I thought this idea sounds fun. In particular, I often feel that victorious units gather personality over time, and it would be nice if the game reinforced that. The personality wouldn't need to be super-powerful, but something to make the unit a little more distinctive.

I guess it's another way of viewing the medals system suggested by others earlier -- experience gives you bonuses specific to what you did.

I'll restate the importance of

Morale

Endurance

Flanking

    there could be a general/leader specific rally call that increases nearby morale by 50%, with a slow recharge rate (will only go up to 150%, but that extra 50% should have worn off by the time a skill recharges, unless its some superhigh end rally call)

    also, a larger army on ALL horseback will strike fear into an army of footmen, even if they have specials like seige equipment. In the Rome vs Atilla battle (attila the Hun, used only horses) at least the big one ... the only way Rome was able to fight to a draw was because the commander kept his army from going into full route at key points in the battle, and also he tried to defend against their flanking as much as possible. It was ultimately a roman "victory" because the Horde needed to keep pillaging and raiding in order to keep fighting. They had no supply lines, ect, so their strategy was to keep moving forward from victory to victory. Actually creating a tie was a serious indentation to the Hun war-strategy, and this particular campaign came to an end for the huns, and they more or less "went home." Of course, later the huns took more of the Roman empire (400s AD) and eventually other groups of barbarians, that had migrated west out of fear of the huns, sacked Rome herself and conquered the Italian peninsula.

These barbarians eventually turned into our modern Europeans, but it took alot of time to reclaim the lost technology. And when Genghis Khan arrived, he was able to cause alot of damage up until his death. Had he not gotten sick, its possible he would of conquered all of Europe. And the Mongols (khan) started all the way in Mongolia ... so they enjoyed a much more successful blitzkreig than the Panzer/Stuka divisions could of dreamed of. Incidentally, the Nation that captured Genghis Khan when he was a child (some asian province south/south west of mongolia) was wiped off the face of the earth once Genghis united all of mongolia.

I completely agree with you. Making tactical combat into, basically, a statistical combat simulation is the way to go. It solves so many problems, does not require an endless list of numbers for each unit, and results in an intuitive, and yet very deep and complex combat system. The morale system adds an entire extra dimension to combat and can be a lot of fun to play with; plus it allows players to utilize strategies that make sense intuitively without having to add in all sorts of specific artificial mechanics for it. It also allows another dimension of strategy - if you don't think you can win by brute force, maybe it'd be worth trying a strategy designed to break your opponent's morale before you're completely overrun. For example, if you manage to take out a powerful hero/creature/general/whatever early on in the battle, your own troops might gain morale (Maybe we can win after all!), while your opponents might lose heart (Maybe this won't be easy like we thought it would be...).

Not to mention that TW-like combat is visually stunning and makes for a very visceral experience. And I think it'd be even more amazing in Elemental with magic, and the occasional scary beast/monster/whatever. Months ago Brad told us that the plan was to have battles that feel like the Battle of the Five Armies in the Hobbit. Quite frankly, the only combat system I've seen in which I can imagine that being possible is in some variant of TW-style combat.

I like AIAndy's suggestion that pressing the Pause button would only pause the game at specific time.  It can make pausible RT mechanism feels like it is more a Turn Based tactical combat (TC).  When gamer pause the TC, units keep doing their own business until ALL of them become free & become avaliable for gamer to issue commands; this will become similar to the beginning of the next turn as in traditional turn-based TC.   If gamer does not pause this turn, the game AI will issue new command on behalf the gamer this turn; the animation will then start as the next turn begins.

Finally, there must be an option to remove TC combat animation.  I hate watching the same fighting animation repeatly when my Dragon is toasting enemy the 100th times.  TW animation has great visual for sure, but I lost interest to the game quickly because I am forced to watch the animation.  Maybe the better option is "Only watch the same TC combat animation X times", so I can see the great work the artists have done but do not bore me with it.

To me, TC must be short in length. Under 12 turns, under 10 minutes at most, as there will be many TC battles per game turn.

What would you prefer? Having the Dragon and troops just stand there, with troops randomly dying around it? The animations are tied to the actions of the troops, so when they are shown attacking, that is when they actually attack. I honestly don't see any resolution of this 'problem' besides auto-combat. If you "Only watch the same TC combat animation X times," what would you watch after that? If you mean after X times the combat ends or something, well that wouldn't make any sense...

This is the first completely disappointing update I've seen.  It moved Elemental from "Must-Buy" to "Wait-And-See".

For the record, I'd like to see a combat model similar in capability to that of Dominions.

Well if the game is run in real-time, then skipping animations would break combat. Abilities/attacks and actions in general that take a long time to display graphically would need to be proportionately powerful, otherwise the long delay wouldn't be worthwhile. Therefore, if your dragon's firebreath for example happens instantly instead of delayed as intended, things wouldn't work out so well. If nothing else is happening, then it wouldn't matter, but if other squads are engaged, moving, or doing anything besides standing there like rocks then it just wouldn't work.

If the game is turn-based, and each squad/unit acts on its own personal turn (and I'm hoping this will not be the case!) then I'd agree with you. Long animations in turn-based combat do tend to get old after a while, especially in those quickie battles that you just want to get over with.

The solution to this problem in real-time combat of any sort is fast-forward. Give us many combat speeds, always accessible, from pause to somewhere between 5-10x speed! Fast-forward is especially useful in the beginning of combat (even in big battles!): once your troops are in position, it can (in TW at least) still take 10-20 seconds, sometimes more, for your troops to actually get within range of the enemy. There is no good reason to make us actually wait out those 10-20 seconds when we could turn it into 2 seconds without changing anything but display speed. But yeah... fast-forward is a necessity if the combat is actually real-time.

Don't worry, I am pretty sure that the devs won't release the game with a dumbed down combat system. If I am wrong, and it will be way too "simple" for the hardcore strategy gamers....well...let's just say that modding must be very powerful in order to satisfy those customers.. IE. No magical or even physical [blunt,piercing,slashing] dmg types? Fine, but allow us to mod them in. You got the picture.

I believe I share many of the concerned sentiments of other posters. There is nothing wrong with old school but we should be clear just how old school it should be. Simply having attack/defence/hp and one form of damage is even older than PC gaming. There should at least be-

Damage types:

Slashing- Swords etc

Piercing- Arrows, bolts, Spears etc

Blunt- Maces, clubs, etc

Even the original Age of Empires had a damage differences between melee and ranged. I hope Elemental won't give us a complex economic model and then give us combat more basic than even MoM.

nah, just blunt and piercing ... and even then they don't have to be "different" damage types ... but a blunt weapon will be designed to attack Armor Defense, and a Piercing weapon (arrows, swords) will be designed to attack SKILL defense.

Cause like ... we should have Weapon Attk/ Armor Defense seperate from Skill Attk/ Skill Defense, and upon levelling up you can choose to raise either skill attk/ skill Def, or something completely different.

Also, morale and endurance should like, automatically increase upon level up, and an option should be available to focus EVEN MORE morale or endurance into your level up.

I didn't exactly state that I explicitly wanted different damage types. I merely wish for weapons to have their own special abilities, perhaps even as a bonus vs different types of enemy armor ... or simply bonuses based on what type of armor you choose to wear. For instance, wearing leather/light armor could greatly increase the parry bonus of a short-sword or rapier.

As for blunt vs pierce, I merely think Axes, Hammers, Maces should somwhat ignore armor defense, while swords, spears, and arrows should somewhat ignore skill defense. The amount of skill defense a sword, spear, or arrow would ignore would be based upon the attacker's attack skill, perhaps combined with the quality of the weapon (or at least the "speed" of the weapon)- like how aerodynamic the arrow is, or how wieldy (light) the sword is. AKA mithil over Iron, or shortsword over longsword. Although longsword has the advantage of greater damage ....

say longsword could be 2-10, while a heavy axe is 1-12, a short sword is 3-8, and a hammer is 3-6 (but ignores armor more-so), while a mace is 1-8 (also ignores armor mor-so)

Im just saying we need a little variety in our weapons other than how much they increase the attack stat. Also, I think heavy armors should give a slight penalty to defense skill, while light armors give a bonus to defense skill, so there is some-what of a choice between High Armor, low skill defense, or Low Armor, high skill defense. High Skill would be good fighting against people wielding large "smash" weapons like hammers/mace, while High Armor would be a good protection against arrows/swords.

Shields would also be good against arrows, so there are always hybrids (shields are probably BEST strat vs arrows, or at least should be ... as well as shield based formations)

Well, that was insightful.