in a tactical map.  I don't mind having 4 levels (or even more), but the utility of having 4+ is less than the first 3.   3 or 4 is really enough for our purpose, but programming wise it should not be much difference to Stardock once it exceed 1 level.

In another screenshot, I see that graphics of having different height levels is a non-issue for FE.  The gfx engine support it.

The rules governing height should be easy for any one to grasp, yet providing way more depth of play.   The programming of rules should not be hard for SD to implement.  It is the design of rules/change of units/change of balance that require their resources/time.  And then the AI.

AI need to understand these rules.  They need to have good pathing code.  They need to have an understanding of 'soft' choke points due to the implementation of height (we now already has 'hard' choke points as indicated in OP's map).  Some spots are more valuable than others.  Some unit should go to high places.  Will height really give Frogboy an AI challenge?  I doubt that.

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Put it another way, what aspect of FE tactical combat we currently know really excites you?  

The initiative system? Really?  The obstacles here and there? Really?

I've played plenty of FFT and Disgaea. They have a battle system completely built around height differences. They are both games that revolve completely around the tactical battles. If you say those kinds of systems are easy to implement, you are out of your mind. Both games use custom made unique tactical battle maps that are designed with very specific battles in mind. You can't just take the system from those games and slap it on another game with random encounters and a wide variety of units and think it'll magically work.

I never found myself thinking "man FFT and Disgaea are really good games because they have height differences!". It's not a requirement for a good tactical battle system.

You also really need to understand that it requires a lot more than you think to implement your ideas. Requiring the AI to do fast pathfinding, line of sight calculations and proper decision making based on those variables is a crazy challenge. To give some perspective, Forgboy mentioned that having a line of sight system in tactical battle might be too much for the AI to handle properly.

I believe you're confusing the AI in games like FFT or Disgaea as good enough for FE. The problem is that in FE your opponents have a level playing field with you. In games like FFT and Disgaea the developers give huge handicaps to the AI to make the game interesting. If at any point you would switch sides with the AI in those games, you would probably trounce the AI controlled player characters easily. Writing truly good AI is something that's done in very few games.