You could actually translate that into "practical" terms. Consider it takes population to train soldiers.. so if 50 soldiers are defeated in battle, instead of simply having all 50 die and disappear, you could have 25 be dead and gone, and 25 merely "disabled" - i.e. able to return to the civilian population of their home city as a farmer or whatever, but unable to continue fighting due to a lost arm or leg. So it's only a partial loss, you lose the resources and training time invested into that soldier, but not the population spent on him. Not a huge difference from gameplay perspective, but I agree a nice touch that adds to immersion.

Just for clarification, I'm picturing this being part of the screen that pops up at the end of a battle. 25 soldiers killed, 25 soldiers disabled and retiring to civilian population of [City X].

Ooh and you could have the chance of disablement depend on the type of attack that kills a soldier - dragon's breath causes 100% fatalities, but getting hacked at with a sword disables half of its victims (just ruined the seriousness of this topic by picturing Monty Python's Black Knight).

I would love to see something like this! by chance have you played x-com, Magic? In that game soldiers have different names which you can change if you wish. if they get shot in battle but did not die they have to get medical attention for a certain amount of days before they can fight again. They can also become unconscious on the battlefield and need to be attended to right then and there or they will die of fatal wounds. 

Each soldier had different stats and would go up in rank as they got more kills. It was an ingenious way of attaching you to your soldiers and making them feel important. Brad has mentioned that x-com is being used as inspiration for the tactical battles and i just can't imagine it without these kinda things

I envision a battle where individual soldiers (or at least the units) each have different traits and can perform differently in a battle. Take for example, when raiding a village. You could move your spearmen in between the houses fighting the peasants for experience, and if the enemy had archers, the buildings would shield you from their arrows. However what if the enemy had fire arrows or fire mages? another layer of strategy could be keeping your spearmen away from the straw huts that will quickly go up in flames because you might lose unnecessary troops and instead vouching for the protection of the small stone wall in that one peasants back yard... maybe your great general got knocked off his horse by an enemy's fire arrow and broke his leg but still lived. He might not be able to fight anymore but Id also love to see an option where that general can be promoted to a seat where his skills can still be used, but thats for a different topic

I think vulnerability was a verry important aspect of x-com. It made the battles actually count and made you balance your decisions rather than just rush into a battle because you know you've got the stronger force. More than anything, i hope that's what they take into account for Elemental.

One tactic used in combat through the ages is intentional wounding.  To wear down your economy, I intentionally injure-and-not-kill, so that you have to take care of those soldiers.

In elemental, I'd imagine it working like this:  wounded soldiers still cost you the same upkeep.  They go into a grand total of wounded soldiers, of which a certain percentage of them are healed each turn, and a certain percentage die.  These percentages could then be effected by technology.

Yeah, something simple like that would be nice. It's just depressing when everyone dies. ALL the time. To a rediculous extent.

Actually, this feature would be very appreciated. I remember running into a problem with Rome: Total War where the population drafted into the military would practically never spring back. Eventually, the cities would end up becoming depopulated. Since Elemental seemse to be using the same system, I think this concept would give some insurance against losing huge populations in a single ill-fated battle.

Dominions almost does what I want it to do. I enjoy that level of detail although I don't really expect it from Elemental. It's a pet peeve of mine that the only escape from the military seems to be death.

Yeah, I forgot about X-Com. I appreciated X-Com and how nervous it made me during a battle, because those dudes mattered to me. Turned based combat has always been pretty hardcore. Unfortunately, I think we've got too many dudes to keep track of individual abilities and stuff, but I like knowing the guy in a particular regiment who got the most kills, and what his name is. It does give me someone to care about in a battle and maybe even a candidate for a battlefield promotion.

I think retiring crippled heroes and generals to cities is a good idea. Very fantasyish. That sort of detail makes me fall in love with games.

I like the idea, actually, but I wouldn't want to use it strictly for immersion.  As was mentioned by others, some should be merely wounded on the battlefield and recover to fight another day and other's might be able to return to the population if they are permanently maimed, but still able to add productivity.

It would be a neat system to have. Making it as complicates as you would like would probably not be practical. But there is no reason why you could not recycle disabled veterans into civilians again. The only distinction is that you can't recruit them a second time.

Assigning a separate injury to each one is something of a pipe dream in a game of this scale.

I don't really care about combat, but in a game with EWOM's economic system this becomes especially relevant. Why? Becuase the soldiers you produce actually come out of your tax-paying population, and having them not die and go back to the farm and pay taxes again will seriously affect your income level. I'm all for it, as long as those bothersome RNGs don't get too overpowered.

Yea, we probably will have too many units to do something individual... very sad  but maybe we can at least see the stats of the commander of an individual unit or just the units themselves could have different stats based on their training, i do like that idea. 

I think real life figures are that only 20% of the loses would be really dead people, the rest would be injuries, desertions, and so on.

I agree that for the base game this x-com like model will not work.

I am hopeful that the modding support in the game would be enough though to create a spin off tactical game that did focus on small squad fights.

Elemental: Enemy Unknown

In my mind I picture a setup where the cities are fixed and you are playing a squad of "special ops" units, perhaps assassins or the like. The focus of the mod would be on these small unit fights as they try to infiltrate rival cities (Basically this is a world after a normal game of elemental where one civ has taken over and war is no more, but internal conflict between houses or merchants still exists). The tech tree would be far different and the way you produced units would also change. In such a mod you could really focus on things like injuries and full unit stats.

I will need to see the full tactical battle design and mod support before I put too much effort into this, but I think it could be a lot of fun.