no, an initiative system does not mean its real time, it just means that each side isn't split into a single turn.  Instead each unit acts in turn based on their combat speed. 

1.1 sounds better than I honestly thought it was going to be.  I'm anxious to check it out.

Ya know, the best indicator in the game ever are those huge exclamation marks floating over the cities.

The only annoying bit about them is that they fade away on their own, making them a nice idea but failure on implementation.

The MAP is what you play on. Menus on the left, popup windows in the middle on the screen - those are all artificial and not a "natural" part of the game.

Just make it 2 symbols, one atop the other, so there is no messiness with one covering up another. (for unit vs improvement queue)
Or some hollow / transparent / overlapping symbols. You have interface designers and graphics artists that are paid to be better at this than me. =P

It would be okay if they faded away to maybe 30 - 50 % alpha after a while but you should not have to scroll around menus when the information could already be there. Right in front of you.

The annoying bit about the unit cards is that they cover the area / units beneath them.

They should pop up in another part of the screen if the mouse would be directly on the card after it has popped up.

Derek Paxton or Kestral, has it been at all considered having armor being detrimental to dodge? The way I thought it could work for example is each armor weight class could halve a units dodge score. This could only work if dodge was made more powerful to account for the halving effect and that dodge would be at it's most effecient when used in light armor -Padded and leather armors-, with reduced effects on medium armors.

As I mentioned in my previous post, if all Dexterity does is dodging, you will either have Dexterity be underpowered compared to Constitution (both survivability stats) or you will have to a boring situation where the hit rate is around 50%.

Using the given values:

I think if you're going to lower dodge based on armor weight (which is a good idea, particularly if you can make lighter enchanted armor using crystal), the base dodge numbers have to be higher. For a standard unit with 10 DEX, a -5 dodge penalty drops their dodge to 0.

This method would work just fine, though balancing would be the key to any attempt to implement it.

hmm......then all we'd need are small weapons that get damage bonuses from either strength or dex *Dreams of dex gouged assassin hero*

Removing the original concept of essence and making it a boolean to determine casting ability is a mistake.  The idea of the channeler being a unique and mighty being and not some mere caster of spells is a very interesting concept and has been an important part of the marketing and design of the game.  

Mana is like electricity existing in the land.  Long in the past the titans brought the crystals which absorbed all the mana and concentrated it.  Mana is collected by building shrines on these crystals, then gathering it into a usable form allowing spell casters to cast their spells, and finally returning it back to the earth to be reabsorbed completing the cycle.

Mana is used for casting spells; throw a fire ball, summon a bear, raise a tile of land, etc.  These are minor things that even imbued mortals can accomplish.

Essence is different than mana, it is not of the land, air, water, or fire.  It comes from outside the world and it is inherent in whatever allows channelers to imbue, live forever, and what makes them different from mortal casters. Only channelers have essence, not imbued casters, not their children.

Essence is not for casting spells or even mana caps.  It is epic in nature and should allow the boundaries of the game to be bent and broken. Essence can be used to raise a volcano from the mantle to the surface quickly destroying entire cities or armies, Imbuing mortals with the sliver of divinity needed to cast spells,  or creating game changing artifacts of immense power.  It is the stuff that comebacks are made of.

A great example of the use of essence is Sauron from the Lord of the Rings where he imbued his essence into the one ring which greatly increased his combat strength, influence over others, etc. However, he was much weaker when separated from the imbued artifact. He put so much essence into the ring that he could not truly die as long as it existed in the world.  I could see this being useful in the game...

To further extend the LotR example Sauron's master Morgoth imbued much of his essence into the land itself creating the ring of mountains around Mordor as a natural defense, created and imbued Balrogs and long lasting taints of evil which allowed his minions to survive and flourish over the eons.

TLDR:  I would like to see essence returned as a stat but ONLY for channelers but never for imbued casters or children of channelers because it was in the original design document and is an important differentiation between channelers and casters.  

opinion/

Thats the way it worked, but now essense is just a true/false flag for if a character can cast spells.

I think that essense is more.

Instead of an annoying pop-up maybe we can have an exclamation point over an idle city, that could disappear after a turn if we ignore it.  Even better would be different colors of exclamation points indicating which que is empty.  The problem with the pop-up is that BOTH queues have to be empty for us to be notified, so maybe there is a large build que, but an empty training que for many turns.  Also this pop up is actually BAD for new players as it will encourage them to deficit spend by training too many troops.

I still prefer alert icons to the side that would give up pop-up information, like new techs, new spell, caravan info, diplomacy requests, wandering monsters info from adventuring, and now city queue info, that we can click on or mouse over when we are in a mind to, rather than getting hit with it right when we are in the middle of something else.

Either that, or a kingdom report box at the end of the turn (like when the AI is moving) that condenses all alert information together, rather than popup after poput after popup.

12 units of 12 troops for each of the two sides equals 144 troops which is triple digits. From my perspective, 100 troops v 10,000 troops is irrelevant as long as the combat is fun and the encounters are strategically meaningful. I have read a lot of posts since release about this idea of epic scale and troops in the thousands, but have yet to be convinced that this would add anything to the fun or meaningfulness of combat. I mean one could simply multiply all the counts by 100 and result in battle counts in the ten thousand range, but you would ultimately end up with the same feel out of combat. Perhaps one would rather move 1,000 units around a tactical map the size of the world map, yet this would be tedious and simply decrease the overall fun of the experience. My stance on combat has not changed since release, and is fairly simple. I believe that every unit should be capable of more than two actions, being attack and move. We should ask why a game like shining force or FFT has such gripping tactical combat, even though only a handful of units per battle. The answer is fairly obvious, which is each unit is capable of many different actions which adds complexity and depth to their combat model. This is the simple reason why a summoned unit is simply more fun and more powerful in tactical combat. A fire giant has something like 5-6 actions it can perform, giving it incredible tactical depth.

I think it is global in the sense that gold or metal is global to your faction.