This makes me feel better, I would hate to see the tactical battles in single player having to change to cater to the MP crowd.

Excellent. More difficulty options the better. I loved it in FfH2 when AI players were beaten early on and I could laugh at them. I hope that the monsters and third-parties remain a consistant threat as they can be a serious impediment to growth, which can only be a good thing a the larger the realm the more gameplay becomes pedestrian, I find. 

i want elemental to have multiplayer but TB can really slow the game down.... i wouldn't care much if we were not able to use it till they allowed a better way for it to work on multi.

If Tactical Battles slow MP to crawl, there's no point in having them in the initial MP mode. Of course a on/off choice when creating games would be ideal.

As for the animation thing- one possible "lazy" solution would be to "Tekken"-it.

Use flashy hitsparks to hide the animation errors.  In Tekken, when you hit someone, usually there is some sort of loud hitspark that masks the poor hit detection.

May not fit the game at all though , and may come off as a bit cheezy.  Might work better for magic though.

As for MP and tactical battles: here's an idea.  Instead of setting a unit threshhold, why not a size of stack threshhold and a relative power threshhold?  Two variables.  Or replace the power threshhold with a surrender mechanic like AoW: Shadow Magic did.

Make it where you tactical battle if both stacks are in each side's top n sizewise and one force isn't x% greater combatwise.

Magic needs a catch. The reason it isn't engaging so far is that it's the same ol' same ol'. There's nothing new about it. Probably, Frogboy feels that it's wrong because he's hailed Elemental as the next 'big thing', so to speak.

So, here's an idea that just now came to me. It may be doable, it may not be doable. I figured it's worth saying, at least.

Thus far, magic seems to be, easily, the salvation and/or damnation of the world. It's a bit of a missing factor - the energies of magic are not wholly part of the world. Whenever you cast spells, then, you bring those energies back into the world. Sometimes, the energies linger - for better or for worse.

Each spell you cast leaves behind some traces of its type. Casting spells of a fire book leaves fire traces, water leaves water, summoning leaves summoning, etc. Each book stands against another, so that their traces neutralize each other. So equal numbers of fire and water traces would flat out to zero.

More traces are left with the more spells you cast. This buildup becomes a great font of power - as you cast a bunch of fire spells, there is so much fire energy in the air you can cast spells for free (by draining the traces instead of using mana) or have spells that are simply more powerful (a fireball with a lot of fire energy packs a hell of a punch, compared to a fireball with no traces of energy of any sort). Some spells have such a horrendously high mana cast that they will require you to burn through a lot of energy in the area to cast.

Eventually, there would be so great a buildup of certain energies (air, fire, etc.) that your area of influence becomes a certain domain. This domain gives passive boosts to units, and certain units and magical beings will be drawn to your territory (IE, having a domain of air would attract flying creatures. Of earth, sand golem-type creatures). The energies become so rampant, so powerful, that their influence causes occurences aligned with their books. Air domains will create sporadic storms, which will impede enemies and strike them with lightning. Fire domains burn enemies and penalize defense. A summoning domain randomly creates very weak units, powerful only en masse.

Thus, magic isn't the same as 'everyone is the same person with the same spells'. You get to choose which books to use, which magic to populate your kingdom with. Do you focus on just a few sorts of magic? You'll be far more powerful in them than others, but you will only be able to draw power from those particular types. Or do you not care about having the domain, instead wanting to be able to hurl every single spell in the game?

Do you choose power through variety and adaptation? Or do you limit yourself to just a few particulars? Be a battlemage whose magic is focused solely on destruction, or be a summoner whose very breath binds magic into minions? Or be a little bit of everything, jack of all books but master of none? The choice is yours.

The tactical battles are fairly critical for my friends and I.  Having a new game that could replace AoW:SM was what got most of them to spring for a pre-order.

@ xecran

That might be interesting, but a game without an end is a waste of time. ... *Cough World of Warcraft ...*cough

If you had an objective  like build to a certain point, or survive for x turns, that would be very interesting indeed.

It's a pretty common mode in strategy games, usually dubbed sandbox mode. Mainly used for testing out different combinations, or in the case of RTS games, build orders.

It's encouraging to consistently see Brad noting the same problems that I see when I play, namely the UI is click-heavy and still not that intuitive and magic is just not there yet.

Magic is especially problematic right now.  But am I the only person who thinks that more spells is NOT the answer?  There are already a ton of spells available and the magic system and interface makes choosing and using them extremely micromanagement heavy; its easily the most complex single piece of the game.  You have to figure out what each spell does, you have to remember what each icon stands for, you have to choose new spells on a regular basis (or be very confident queuing them), you have cast when you have mana, etc.  Maybe I'll feel better with some UI improvements but right now I dislike magic entirely as it requires so much work to figure out and use.  More spells would be fun down the road once things get worked out but right now I actually think LESS spells and a simplified interface would be preferred.

I realize most of the people on this forum are hardcore players who want tactical battles to take 30 minutes and will always want "moar spellz!!!" but remember there is a huge group of casual players who make up the majority of Stardock sales and if they get turned off by an overly complex and un-intuitive magic system where they spend 80% of their time fighting the interface and only 20% of the time actually playing the game its going to cause problems.

Super complex and extensive spell books can easily be added in via modding for the hardcore players, but if casual players get turned off to the "base" game because there is too much complexity to the magic system its going to hurt sales, I can guarantee it.  Particularly if the game gets the reputation as a hardcore player-only game.

It's almost like magic needs an "easy mode" option or something.

Tactical battles are a make or break deal for a lot of people.  I am one of them.  Honestly, I don't need SynchKill animations like Warhammer40k.  In fact the retro style of only the attacking unit moving wouldn't make me cry that much.  But not having TB tactical battles would definitely make me not recommend it to friends. Even knowledge that they would come later would be bitter.  Since it makes it feel like you pushed an incomplete game.

I have to agree, without tactical battles for my friends and I multiplayer will just not be played and it will be difficult for me to talk other guild mates into buying/playing the game as well.

PLEASE!!! Leave tactical battles in multiplayer if people don't want  it in their games just have an option to turn it on or off.

I agree, good idea.