tactical combats are trivial

I would even prefer RTS option to this, I thought this was supposed to be like MoM combat, whit this setup flying units will be nearly invincible.

well if stardock decided for turns now is surely too late to change

lets focus on what stardock chooose to improve it

right now the first games i did i sorta missed the autoresolve lol  ( yes i know i can still autoresolve but thats not the point)

b4 a big spider or wolf was challenging now its just meat

also apparently some combat stat got buffed, it seems melee units deal a lot more dmg                                                                                                                                   

well ok i give up carrodus is unplayable

i mean 46 attack? where did that come from?

better try some casters 

My initial impression of tactical battles is not good at all,and not only from a visual standpoint.

Indeed... so I'm assuming that the implimentation in 3B is just the skeleton of tactical battles to come.  clearly some more depth is needed to make the battles compelling and fun.

Here, in no particular order, are some of my favorite features from other tactical combat games that i think could be implemented in Elemental

* Age of Wonders:  The whole system was pretty good -- in particular, I liked the way that the turn was broken up so that you could either attack 3 times, move a lot and not attack, or move a little and attack once or twice

* Heroes 3/5; King's Bounty:  Obviously stacks have their own problems, but even with stacks, the strike & counterstrike system is pretty solid, and magic has a nice variety buffs & debuffs, direct damage, aoe's, and traps.  

In both AoW and HoMM/KB: Something i really want to point out though is that almost every unit other than the basic goons have a couple special abilities either activated or passive, like Whirlwind attack, Charge, Fire arrow, etc.

* Total War:  RTS of course, so not everything applies, but there's a pretty compelling underlying tactical system based on maneuver and zone of control.  You have your line infantry (whether men at arms, hastatii, musketmen ...) who can pin the enemy down for some time, and then you have your guys who deal lots of damage when stationary but are fragile (archers, howitzers...).  Then you get a couple of ways to disrupt the battle lines to your own advantage: assault (cataphracts, grenadiers..) or maneuver (horse archers, cavalry).  Toss in a few activated special abilities like Testudo and Phalanx, and then mix in units that break the paradigm in interesting ways (like dragoons)

* Battle for Wesnoth: hex, turn based system also based on zone of control -- good example of how interesting gameplay can emerge from a very simple system.  interface is clunky though.

* Starcraft:  the hard counter (marines are great, aoe kills marines, assassins kill aoe; melee beats missle if they can catch them) was pretty good at encouraging combined arms

these are the reallly must things

The scale of the maps is much larger in AOW and Wesnoth and so appear more immersive.

The use of hexes makes battle gameplay seem more natural. I've always struggled with the math of units moving through the diagonal. Hexes are also a much better model for zones of control etc.

Each square in Elemental takes up a lot of space in the map and looks funny with only a single unit in it. HOMM and KB abstracted this by only showing a single unit to represent a group. I don't think this is a great solution either but at the moment it just looks wrong.

The movement allowance of only one or two squares means that difficult terrain cannot be modelled.

For me, it is looking way too much like it has just been ported across from Galactic Civilisations and making it try to fit that model.

Ability's what I think would be cool is if our units had ability's like dragons have fire breathing and such, am I missing this or something because I have a red dragon, and all it does is hit with its tail, would also be cool if you could fortify a square and things like this. and if we had different tactical maps inside buildings and such, but maybe thats a mod thing or something.

I actually really like the turn-based combat, there are quiet enough RTS's out there. but I wish there was more depth in combat, however this is just the first time I've seen it, I like it I just wish there were more maps, and some inside structures when doing quests, and also different monsters have different ability's and It would be cool if you could assign combat skills to the units you design and stuff., I find RTS kind of Low-brow, they require no strategy, just 100% zerging. In Turn-based combat you have to think, about terrain penalty's, unit ability's, etc.. Army size doesn't always matter if you know how to play your team. RTS you just find the cheapest, quickest unit to build, over produce them, then attack and the battle is over in seconds. so if you like RTS you should probably stick to Auto-resolving combat, since its basically the samething

The AoW-SM tactical battle system is the best in genre right now. [Fantasy TBS] I am pretty sure that EWoM's tact. battles will be at least as good and tactical later on...lot of stuff must be improved in EWoM's battle system, but as we all know, the devs are decent, so I am not worried.

I'm thinking that the tactical battles will be much better, since this is the initial release of them, and I heard him mention about a tactical battle he setup inside a temple, so at least I know it will not always be a Stratego like field and I'm hoping that we will have more skills and such for the tactical battles as time goes on, 

Brad has posted addressing many of these issues.

https://forums.elementalgame.com/388211

Hit you in the face... run away! Hit you in the face... run away!

Agree with the most the above. I was expecting something similar to the TW games. Even the very first tactical battle in Rome:TW has a far grander feel than anything I've seen in Elemental. 

How well is the system going to scale? Will we ever be able to have epic battles, or will these take place as as series of small, uninspiring skirmishes between 10s of men on each side?

I'm surprised that GamesWorkshop's Warhammer hasn't had more of an influence.

Completely agree here. But Elemental is on the right track.  This is the beta and I have read that the devs are going to improve tactical combat. So we shall see.