Continous turns are just that.  Turns that are taken simultaniously and continuously until one pauses.  Once you pause you can issue orders.  It is an unusual concept but not unheard of.  If you play paradox games, those run in continous time, not real time.  A bit different from continous turn based, but somewhat similar.  I think you'll see when it comes out that continous turn based tactical battles will be a perfectly all right system once they get things hammered down.

Do you know that when you pause you have as much time as you need ?

I still think "we don't know enough" is the most important point so far. I can imagine some pretty different situations with a Pause button, some of which would be OK and others of which would leave me wondering if I'd bought some RTS thing by mistake. The last RTS thing I played much was Starcraft. I bought one of the holiday multipacks, got into the looks & story of the game, browbeat my way into learning how to get through it, and stopped. Never touched it since I understood the basic win mechanics because the click overhead was just insane for a player with my tastes.

I want to spend my clicks on looking at the details of a massive strategic map, the major nodes on that map, my infrastructure, the diplomatic context, and making the big-picture decisions. I have little doubt I'll get great satisfaction out of the money I've spent on my pre-order. But I'm pretty sure that whether there's long-term replayability for me, like GC2 has provided, will be heavily influenced by how much bother the tactical layer *requires*. I love optional complexity everywhere, but just like the folks who don't want to be bothered micromanaging their logistics, I don't want to be required to click hard and fast for several minutes every time I want to send units into battle. A pause button won't be much help for me there if battle success still depends on watching live animation and figuring out when you need to pause and change orders.

That said, Stardock's work on GC2 shows a strong devotion to flexibility and options (that game really does appeal to a ludicrous range of play styles in our little TBS niche). So, that plus "we don't know enough" means I'm not worried.

I have played most strategy games on the market since the times of civilisation 1 and dune 2 and always enjoyed turn based more than real time, although i can see appeal of both.

The major negative points in RTS/ positive in TBS for me:

- TBS it is usual to have truly different and valuable units with different experience and equipment.

- rts: mostly identical units, one marine in Starcraft is identical to another, no levels, equipment or something else to differentiate them. (yes i know there are some exceptions like act of war or LotR RTS, still units are usually too similar and too few in variety)

               - shouldn't happen in elemental with all the customisation we are already aware of

-tbs allow for far more strategical thought. You really feel your strategy and not your fast moving finger make the difference

-rts are too twitchy. you were busy on the other side of the map for two minutes? too bad, kiss your 36 zealots good bye.

               -can be done much better: example sose and the holy pause button is your friend in elemental, also featured in aftermath, aftershock, afterlight series of games, which UI i quite liked.

-rts rushing.

               -since we do not have any base building in rts part it is a non issue.

-rts bigger stack of uber unit wins

                -since we do not have any base building in rts part it would be an issue in rts or tbs tactical battles.

positive sides of rts:

-fluid game flow

          -just play a late mission of battle isle, panzer general or fantasy general in under half an hour. i dare you. Then try to convince me it was less stressful than any late level of starcraft. I doubt you could. Now imagine a late game in elemental with thousands of units. Still want to play it strictly turnbased? i do not.

-less micromanagement

           -i want to move these twelve infantry units to the other side of the map. they have movement 2.                               The other side is 25 hexes away. Oh Joy. Who else remembers the terror missions on cruiser ships from "Terror from the deep"? Funny? I think not.

the list is not complete by any means, but i hope i made it clear that neither tbs nor rts is the holy grail of tactical combat.

Now my personal favourite of all strategical games i played and i doubt someone will be able to predict it:

-drums-

kessen 2

Now the game had its faults, but this is rts combat done right. The units were large and did not die in seconds, you had enough time to reinforce and maneuver. Strategical mind was in highest demand: play your cards right and you are the clear winner, make some mistakes and you are done for, nothing about it twitchy. The officers and their skills were very important and could and would often be decisive to engagements. Units were varied and truly different, also if they were fleeing from battle they were not dead, i did not need to be overly protective about my precious experienced battalions, they would miss on exp and be weak but not dead if they were defeated in battle.

It would be a good idea to look at this game for elements usable with Elementals WoM.

Tenchifew, check out the Kohan games, I bet you'd like them.

@tenchifew: those are some rather subjective points with which one could easily disprove and seem to be a rather stereotypical view of RTS gaming to be honest..

In any case, having looked at the screenshot over at gamespy, i would dare to say that combat as well looks turnbased, where i to be honest had hoped for some real time as it tends to make things a bit more.. visceral   and generally more interesting. Not that i mind turnbased combat, far from it, but when they mention Total war, i really can't help but think of the huge battles one could have there, and how they are resolved in real time..

Albeit i hope they go for some slightly more interesting sieges than in total war.. Never quite liked those.

I just want to add, to this thread, quoted from another thread, an utter necessity when it comes to the combat system;

Just my 2 cents, as someone who is overall looking forward to this game very much, tactical combat is the one thing that worries me, but for different reasons than are expressed in much of this thread.

To start with, I like the tactical combat in Medieval 2: Total War.  It's real-time, but things go slow enough that you can react and give orders in a "natural" state of feeling.  I.e., it's not a "twitch" game like Starcraft, Warcraft, etc.  You can also pause it at any time, although I very rarely do so.  One of the things I love about it is that it really does a fine job to create just a fun level of tactical depth.  Playing the game, you can really appreciate the tactical value of holding a bridge over a river, or the walls of a castle.  The AI could have stood some improvement in some of those situations, but that can ALWAYS be said for AI.

Something that was frequently commented on in the Total War forums was how neat it would be to see a Middle Earth: Total War, thus creating the great battles depicted in the Lord of the Rings movies.  The Total War engine is well suited to depicting such battles, and lots of folks salivated at that idea.

Stardock has beaten them to it.

Stardock has proven themselves an absolute--perhaps THE absolute--leader in strategic depth.  Certainly one of the top three, between themselves, Paradox, and Firaxis.  In terms of style, GalCiv competes most directly with Civ 4, and stands quite well in the comparison.  GalCiv hands-down has the better AI, which is probably the most important single factor.  Based on Stardock's success in the GalCiv series, and my interest in a good, deep fantasy 4x strategy game, I am looking forward to Elemental.

What concerns me about the tactical combat mechanism, however, is that that's an area where Total War's success has been due in part to its graphics engine.  I mean, it's fun setting up the troops and then giving some orders and knowing that you've properly used your terrain advantage, but it all becomes really rewarding when you zoom in on that hail of arrows raining down from your castle walls onto the advancing spearmen, or seeing two units of cavalry lower their lances and execute a perfect pincer charge, leading to bodies flying and the flashing-white flag of panic from the pincered units.

And that's one thing that I don't expect Stardock to give me, cutting edge graphics.  Civ 4 still looks better than Twilight of the Arnor.  And Medieval 2: Total War looks a heck of a lot better than Civ 4.  And Medieval 2: Total War is going to be pushed to yesteryear's graphics club come the release of Empire: Total War.  And the reality is, if you want to suck me in to the middle of an awesome tactical battle a la Lord of the Rings, you're gonna need a graphics engine that can achieve that.  And that's a brutal competition that I've always preferred to see Stardock stay out of.

At the same time, GalCiv has the most completely abstract level of tactical combat in existence.  Abstracting the military defense capability of a planet to its population count is abstract beyond abstract--WAY beyond Civ 4 in that regard.  The goal here, then, is to make a 180 degree reversal of that.  That's an ambitious goal.

Overall, I'm 100% looking forward to the game, but this is the area that I'll be watching most carefully, out of some degree of concern.

Sounds like a wireless keyboard would be a worthwhile investment for you!  While a well-developed game shouldn't require the keyboard, I do find that using the keyboard removes or speeds up a lot of the more tedious steps.

Solam is right! 4x strategy is TBS. I've tried some "4x games" flirting with RTS, but never for more then 5 min before getting bored.

GalCiv2, HOMM3/4 and Civilization 4 on the other hand are games I've been playing for years, and will be playing for years to come. True quality!

(I admit I love the Paradox games too, with the Universalis-engine, but they aren't true RTS, neither true 4x.....)

I think there are pluses and minuses to each way of doing things. I know it is out of genera here, but if you look at final fantasy 12's battle system vs all the other ones, it makes an interesting change in the feeling of how you are playing.

In 12, the combat ceases to become turn based, meaning I do not pick which spell to cast on which guy in what order. Instead, I control my main guy, and set up a series of actions for my companions to partake. At any point I can pause a battle, and issues specific orders to any unit and take control of who ever I want. But generally you only did this when you got into trouble and you need to micromanage things.

The result was that I was running around with what I thought was a very well oiled killing machine, but at the end of the day, I didn't really get a great picture of who was doing what. When you select each person, watch their attack animation, watch the damage they do, and damage they take, you get to really know your units personally. When they they are moving in a pausable real time setting, you really don't get to know your units. Generally, if you want to take the appoach of playing a continuious game in a turn based setting, it is a pita and really does make it a lot longer then if the game had been created from the start with a turn based setting in mind.

A game that really makes turn based combat go "fast" in my opinion is fire emblem. There are a huge set of tools for you to know where your guys are going to move and what could happen. There is some randomness, but ultimatly you are going to know what is about to happne, and know ahead of time when you are taking a large gamble with your troops. Turn based battls just force you to think more by their nature of what your moves are going to be, and how your troops will be formed up. Real time games you seem to spend that time you would thinking about a move, trying to keep your guys moving the way you want them to go to get into position, sometimes causing you to pause and think about things way more then you would have in a turn based game. Unfortunatly, moving across a large map in a turn based setting when there is no combat sucks. Flanking in turn based game sucks, it just takes too long. Fire emblem had some tools to deal with that, such as rally points and group move type behaviors, but still, it seems as a trade off.

Master of magic did stand out from the crowd for its tactical battles. I think one of the intersting things about that was that you would sometimes fight with a stack of 6 or so guys for one "unit" and watch them wittle away, against stronger units that were fewer in number. Age of wonder's failed to capture this feeling, as each unit was a person of it's own accord, and concequently, you never felt like you were dealing with a large empire, and instead a lot of micro managment.

Now, I'm not sure what continuous turn means. It could be in lue of the simultanious turns we see as an option in many strat games. This could be say, my unit can move 4 hexes forward and attack twice for this round. As soon as this round starts, I move the unit right away 4 spaces, and attack someone twice. But my opponent waits around to move. I can't move again until my enemy passes his turn or moves his guys though. So I think that's what they mean by the simultanious turns. It's turn based, but you all move at the same time. I tend to not like this as you still have to rush sometimes if you say have an attack bonus with your guys to make sure you hit first before 10 of your guys are down.

I understand though that a turn based battle, for a large empire, with like 10 battles to fight a turn, will really bog things down, when a lot of those are fights you probably want to autopilot, but still need to babysit. I think the developers understand this though, and I am pretty confident their first offering will be a good balance between all these tradeoffs, and if it isn't, we'll have enough constructive advice to make sure it works!

I'm glad to see the Fire Emblem games mentioned!  Those are some of the finest fantasy TBS games ever made.  You really had to be careful with your decisions because every move counted, especially if you were trying to acquire a new character.  It was almost like a puzzle that needed to be solved.  I'm a big HOMM fan, but let's face it, once you amass a substantially larger army you win.  I'd love to see tactical turn-based battles with more consequence in PC gaming. 

More to the topic, I also checked out that Gamespy pic and am very pleased with the direction it alludes to, even if it is early alpha.  I feel much better about the combat now.  All they need to do is make the combat slightly more rewarding to play through manually and I'll be happy.  Auto-resolve should be very adequate, but there should be some encouragement to actually play through the battles. 

I tend to fret excessively when changes are made to a good system of combat.  Anyone ever play that Magic the Gathering battle game for PC?  OMG what a piece of garbage!  They basically took the Magic CCG and turned it into a Tekken style fight game!  Horrid!  As long as Elemental stays somewhere within the realm of classic TBS style combat, I'll be a happy camper.

I'm hoping the tactical battle map scales with army size though, so small.