If you turn the world difficulty down they won't attack you, they'll just sit out there in the wilds.

Please ...please ....please put Tactical combat as an option in MP otherwise it would not be worth playing the MP.

So... Every Tactical Battle that plays on a set type of terrain will have the same Map?

The old Warlords series had a cool concept: upon capturing a city, one could choose to "Capture", "Sack", or "Raze".  I think having these options would be very nice.  Capture just grabs the thing: no money, no loss.  Sack brings in some materials, gold, maybe even arcane knowledge (i.e. resources) but reduces population and damages/destroys some improvements.  Raze knocks everything down, and produces potentially more than sacking, but maybe nothing at all (i.e. 0 to n amount of resources).  Telling your troops to "burn and pillage" sometimes results in them burning, and then pillaging.

Monsters, of course, could be inclined to "Raze"; bandits might have a chance of "Sacking" instead.

So... Every Tactical Battle that plays on a set type of terrain will have the same Map?

For the moment, it would be easy to make 10 more maps of each type, and then random them, or have a seed type depending on the terrain, and then add random elements

Issue 1 is that autoresolve is by definition boring.  We need more of MoM and AoW and Xcom, and less 'Stacks of doom'.

Issue 2 is that some ppl have varied definitions of 'strategy' games.  Using myself as an example, I don't consider starcraft 2 a strategy game.  It is a ClickPerMinute based micromanagement game, with some spare logistic elements thrown in.  Whereas I consider Turnbased combat to be the essence and core of strategical gameplay, allowing the player to make both Tactical(will I win this combat/battle) and Strategical(if I sacrafice this unit I WILL win, but can I afford that loss in the battles to come) considerations.

You don't think being able to control your own army in combat is part of a strategy game?

What's the strategy in "throw what the computer thinks is a superior force at the other guy"?

Well I don't think it is pointless, playing  a game for the experience of playing the game can be fun enough.  With how the game is set up, I believe there could be more than enough fun just exploring the world and not having to defeat a specific opponent.  When you get bored you would just stop playing.

I've never actually seen this option in any game I've played.  Also I believe they already have a victory condition that does not rely on any opponent, the Master Quest victory, of course I don't really know what that is and I could be wrong.

I hope that these issues become a priority soon. They're related I think - some aspects of the UI reduce immersion.

The unit movement and turn mechanics in Elemental pretty much match Galactic Civilizations and to me that just don't feel right for Elemental. It is what most interferes which me feeling engaged. I suggest:

1) When a unit has the focus, gently highlight (with a color transparency) all tiles the unit can move to in the current turn. If the player has grid line display turned off, outline the edge of the reachable area and round corners in the outline. As soon as the unit starts to move, turn off the reachable tiles highlighting, then turn it on again when the movement animation is complete if the unit can still move this turn. (Note: this was mentioned in https://forums.elementalgame.com/386279 but I don't know if that was read by the developers.)

2) Add a mechanism which changes the focus to the "next" (any order is ok) unit which has moves remaining in the current turn. I suggest putting this just left of the "end turn" button, and graying it out when no moveable units remain.

3) Add a start of turn popup whenever a town finishes building something showing what it has completed, what it will build next, and with a button to set focus to the town's build dialog. Checking towns manually is tedious.

I haven't gone looking for stuff to tweak (haven't played much, it feels too much like work in its current state) but noted some other things I encountered:

4) When the kingdom is founded (first town) automatically display the build dialog. This would help to guide the first time player.

5) As mentioned in the post at https://forums.elementalgame.com/386279, remove an unnecessary click from the town build interface.

6) The way units enter and pop out of towns seems awkward to me. I especially dislike that I have no control over where a unit appears after leaving a town, and the similar random feeling movement off the tile after founding the kingdom. A possible fix would be, after founding the kingdom or popping a unit out of a town, change the cursor to the unit's icon and highlight the possible "drop" tiles. User clicks to drop the unit. The escape key could be used for auto-placement, just as a way out for new users who don't get the suggestion made by the highlit tiles.

7) The "Research Breakthrough" dialog includes in the description for each possible selection "Likelihood of being available", "xxx". This is confusing to a new player. Does it mean something might not be available even though it is being displayed? (Of course not but I stumbled over it first time.) Does it mean that something which is available at this instant might not be available on our next breakthrough? (I don't know the answer to this.) This wording should be reworked.

8) The dialog confirming the founding of a new Kingdom should include verbiage which says that the town will grow over time and is best founded near resources (fertile land, metals, shards, etc.) which it will be able to use when it grows. Verbiage like this would eliminate the uncertainties I had when I first played the game about how a town would eventually harvest resources.

I'm not someone likely to play MP much so this won't effect me but we already have that threshold feature.  Why take anything out?  Leave it up to the players if they want it or not.  Set the threshold to 99999 if you don't want them, simple enough.  Taking it out while a more MP friendly version is being worked on will not sit well with some people.  Options are good.

It'd only be a problem if there's nothing else you can do while waiting for them to finish. As long as you can do something it doesn't matter. Most TBS have ways around this to overcome the end of turn wait, whether that's giving the player something to do while waiting, letting them access the informational screens to plan their next few turns or even letting them spectate in the battles. I don't mind waiting ten minutes for two players to finish a tactical combat if I can use that time to check my empire is ticking over nicely, tweak my unit designs, check up on what certain abilities or spells actually do or even just read up on the background lore.

3.5 is the version that got watered down.. 4.0 distilled it. 

I just spewed water over my monitor and threw up a little in my mouth.