When I play this sort of 4X game, I think my main interest is in producing interesting units that do interesting things in battles. If the battles are not fun in the long term, for whatever reason, then the game will not hold my interest.

Master of Magic has battles that I still find interesting; the small number of stats interact in an interesting way, and specialising in any of attack, defence or hit points, and the varying numbers of figures and the small number of special abilities work very well.

At the moment, I'm not convinced that this is true of Elemental. High defence can never be high enough to stop all the damage. Range doesnt seem to matter. One doesnt have to think much about how to hit things without being hit back, especially with most units not being able to counterattack. And once units level up, their hit points grow disproportionatly compared to their attack, so there is no risk of them being killed except when fighting things with vastly superior attack.

First off, thanks very much for this "Fallen Enchantress - BETA FAQ" post!!  As one of the early responders noted, it is very gratifying to see this much continuing information and feedback, being provided on a regular basis, by the design team and company president.  I am very much enjoying this Beta-testing experience.  I am now up to about 30 hours of game-play; since I was first eligible to download the Beta on February 23.  I have a very good feeling about this product, thus far; and I am very much looking forward to its continuing evolution!

As to the question of the importance (or relative un-importance) of tactical battles, I would like to register my views/vote.  (And incidentally, I know we are not really "voting" here.  In fact I strongly support your position that the game -- in its final iteration -- should reflect a singular view, of a single individual (Kael), or at least a small, disciplned, design team.)  

But, getting to the point, I really think you are headed down the best road, with your current approach.  I like having BOTH auto-resolve; and the ability to sometimes get messy with Tactics.  I am probably using auto-resolve about 60% of the time; and personal direction about 40%.  Which route I take depends on a myriad of things, including: complexity, number of units involved, relative importance of the battle, perceived odds, relative balance of magic versus arms, time-of-the-day-or-night I am playing, how tired I am,  etc. 

Given that I might go either route, I would like the outcomes to be roughly comparable, a majority of the times, either way.  I have no problem with a Superior Tactician being able to do slightly better than the auto-resolve; but I would rather not be FORCED to be enmeshed in every last tactical detail, in every single battle.  I would rather not see this game become 70% tactical battles, versus 30% strategy and overall game content.

It sounds to me like you have adopted a good approach; and I trust you will work to strike a proper balance in that regard.  I don't mean to be a Fanboy here, but I really think that you have chosen (and enunciated) an optimal direction.  I understand that many months of development, and refinement, remain.               FE is genuinely good, getting better, and I think it will end up great!   

It seems kind of like a wasted to shy away from having complex tactical battles when this is an area that's been largely overlooked on army level when it comes to computer games. If the battles are reduced or kept more or less the same, you end up with a game that's a half baked CIV clone combined with a half baked Age of Wonders.

I've seen this elsewhere but I'll say it again because it's fun: People like MOM except when they don't like MOM.   Classic games work because they achieve that rarest of delicate balances.  What made MOM's tactical battles fun is that they achieved that balance.  That is what we're going for as well.

The biggest problem I have in tactical is that the AI does not see a hero mage as a necessary unit for an army. They also have trouble putting together one deadly army that can defeat me. I think it is because they see all the armies near each other as one unit. Still needs some work. 

drabhead is of course skeptic and idealistic. That's Fine. I guess what I want to know is how Derek is thinking about changes to tactical and how much better the AI will be at making armies and playing tactical. The most logical answer is that there are too many unknown variables in the development process for the devs to comment.

Mastroego has an excellent point. It was those FEATURES that made MOM fun. The variety of units and races was really what made the game fun, in my opinion. I've always liked playing different races and having unique units for each race. It's what got me going with MOO, MOM, CIV (to a lesser extent), SINS, etc....

AoW:SM had some interesting battles and they were certainly fun. But the AI was easy to cheese with some very simple tactics. Once I learned the cheese, there was no stopping me from winning almost every battle. Unless I autoresolved. Then it was pretty fair. But even that had some errors in it. And those battles take a long time. The game was also only fun on a tactical level. The Strategic level offered very little besides setting up the tactical. That made the AI even easier to wreck. FE has a chance to be better in this respect. 

I agree. But I still hope the TCs have a lot of depth in them. Especially if you plan on adding MP to the game.

My favourite strategy game is, by far, Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic. In that game, the Tactical Combats are really immersive. And though luck has a part to play, the battles are decided by skill and knowledge. What makes them great is the number of variables that come into play. Not only units (including heroes/sovereigns) have many "traits" that make them unique strategically, but there are also a lot of mechanics that force you to use them properly (or suffer the consequences). For example, units get attacks of opportunity, archers have obstacles, terrain and distance penalties, there's friendly fire, etc.

I'm not sure something that sophisticated is attainable right now (though that game is ages old), but I just hope Tactical Combat doesn't become one of those features that are tossed into a game, but then become a drag because it's not well impemented. I'd rather not have it at all.

It would be great if someone of the dev team can take a look at that game. Not to copy it, but to have a vision of what can be achieved in some particular aspects of it.

Cheers!

What about the terrible 18 unit limit for battles? The most defeating and buggy element to battles. It would be better to allow more units in city defense battles so that city militia can matter. I would also like the "cast spell at beginning of battle" to be able to summon monsters. So a summoner can have more that nine units in a battle as well.

It makes sense to be the max for an army, but it shouldn't be a hard limit. There should be ways around it. Logistics are a good mechanic, but they needs some flexibility. 

I try to not dismiss any reports.  For example, there is nothing wrong with wanting 10 completely different races -- i.e. a sider race, a bat race, a 6 legged race, etc. all with their own weapons, armor, etc.   I want that too.  On the other hand, I also want a 3D engine and high resolution textures and to be able to fully clothe and armor these units.  Unfortunately, that would require a 64-bit game because you can't do all those things in 2GB (just think about how much memory a single 4096x4096x32bit texture takes up. That's ONE texture).

The good news, and I apologize for digressing for a minute, is that this is an area where the PC is going to destroy the consoles when it comes to epic games because within a year or two, games are going to be 64-bit only and at that point, we can have as much stuff as we want.

But I'll just repeat what I've said before, when it comes to tactical battles, we look at MOM as the inspiration.  And most of their elements that people liked were strategic game features that were translated their way into tactical.  No one would ever call MOM a tactical war game. But it's tactical was extremely fun.

This is fine by me as well if we're actually going to see these things. I could probably live without range or obstacles mattering to ranged units or counterattacks and that kind of thing if the battles were in some way made less bland. Sure, I would without question rather tactical battle system was made everything it can be, but I'll settle for 'not-bland' if the rest of the game is otherwise fantastic, which thus far seems to be the direction it is taking.