That's not how I saw it.

I completely agree with Martok.  For those that don't like the term "Tactical" combat let's maybe call it "Strategic" combat. 

For what it's worth, my vote is for some moo2 style combat. Best ever imo.

Of course quick combat must be an option with this format to deal with the late game slog.

Already been ruled out. In fact MOO2 style combat was explicitly mentioned as what they're not doing.

I am going to muse that they might be doing call to power style combat.

Because building several levels of combat would cost more money.

You can take that as a given. One feature we do have confirmation on is that there will be some sort of completely asynchronous multiplayer - meaning it will be playable by more than one person without them ever being online at the same time. I do my turn this morning, you do yours over lunch, I do mine again when I get home after work, etc. Real time combat simply cannot be supported on that sort of system (unless there's some bullshit like one player agrees to let the AI do his battles for him)

In that case, battles between humans in an async game would be forced auto-resolve, and nobody gets to play it (whatever the "play it" system happens to be). You could still fight the AI with whatever the system winds up being, though.

Good news.

1. Neither the presence nor the absence of any form of tactical battles is a defining characteristic of Grand Strategy games. The defining characteristic of Grand Strategy is that the focus of the game is on grand strategy, not the lack of any form of tactical combat. Implementing tactical combat in a game may shift the focus from grand strategy over to the battles, but will not necessarily do so, nor will the implementation of some form of tactical combat necessarily degrade the quality of the grand strategy aspect.
2. Tactical battles do not necessarily require the players to manage each and every single unit. You could instead give directives to groups of units, or you might only have direct control over some subset of your units, with the others controlled by the AI, or some other implementation of tactical combat.
3. Direct control of battles and automatic resolution of battles are not mutually exclusive, despite claims to the contrary found throughout this thread. Autoresolve need only give a reasonable approximation of the outcome of a manually-controlled battle to be acceptable for a game; it's only when you require that each and every single battle have the optimal result that one or the other form of combat becomes essential. I've played Shogun/Medieval/Rome: Total War and several other games which offer the option of manually fighting out a battle or allowing the computer to decide the outcome, and I can almost always do better than the autoresolve function. Nevertheless, I still make use of the autoresolve function, because I don't always care that the battle goes as perfectly as possible, and sometimes I just don't feel like fighting another battle myself. The autoresolve function produces generally acceptable results which are worse than what I probably could have achieved; occasionally it'll surprise me and produce a very good or very bad result. The only strategy games which include tactical battles which I feel obligated to control myself are those in which the autoresolve function produces results which are consistently unacceptable, for instance one where you might have sent a fleet of dreadnoughts against a fishing boat and the fishing boat somehow wins consistently. If I found a game with an autoresolve function that consistently produced better results than I was capable of achieving, I'd still control the battles myself if I found doing so to be fun, which might also result in me eventually outperforming the autoresolve function. I suppose I should also mention that autoresolve should be the fast option - SotS autoresolve is acceptable despite the deviation in weapon performance between autoresolve and manual control, because autoresolve was quick and produced generally reasonable results. SotSII autoresolve is less acceptable because it isn't significantly faster than manual control of a combat, even though it may have reduced the deviation in design performance between manual battles and autoresolve. Perhaps all of you who claim that games must either be autoresolve exclusively or manual resolution exclusively based on the quality of the outcomes play games because you want to win, but I play games because I want to have fun. Winning battles in the 'optimal' manner is not necessarily fun, regardless of whether that way is by means of an autoresolve function or manual control, nor is manual control always fun even if I generally enjoy the manual control option as implemented in that particular game. The only time when autoresolve/manual control becomes an issue in a strategy game is when the game is at the edge of not being fun because the fun on the strategy side of the game is in some way lacking enough to hold my interest.
4. We don't necessarily know that the battles in GCIII will be better than those in GCII. We certainly hope that they will be, assuming that "better battles" = "more fun game", but there isn't sufficient information available about the battles to judge.
5. I really wish that people would stop this nonsensical equation of tactical battles and RTS games. Yes, RTS games (and "shoot-em-ups", since that seems to be Zydor's only acknowledged alternative to TBS games which lack any form of tactical combat) generally involve tactical combats of some kind, but it isn't an essential feature of the RTS. Crusader Kings II is one example of an RTS which does not have tactical battles of any kind, real-time or otherwise, unless you consider 'tactics' to be the rather limited options you have in choosing the army composition, or the number of forces you send into a given engagement, or the direction(s) from which your forces come.

Lecek, sorry to single your post out for this, but I'm kind of tired of seeing the same foolish arguments go around the circle, and your post was the closest one. This probably won't do anything at all to stop the stupidity or the pointless arguments, either.

All of the above being said, I do not care whether the game implements tactical battles or just has a pretty autoresolve screen, as long as the game itself is fun. While I think that a tactical battle implementation might be fun, it is in no way a requirement, and I already have games which have well-implemented tactical battles if I really want to play one. This thread is mostly 15 pages of idiocy on both sides of the argument, and additionally fails to answer the question, not the least because the question is ill-defined. On a very basic level, strategy is the plan and tactics are the implementation. At what point does a battle become "tactical" as opposed to "strategic"? Is it when the game shifts from the big-picture map to a more focused map? Is it when you can affect the outcome of the battle by changing targeting priorities, engagement ranges, and objectives? When you can control the actions of groups of units or individual units? If it's just the shift from the big-picture map to a more narrow view, then GCII already had 'tactical' combat in the combat viewer (please note that I do not consider the combat viewer from GCII to be anything more than a somewhat prettier than normal autoresolve screen), and GCIII will most likely have at least that. If it's when we can affect the outcome of a battle by choosing the engagement ranges, targeting priorities, and objectives, well, it's looking like we're going to have control over at least some of this (specifically, the engagement range, though I don't know of anything indicating that we would be able to set this any way other than by choosing the weapon load-outs of our ships), so the answer might be a 'yes' of some kind. At any rate, clearly if there are limits to weapon ranges the computer is going to have to do something which approximates tactics, even if the only tactics it understands are "Charge!" and "Run away!", regardless of whether or not we the players have any direct control over the outcome of the battles. If, however, "tactical battles" are those implementations in which the player has direct control over the actions of at least some units in the fight, it would appear that the answer to that question, based on the information currently available, is no, there will not be "tactical" battles in GCIII.

I agree with what you just said except for one major point:

Common usage doesn't mean "the definition I and a few others use". Shoot-em-up in common usage refers to games like 1942 and the like. Though it does contain several sub-definition, rarely are they applied to strategy games. The definition that you, Zydor, and a few other posters use are personal definitions that is shared by a sub-group of people within a genre or culture.

Though you are free to develop personal slangs, and group slangs for certain words, applying this as 'common usage' is erroneous. Video games have been around for several decades now and certain terms have come to mean certain things to a broad number of people. It has even come to the point some terms have gained literary and formal acceptance. These and those that are still informal but widely used by most is what common usage means.

As I said, feel free to use shoot-em-up as a term to represent a certain style of combat management in a strategy game, but do not try to pass it off as common usage or formally accepted vocabulary in the industry. Doubly so in a post where you criticise someone else of being self-centric in their argument.

Personally I try to avoid to use Wikipedia by itself as a source of information, like an encyclopedia it is a good way to get quick facts but you still want to verify these facts with an outside source, However, since you yourself are using Wikipedia, I am just going to stick what they have to say on the matter:

"A "shoot 'em up", also known as a "shmup" or "STG", is a game in which the protagonist combats a large number of enemies by shooting at them while dodging their fire. The controlling player must rely primarily on reaction times to succeed. Beyond this, critics differ on exactly which design elements constitute a shoot 'em up. Some restrict the genre to games featuring some kind of craft, using fixed or scrolling movement. Others widen the scope to include games featuring such protagonists as robots or humans on foot, as well as including games featuring "on-rails" (or "into the screen") and "run and gun" movement. Mark Wolf restricts the definition to games featuring multiple antagonists ("'em" being short for "them"), calling games featuring one-on-one shooting "combat games". Formerly, critics described any game where the primary design element was shooting as a "shoot 'em up", but later shoot 'em ups became a specific, inward-looking genre based on design conventions established in those shooting games of the 1980s."

And:

"Shoot 'em ups are a subgenre of shooter game, in turn a type of action game. These games are usually viewed from a top-down or side-view perspective, and players must use ranged weapons to take action at a distance. The player's avatar is typically a vehicle under constant attack. Thus, the player's goal is to shoot as quickly as possible anything that moves or threatens him. In some games, the player's character can withstand some damage; in others, a single hit will result in his destruction. The main skills required in shoot 'em ups are fast reactions and memorising enemy attack patterns. Some games feature overwhelming numbers of enemy projectiles and the player has to memorise their patterns to survive. These games belong to one of the fastest-paced video game genres."

The sections then continue to elaborate more on each of these points and even define different subgroups of shoot-em ups and different application of the terms. All of which follow the same logic overall (explained later).

Both of these had heavy level of citation (sometimes Wikipedia does do its job properly). However, they both share a very common thread, shoot-em ups are subgenre of shooter games and thus a subgroup of action games. The term is rarely used to describe actions and activities outside of that genre, as in shoot-em up is more of a category of games than a adjective someone can apply liberally wherever they want. This follows in line with the industry's accepted usages of the word by game developers and game media.

I am sorry, but you can not cherry pick a single sentence out of context of the broader definition and use it to apply your own meaning to what that sentence means. The whole definition matters, and the context of what the sentence means by shooting matters.

As I said, feel free to use the term personally to describe a certain style of gameplay as a personal or group slang. But again, your definition of shoot-em up is not the broadly accepted definition, and as such is not common usage.

As for your question what would be a better term for games that have high level of micromanagement of units where you dictate their attack (or 'shoot') orders individually. Give me some time as you can see I am very strict with the formal definition and usage of terms, which means I will have to verify the different terms used to describe such gameplay. One term I did find was unit based tactics or unit based tactical combat (as in you individual command each unit separately and completely).

Actually, I would be happy with this too. Personally I do not like unit based tactical combat. I loved MMO2 back in its days and I still enjoy a good RTS or unit TBS strategy/tactics game.

However, I loved GC because it focused on the 'meta' of it, as I like to call it. It was the game I went to play for that experience and it is the experience I most prefer. As you said there other games to cater to that specific itch (and to me that itch is only a minor one), and I rather GalCiv focuses on what it did well.

I will be honest in those other games I tend to auto-resolve 90% of the time, which means a section of the game which a lot of resources went into is not experienced by me, it makes me think I effectively not the target audience anymore (even if I enjoy the other aspects of the game still). It is awesome for those that want it and I am happy they get the full experience. I do not see why every game needs to follow that route.