Excellent post. Very good points indeed. Basically, it comes down to perceptions and what each player considers "Fun". All of which can be pre-determined to suit the individual with various game "Options". Once the player has the ability, "Option", to set things up the way they like, I.E. Slow, Fast, Auto, etc etc, then the player has control. They decide how long or fast it is to suit them. They make it last as long or go as fast as they like. All we really need to end the debates are "Options".

This might be the time to reintroduce the Formations discussion that cropped up a lot last year.

Are combat formations currently planned for release?

There have been many posts (https://forums.elementalgame.com/367798 for example) discussing the pros and cons of having formations in tactical combat. Personally I think it would help immensely and give combat research another line of techs to go for.

Not only do tactical formations add a layer of tactics to battle, they spice up the scene. If game-wide formations are too sweeping, there are alternatives. Especially for considerations like Cavalry charges and Pike formations, consider making some choice formations as special abilities that can be researched and attached to a designed unit ala equipment.

There is an important difference between retreating and routing. Retreating is what you do with high morale in order to preserve a force. Routing is what happens when morale breaks and the troops try to save themsleves, they usually fail.

I don't know how closely the game tracks individual units, but it has a high degree of detail you could use a system like the Dominions games where retreating soldiers go through a check as they rout and will either be destroyed or end up scattered in surrounding provinces with varying vegrees of damage or long term ailments. Perhaps lost equipment in this game would be better modeling. (Ala the famous roman admonishment to 'Come home with your shield or on it.' as the shield was the first thing routing soldiers would drop in order to run faster.)

A unit that manages to retreat in good order however should remain together with little additional penalty aside from exhausting it's movement (or moving at half speed next turn if that's already normal for this game as I don't know the details of the mechanics.)

When can we get a video of tactical battles?

RTS vs. Turn/Tile base

How big can battles get (number of units)?

If battles are small I would like to see something more like RTS (w/pause) tactical battles like those in NWN/Spell Force. I never liked the hex turn-based combat in MOM.

WINNER. TAKE. ALL.

I would like to see the option to retreat and a chance of npc's/units capture or be capture with a ransom system.  Also have any retreating party random chance of dropping some equipment.

My first post here so I'll start with a quick intro. My favorite games to date are MoM and Civ3. I played Civ3 quite a bit and pushed its limits, including games published on CivFanatics such as the first published six way win and the first "Sid" level PTW win in the Hall of Fame. I've also enjoyed MOO, XCom, HOMM, and some others. I discovered this site recently and am excited about Elemental. I've long hoped to see a new strategy game which incorporates the great elements which were unique in MoM.

This thread seems to me to be of utmost importance to the overall feel of Elemental. Will Elemental emphasize strategic play or tactical play? Single player or multi-player? Or somehow provide great play in all four combinations of those attributes? This subject (tactical combat) is perhaps the strongest distinguishing factor regarding which audience a game primarily targets (strategic/tactical and single/multiplayer.) I think that while choosing a tactical combat system Elemental must choose one or more of these targets as their primary audience, understanding that choosing more than one of those four combinations is quite ambitious. I think that to be a great game for more than one of these target audiences it will be necessary to separately implement and balance different approaches to battles.

Much of the discussion on this thread is by players who like rich tactical play, mostly singleplayer, some multiplayer. I'll be going against the grain here because my prefered environment is strategic/singleplayer.

I'm worried about a focus on rich tactical play. The most replayable game I've played, by a very long shot (I don't want to know how many hours I spent in it), was Civ3. Games I tired of more quickly were generally because of their tactical play. HOMM (I played I to IV) and XCom (I played two versions) are examples. I found them fun for a while, sometimes quite a while, but eventually I pretty much knew what I'd do in any tactical situation and they came to feel too repetitive.

I prefer to spend more game time planning for battles than playing battles and this ratio may be at the heart of what makes a good game more appealing to one type of player than another.

An option to auto-resolve combat does not address this problem. The problem with that for someone who likes to push a game to its limits, finding ways to win (or lose ) given improbable or "impossible" conditions, and to achieve quickest or highest scoring victories from a given start, is that with an auto combat option there are only two possible results and neither is satisfying:

1) The AI invoked by auto mode is clever enough that I can never do better. If this is the case, then why would I ever choose to not use it? Manual battle becomes meaningless to me in this case and I don't even want an option, let's auto-resolve it whenever I'm in a fight so I can continue with the game elements where my choices matter.

2) I can do better than the AI. In this case, I will never use the AI except perhaps while exploring some strategic approach in a test game. In a real game I will do my best to try to win and to win as decisively as I can. If (when?) I reach the point that I'd rather auto-resolve battles because they aren't fun any more, I'll also lose interest in the game because I'm no longer giving it my best effort.

Bottom line: Either tactial battles are meaningless and shouldn't even be in the game or they are meaningful and I will always fight them in detail.

Winner Takes All?

I don't think winner takes all is a good approach, for the same reasons others have already given.

Retreat?

To me an important factor in this is who started the fight.

It looks like Elemental will follow the usual approach where one party initiates combat by moving onto a world tile occupied by another party.

I think that the invading party should be able to terminate the attack at any time when it is their turn to act, and that this should return their remaining units to the tile from which they initiated the attack. The defending party should either have no retreat option at all, or if they have one it should have a significant associated penalty (payment to the attacker, loss and/or weakening of most units, etc.)

This model, where the combat initiator is in control of whether combat continues until a win or stops before then, works very well in Civilization and adds much to its strategic depth. It enables strategies based on hit and run. It enables skirmishes. It enables deliberate weakening of stacks which cannot be defeated with control over how far it is taken.

Although a tile's defender does not have the same retreat option as the attacker in this model, this does not imbalance game play. If one player attacks another and then retreats before finishing off the defender, the defender can on their next turn choose to attack the first party. (Unless of course the attacker had the ability to retreat out of range, which should be a special case affecting strategic decisions.)

On a related note, I think that defenders should almost always have a slight advantage (possibly more than slight due to terrain, walls, etc.) Given a situation where everything is equal (unit strength, inherent and strategic value of a tile, etc.) the balance should be such that it is not worthwhile to initiate combat. This delicate balance which slightly favors non-attack is one of the things which makes strategic play more satisfying.

Limit Combat Duration?

I think it important that by design there is no need to have a limit. The nature of the tactical battlefield should be such that there is an inevitable reduction of units until either one party is wiped out or the invader retreats.

I remember a situation in MoM where my best course of action during a battle was to run around in circles avoiding contact until the battle was terminated. (I've forgotten the details, it is a long time since I played MoM.) I'd like the very structure of the tactical combat to preclude possibilities like that, even if it means simplifying it.

Morale?

I'm not for or against using morale as a factor in the makeup of Kingdom units. However I do want to say that the concept of morale seems wrong to me for Empires. When I'm playing as an evil overlord, I expect my subjects to be motivated by fear (and perhaps greed and sadism in the leaders.) I don't give a damn how low their morale is and I expect them to be oblivious to pain.

If only Kingdom units have morale things will get harder to balance. There has to be an offset of some sort for Empires. An easy out would be to give them something functionally equivalent with another name (weariness?) Not sure that really works.

I do think that the more factors there are which affect each units behaviour and odds in various situations, the more difficult it becomes to balance the game such that all the factors matter and contribute meaningfully to various strategies. I've never become deeply immersed in an RPG style game which has a lot of separate modifiers contributing to each unit's makeup.

My Preference

I'd like to see tactical combat which is no more complex (in terms of number of decisions to be made to complete a fight between two stacks of a given size) than MoM. I think that anything more detailed that that (in terms of number of decisions to be made and acted on) will slide toward a game which feels more oriented toward tactical play than strategic play and won't be my cup of tea for long term replayability.

I imagine there are a number of ways that could be accomplished. A quick example which might be tweaked into something good:

At any point during tactical combat, one of the two players has the initiative. On each turn the player with the iniative does one of the following:
1. Throws a spell. After it is cast, the other player gets the iniative.
2. Choose a unit (or unit group) which will attack. The other player then chooses a unit who will defend. One round of combat then occurs between the selected units and is automatically resolved. The result is always that there is at least some damage to one side or the other. After the combat the initiative remains with the same player as before the combat.
3. Retreat. (Available only to the invader, or perhaps also to the defender but at some high cost in that case.)

The above would functionally be Civ style combat with the addition of spells and an associated cost when throwing a spell of giving up the initiative, and the addition of the defender choosing the unit which combats each attacker.

To my mind the next level of complexity would occur if a 4th choice were added to the above list to allow movement of units on a field of play. That's a big jump because it introduces the possibility of endless cat and mouse play and something must be done to deal with that, and also because if it becomes very sophisticated it risks the game feel becoming overall dominated by tactical play. (And of course that might be a good thing if that's where the developers want to go. The result will appeal more to some people, less to others.)

Pleasing Everyone

Perhaps it is possible to please everyone with one game by having different modules which provide deeper vs. quicker tactical combat, real time vs. turn based combat, and tuning each module to work well and to work with correspondingly tuned factors throughout the rest of the game. The style of play would be selected at the outset of each game and would determine the feel of the entire game.

But that seems way too ambitious to target in an initial release. I think the developers should choose the overall feel and associated primary target audience for the game before committing to a particular model for tactical combat. Then design the tactical combat to work very well for that audience.

As you noted, this is the gameplay style of civilization, which does not even possess tactical combat. I don't think it automatically follows that this is a good rule for a game with tactical combat and a greater emphasis on individual units. Especially when you add magic into the mix. You can easily end up in situations where it should be obvious to the defender that retreat is the only option, so why shouldn't he be able to retreat? Because that would be inconvenient to the aggressor? Tough luck.

That's an interesting point, and one I'm going to run with in a minute.  

That was the rule in MoM because the AI wasn't smart enough to recognize a useless combat position. Say attacking a draconian city with an army of swordsman. They have to get into the city to win, but they can't pass the gate without killing it's defenders, and they can't kill the defenders because ground units can't attack flying units. So they would sit there until 'exhusted' and then withdraw. It prevented infinite loop attacks from killing the game. It was however an abusable system as you well noted.

Ha! That may well be what you as an evil overlord want, but until you make soulless, fleshless automata for your armies it's not what you're going to get! Your troops are still flesh and bone, and they still feel fear. And at the exact moment they fear the enemy more than they fear you, their morale breaks.

As you noted yourself above however, you will be unable to resist using any option that might eek you out an advantage, so what the point? If you had an option during game setup to choose 'no tactical combat' would you choose it, even knowing there might be a battle later on in the game which you could win if it wasn't auto-resolved?

Right, I would not choose it. That's why I said that an option to auto-resolve combat does not address the issue. And it is the reason I think that building a game which will be great when played with a strategic focus and great when played with a tactical focus would be  very ambitious.

Instead of just putting the whole game into auto-resolve, when a player chooses a strategic-focus game mode a number of aspects of the game must change. The mechanics of combat don't just get auto-resolved, they get replaced by different mechanics which are quicker and simpler. But still provide interesting decision points and a need for strategic planning. Skills and spells which apply to rich tactical combat are replaced by a lesser number (less because the focus of the game is shifted) of different traits and spells which apply to the different combat mechanics. Questions of unit speed, fortification, retreat, leader capabilities, and many other things, are all handled differently in each style of the game, as seems best for gameplay in that style.

If the different styles are implemented with that much depth then the situation of "I should've enabled tactical combat" doesn't come up. The characteristics of the units, the somewhat different research tree and spells, the different planning the player does toward combat, result in neither style being a superset of the other and a given situation in one style of the game can't be directly compared to a situation in the other style.

Would you mind clarifying this for me.

If Offense is somehow to be "not worthwhile" and a balance maintained that is somehow geared more towards "non-attack", how would any player justify being the aggressor, unless of course the #'s were rather lopsided....?

If all things being equal means the aggressor is always at a disadvantage, even a "slight" one, then one could/would likely face many instance where 2 armies would stand around waiting for the other player to initiate combat as the aggressor knows he will be at said disadvantage.

So.. you basically want them to make two entirely seperate games and sell them both to you for the same amount of money? That's ... a lot to ask for, I think.

That having been said however I think it's clear that the modding tools will allow you, or someone to make the game you want, I just don't think it's going to be bundled with the core game.

Incidently I just reread your original post and I think I have a better grasp on your position. You're not saying you don't want to see squad based combat as in MoM. You just don't want it to go further than that into an X-com style where you have to worry about the individual loadout/morale/fatigue of every man in the army. If that's the case then given that some of the beta testers were talking about battles with hundreds or thousands of troops then I heartily agree with you.

1) When neither party is given any advantage, or the attacker is given an advantage due to being the attacker, then in general the correct strategy will be to always attack when possible. It either can't hurt (in the case of even odds) or is advantageous (if attacker gets a bonus) and might gain control of a tile. (So this overall simple strategy is subject to that usually being either a good thing or harmless.)

2) When the defender is given some advantage, even a fairly small one, it is not advantageous to always attack. Now the players are forced to choose other strategies to gain an advantage (other than just being the attacker); they must work toward superior numbers, holding resources, holding chokepoints, etc. And options such as these become important while still living in a theoretical situation where units are all of equal strength. If the game's other features are rich enough (Elemental certainly will be) then a stand-off such as you describe is very unlikely. The players will find reasons to try something else to gain an advantage.

Of course in Elemental this theoretical "all other things being equal" kind of situation will almost never happen. The richness of other factors affecting both the decision to enter combat and the outcome of combat will be huge. Nonetheless, I think that this theoretical underpinning is good to keep in mind.

As a real world example consider the end game between two players in the board game Risk. (I hope you've played it so that the following makes sense.) The end game is almost always completely uninteresting because the odds favor the attacker between two sizeable stacks, which accounts for the majority of fights in most end games. The 3 to 2 dice rolls at this point favor the attacker by roughly 7 to 6. The correct strategy in the end game is mostly "attack everything on your turn." It is even true in battles where your stack is much smaller than the opponent's - you're better off losing most of your stack on your turn at 6:7 than doing nothing and having your opponent take your stack on his next turn at 7:6 losses for you. Always attack would generally be the best end game strategy even if the dice rolls were at even odds, because a chance of gaining land is worth taking. But if the defender had an advantage in the dice rolls, the correct strategy would no longer be obvious. One would have to make trade-offs between those odds and the benefit of gaining tiles/continents, breaking into a continent, striking before the opponent can use a set of cards, etc.

I agree, that would be quite a lot to ask for. I think too much to ask for. What I'm hoping for is a strategic-emphasis game. The main point I was trying to make is that I think the developers would be making a mistake by aiming for a game which is great for all types of play, because either they'll be building two (or more) games in one and slowing development considerably to do it, or they'll have a game which isn't truly great at at least one of the styles of play, and they'll be risking it being less good than it might be in each style.

It seems to me that choosing the style of the game's tactical combat is a turning point which should include committing to a primary target audience who prefers a particular style of game.

To put it yet another way, I don't want the number of decisions I make in combat to be a very high percentage of the total number of decisions I make in the game.

I do play Risk indeed and as you stated at the end, there are various reasons to try and eliminate that "currently weaker" player.

We must also remember that even if we prepare and fight well in a tactical battle, the computer will be rolling the DICE and as in Risk, usually the only real way to assure total Victory, between 2 competent players, is via a greater #'s of units (and not trapping troops in useless positions)

That is not to say superior Tactics can't help sway things, but if I get caught "pants down" then I should be able to retreat, with some losses, and try and correct the situation.