It's the rest of your post that was the problem.

Assumption #1: Assuming that MP has anything to do with anything. The combat system is going to be the same for both, which mode it's played in is irrelevant.

Assumption #2: That battle length can be "voted on". What if there is no pre-game battle length setting? "Okay guys, we can't fight for longer than 10 minutes, so uh, if 10 minutes are up and one looks like he's losing, just surrender, k"?

Assumption #3: That the developers who advertise their game's moddability as "you'll be able to make new games with it" somehow don't have to concern themselves with making sure their engine (and yes, tactical battle mechanics are part of the engine) works outside of the "sweet-spot-in-our-campaign" spec within reasonable boundaries.

I don't think you actually understood what I was trying to say to the other poster.

He linked the length of combat to the current balance in the beta in terms of the size of armies we can produce. I just pointed out that you can't design a combat system based strictly on the fact that "on a tiny map, it takes over 100 turns to get 10 okay-equipped guys so battles are small". You have to design a combat system that works well for small armies, and scales pretty well for reasonably large armies, especially if you're going to encourage people to create new games with your modding tools.

Multiplayer has absolutely no relevance here.

Please re-read the quote in Post #134 as that was the point I responded to. Not sure what your on about above....

Nothing in the post you quoted from talked about mods, and in fact nobody else was talking about mods. So, "As to the mods.." in your post was most certainly not referring to what you quoted in #134.

Unlike those other games though, in Elemental, Each Individual Soldier will be counted for On Screen. You Won't see a picture of a group of Knights with a little number that says (1000 or 500) that counts as the number of actual soldiers. We won't need to use our Imaginations to envision our troops and with todays level of technology I don't think I should have to.

In Elemental if all of your units combined equals a total of 10,000 Individual Soldiers/Creatures/whatever, All of them Will Be Visually Displayed On Screen. This much we already Know for Sure and it has been stated by Frogboy him-self.

Units will be counted as Companies/ Divisions/Parties etc etc based on the players level of Warfare Technology. This has already been seen first hand in a previous version of the beta where the Warfare Tech Tree has been available to us. One of the things I remember researching was the ability to group my units by "Company". You do this when you make units in the game, and it takes those individual soldiers from your cities population. I would expect a Maxed Out City (Level 5-6?) to have at Least 10,000 people in it. If I have 5 or 6 cities of that size and a thriving economy I would fully expect to be able to field a Army of 10,000 men.

The 4-5 City Count would only be on Medium or Small Maps. As they've already shown, Huge Maps will undoubtedly have Kingdoms (or Empires) so large they will control vast areas of land. I can see my-self having 10-20 cities easily by Mid to End Game on a "Large" or "Huge" Map. Now THAT is EPIC (to Me).

I have to pitch it with the guys here who are saying that you've got to be really careful not to confuse zillions of cities/units with epic.

There are epic battles in mythology that were 1v1 e.g. Hercules vs. Cerberus.

A game that is bogged down in 2 hour turns and managing 20 cities tends to feel, to me, more like work than like epic.

Civ IV, for example, suggests the minimum number of players for a given map size... I think it is 12 players for huge. That's because the designers are very aware that the way you expand has a sweet spot, and that's around 7-9 cities in Civ's case.

Indeed, we're trying not to take it literally, we just want to make sure the battles scale well for when we Do have Lots of Soldiers for the Epic Last Battles. When you think about it though, "Going Through the Motions" is a matter of Perspective and Opinion. Anything from founding a new city to casting the most devastating spell in the game, after you've done it enough times, can be considered "Going Through the Motions". Eventually any and every game mechanic, no matter how cool or innovative or exciting, will get old eventually.

That's why all those people who don't want to play through each battle need is the option to Auto Calculate at Any Time they want, which Frogboy already said was going to be possible. That's why it's pretty pointless to be listening to anyone who's saying "Whaaaa, I don't want to fight long battles"...So DON'T, just Hit Auto Calculate and be Done With It IF THAT'S WHAT YOU WANT. Personally, I WANT to play EACH AND EVERY BATTLE MY-SELF. As long as both groups of players have the option to do it the way they want then any personal opinions are completely irrelevant. If someone isn't smart enough to realize they have the ability to end the battle any time they want then that's their own stupidity and Not any fault of the game's design.

If you're tired of playing through a long battle, just end it. If you want to play through a long battle, then play it. Just don't RUIN THE GAME by TAKING AWAY the Players Ability to Chose which one to do. This way Everyone is Happy.

Exactly Right!!! This puts the choice where it belongs, in the Individual Player's Hands.

Exactly. That's why You can End the Battle Any Time YOU Want. If you don't want to play through those long battles, YOU don't have to . Just hit Auto Calculate which you'll be able to do at ANY TIME. See what I'm getting at here?

There's No Need to gimp the game for those of us who DO want to play through the long battles when those who don't want too don't have too.

Except of course that auto battle will tend to give sub-optimial results compared to running tactical combat, so in a tight game that's not actually an option.

When did anybody ever advocate removing the ability to do the battles yourself? The problem is people asking for absurdly long battles. No battle will actually last that long unless someone is extremely slow in deciding movement (which is fine), or the combat system is designed to just take a really long time (which is not fine). With tactical combat in most other games, your typical combat is a few minutes long. These hour long battles just don't exist in reality very often because as soon as you have to do it regularly, it switches from fun to mind numbing tedium.

And that's pretty much the stated design goal. Typical combat will be a couple minutes long, and that keeps the game moving. But since there's no hard limits, on the off chance huge armies collide and things take a while? No problem. It's just not a goal to make horribly long battles the norm.

You're not really advocating choice, though. You're advocating tactical battles only for people who want insanely long tactical battles, and no tactical battles for everybody else. "Oh just always auto resolve" is not a real solution to the problem any more then "oh just disable magic" is a solution to a problem like fireballs being too powerful (not that they are right now).

This is true, but also as I've said, like three times now, you don't have to play through the Entire Battle. Play it until your enemy is "almost" destroyed if that's what You want, then hit "Auto Resolve" and you won't take massive losses as long as "Auto Resolve" is done right. As far as I know, making sure the "Auto Resolve" is "Done Right" is a pretty big concern for Frogboy and the Team.

Not at all, my friend. What people aren't understanding apparently is you can hit Auto Resolve in the Middle of a Battle if You want. This means you can control the battle long enough to make sure you're going to win without taking massive losses, THEN hit Auto Resolve so you don't have to "Mop Up". It's a choice given to the player.

I don't want each and every battle in the game to take forever, nor do I want each and every battle in the game to take 3 minutes or less. It's all about giving the individual player the ability to control as much or as little of the combat that they want.

When did anybody ever advocate removing the ability to do the battles yourself?

Earlier in the thread someone said "Why have Tactical Battles at All?" that too me sounds like someone wanting to get rid of battles. In a round-about kind of way, limiting combat to 3 minutes for a Large Battle might as well be like having limited to next-to-no control. I just think artificial limits are bad. Plain and simple.

I feel I should expand on this with an example:

Battle:

Players Army: Sovereign, 10 Foot Soldiers, 1 Spell Casting Champion, 10 Archers.

AI Army: 1 Spell Casting Champion, 10 Foot Soldiers, 10 Archers.

I would play long enough to take out the AI's Spell Casting Champion and 10 Archers, then I'd hit Auto Resolve being quite confident that it would "Mop Up" those 10 remaining AI Foot Soldiers without killing my Sov or Champ.

That way, what could have potentially been a long or drawn out battle just got cut down to maybe 3 minutes or 5 minutes instead of taking the necessary 10 minutes to hunt down every enemy soldier or unit.

Just figure out who your target is customer wise and stick with it. Elementals development has weaved back and forth between stupidly (can you guess which camp I'm in?) casual and delightfully tactical with rich complexity.

One of the adages from one of old Aesop's fables goes "If you try to please everyone, you'll end up pleasing no one at all".

Being a fan of Master of Magic and the Twilight of the Arnor expansion I sincerely hope the tech complexity stays in as that is what I would enjoy the most.

I'm not sure if this screen shot is still relevant, but it looks pretty "epic" to me. Maybe it will help allay some concern:

http://ve3d.ign.com/images/68233/PC/Elemental-War-of-Magic/Screenshots/June-4th-Screenshot

I think just chillin' out and waiting until we see what tactical combat will feel like would be the most prudent course of action presently.