It probably won't be found too lacking in my opinion.  From what I know of Stardock and it's previous games, if they are going to implement a feature such as tactical battles, they would make sure that it actually has some substance.  Otherwise, they would probably not even waste the resources and just have combat done in a far more abstract way (like the planet invasions in galciv 2).  I don't expect it to be at the level of say Total War, but I think it will have some substance.

Personally, I would be pretty content with a system similar to Dominions 3 only with a bit more umph, and more importantly, the ability to control units (having to prescript everything, can get tedious, and is very limiting, hated shooting those fireballs right in the middle of my own troops, argh).

I am also worried.  This part that worries me is the real-time stuff.  I loved MOM's tactical battles.  I really want completely turn based battles to be at least an option.  It does seem like they are putting more weight on the strategic map then the tactical map.

A real time battle with pause is just like a turn based game. It just fasten it. Remember, you can pause. So you can't get a brain-ache.

From what I've read, the battles won't really be real-time.  They're more like simultaneous turns.  You queue up your orders, and your opponent queues up theirs.  Neither set of orders are actually executed as you issue them, they're just noted by the game.  Then the game executes both sets of orders simultaneously.  You can then pause, issue new orders, and so forth.

If you look at the combat screen shots, the positioning of units is grid-based.  A true real-time game wouldn't really work well on a grid-based system, so it appears it will still be a "This unit can move 3 spaces per turn" affair.  It's just that:

1) Both sides' orders are executed simultaneously, which gives it a more realistic and fluid feel.  Your units aren't running around doing things while your opponent's are sitting their frozen, just watching.

2) You can issue orders that will take more than one turn to execute, so you don't have to stop and issue orders each turn, you can just let the turns tick by until the time comes that you want to issue new orders, or alter the current ones.

At least that's my (completely uninformed) guess.

Ya, from what I can tell from the screen shots, the tacticle battles will be ateast partially turn based. What Im worried about is a similar situation you get in playing the Total War games. Sometimes you just don't want to play the battles. Either you know you would win, but auto-resolving gives unrealistic results, so you feel forced to play every battle. This happens especially in Rome in trying to auto-resolve when fighting against a roman faction as a non roman faction. I don't know if anyone else experienced this but if you tried to attack a roman family faction as a non roman and Auto resolve you would loose a CRAP load of troops...even if you would just wipe them out playing them yourself. It's like the computer weighted the roman units SO much more in it's calculations. Thus everytime you fight romans as non-romans you are forced to play the battle or lose an unreasonable number of troops. - Also in Medieval 2 if you had a large army you could auto-resolve seiges and barley lose any troops, which is also unrealistic. You could often easily wipe out a 800 man army or more if they are in a city just by auto resolving, at very lost cost to yourself.

So, the tacticle battles will be great if Stardock does two things.(In my opinion)

1. Make the battles fast enough so they don't slow down the pace of the game.(but long enough to be enjoyable)

2. Balance the auto-resolve sytem so people will A. Never feel forced to play a tacticle battle and B. Nevel feel like it would be better to auto-resolve most of the time.

I agree that the AI is quite predictable, and diplomacy is non-existent(...though I suppose that's why it's called Total war lol). Diplomacy is the most disapointing thing in the game for sure. Alliance were impossible to maintain, and your allies hardly ever help you. LoL does any one remeber in the earier patches of Rome that almost every time a nation was going to attack you, they would get a trade agreement from you a few turns before...like that was going to trick you into moving all your troops away form them LOL. Also the Computer controlled nations tend to gang up on the player. Thats one thing I loved about GalCiv2, the AI didn't differentiate the player from the other computer controled races.

-I have full confidence in Stardock though. I hope they come up with some awesome tacticle battles!

I agree 100 percent.

@Iwarmonger

You make it sound like you understand what the phrase continuous turns means.  If so, please clarify.  I'm afraid I really don't.

I totally disagree. Before going further I must say I prefer turn based to real time. But I also like real time. The problem with real time is you can't think of everything. But with pause you can. And I also like long battles. But you can have the same battles in a less time.

With continuous turns you still think about each move, but you don't have the perfect accuracy you have with turn based. And turn based are often just chess with a random factor. No place to "Arg i've gone too far" or things like that (unless you're too lazy to count hex and learn the weaknesses/defences of your enemy).

Why would you have to give 2 or 3 times the same order to a unit that is a bit far away from the heat of battle when you can just give the order once and let real time do the rest for you? When you're in need of thinking just pause.

Anyway I may be wrong, and so do you because we just don't have enough information about the tactical battles

I liked the one screen shot we saw of a battle scene. Maybe I will look at that again, and see if there is any information to be gleaned from it.

I'm sure I don't know enough yet to even begin being worried (or stoked). If things end up working like the video Shadowgandor linked, I won't worry, I'll just hope that auto-resolve is OK. That is *way* too much mousework for me to enjoy for a tactical engagement.

And the demo makes me think that, pause buttons aside, the mode is too close to RTS because it would leave me feeling like the computer is pusing me, not me pushing the computer. (I'm thinking from a single-player POV here b/c I've not yet enjoyed any multiplayer stuff and am not sure I'll get into that side of Elemental.)

But what if there's an option for the game to auto-pause after every turn?  Perhaps it's best not to think of it as pausing at all.

1) Issue commands to your units.

2) Push the "Next Turn" button and watch them get executed (along with the commands your opponent issued).

3) Once the turn is done, you can then issue the next turn's orders.

The only difference between this and MoM would be that the orders get executed simultaneously.

I can't seem to find that screenshot of the grids in the tactical combat anywhere.  Perhaps they pulled it?