You know that is why I pre-ordered and got involved with this game, but that horse has already bolted from the barn. Age of Wonders was also touted as a spiritual successor to MoM and I think Elemental at this rate is going to be just as close.

Inspired by MoM it may be, a "Spiritiual Successor" it is too far of a stretch to call any more.

Whether it was forethought, simple genius, or a requirement for the future modding abilities, it does seem a bit odd that SD built a new RT based game engine, with an obvious lean towards CT as the primary battle model proposed, then had to back down to the newest iteration of Tile/Turn based for Vanilla.

I really hope Brad does not take to long to, if he does at all of course, writes up a Post-Mortem for E:WoM after release. I am sure the actual reason for the change, at quite an expense we are told, to caused such a shift would prove quite interesting indeed.

I won't bother to speculate at this time.

I think they just wanted to make it as moddable as possible, and chose the "least controversial" (because people who buy Elemental expect a TBS game, so it's logical that the combat is turn-based too) system as the standard one.

I don't honestly think so. The armies coming into each battle are different, and there would be several maps. It's not like every fight would take place on exactly the same terrain.

Previous games also had limited numbers of tactical maps, and honestly not having enough of them wasn't a complaint I heard much.

I think the maps could have Pre-Made characteristics, but they should resemble the place where the battle takes place...

Anyway, I truly hope for the release of Beta 2 this thursday...

Has anyone considered that maybe the original combat system that they had come up with was either just plain bad, or no fun at all? 

I think that pre-made maps are fine AS LONG AS battles in cities are based ON THE CITY!!! (as in City battles being randomized and field battles being premade)

However, even for field battles I think there needs to be some sort of parameter ... and if the tac battle's location/etc falls outside of that parameter its a randomized map instead of a pre-made one.

Hopefully this wouldn't take too much time to implement (as opposed to fully one or the other)

As far as Winner Take All ... I think that each turn each army should allow for one attacking retreat and one defending retreat. An attacking retreat is controllable at low morale, while a defending retreat is Panic (no control)

I agree that after N turns an attacking army's morale should drop "somewhat" but never resulting in an automatic loss please. As in, if you start with a high morale, then after 3/4 N turns you get normal morale, and after 6/4 N turns you get low morale ... however NEVER panic. And if you have normal morale, after N turns you get low morale. And if you have low morale, you stay? at low morale but after 2/4 N turns you get increased chances for events to drop your units morale to panic, and after 6/4 N turns the chances increase to a ridiculous level (like simply being flanked) ...

However never a default win/loss, or even a default switch to panic (except for defensive retreat, especially if out of a city)

No they wouldn't be - they wouldn't expect anything at all in particular. Most of the potential buyers have never heard of Elemental, beyond maybe the fact that it is a game in development, and will in all likelihood not hear much about it until much closer to release when actual previews and reviews start coming out. If they haven't ever really even heard of the game, then they probably don't "think that EWoM is the successor of MoM." And when they read those previews and reviews, they will learn what to expect from it.

Not to mention, I have been a TBS junkie since I started playing video games in ~1994ish. Before MoM even came out. I had never heard about MoM until our friends at Stardock announced that they were working on a spiritual successor to MoM 2 or 3 years ago. So even some of the most avid TBS gamers have never heard of MoM, so it wouldn't be too crazy an assumption that a sizeable fraction of more normal people who enjoy TBS games haven't heard of it either, let alone played it.

But that doesn't make sense. People who buy Total War games expect a TBS game, but it does not have turn-based combat. Sure, by now there have been enough Total War games that most people who are likely to buy one would either know from experience that Total War uses RTS combat, or they'd have heard through the grapevine. But what about the first installations of the series?

And far more importantly, anyone who buys a game without reading about it at all deserves whatever it is they get if it turns out they thought the game would be different than it is. People expect what is advertised about a game, not the first association they make in their heads when they see the genre. Not to mention that nowadays the inside of the box cover of most games displays major game features quite prominently. People who don't know anything about a game don't expect anything about it; people who have done their research know what to expect.

...This thread has gone off topic. But I suppose it has gotten to the stage where it's too unwieldy to be very productive anyway, and I think most topics of relevant discussion have been more or less exhausted so I don't feel too bad for contributing to the derailing of yet another dev post.

Morale

I think your idea about morale sucks

So if my archers does almost no damage to the enemy then on top of that, their morale goes down the drain as well??

That's a slippery slope and I don't see the point of that (and realism is an invalid reason to me.)

WTA

Lots of complicated rules, for what gain?

And again this realistic morale....and add % lost in retreat to that....No....

Controlling the length of a tactical battle

1. Completely against you here. I like kiting.

2. I believe an Initiative stat is better

3. Sounds good

4. I support a timelimit for everything except combat just like in AoW: SM.

I wouldn't have given feedback if you hadn't asked for it, but there you go.

I have pluyed many multi- player games and personally your multi-player options should be just that an option. If all players want to not have tactical combat time limits then they should have the option to have this.  I know the people I play with would not want a time limit.

Turn-based sounds like a great idea. And I think it will be lots of fun for the beginning of the game. But once you get later in the game it will quickly bog things down unless tactical combat is simplified into oblivion. I think this is going to cause problems for the game that will only become evident later when it's far too late to change back to real-time combat.

Just think of how long your X-com turns got when you had the biggest ship and imagine trying to play that in multi-player for EACH BATTLE.

Don't take this the wrong way anyone, I was as psyched about it as anyone, BUT, unless something radical is done with material costs, build times etc, fielding the ultimate 10,000 man Battle force may not happen on anything but the HUGEST of maps that make it so you never see another player for 4000+ Turns.

Perhaps Beta 2 will shed some new light on the state of that game element but I am skeptical at this point. I hope I am totally wrong.