Sounds good. I have a daughter that is 4 years old and could supply some graphics here

Enjoy your holidays!

That sounds amazing.

Happy thanksgiving!

But dragon age is fully real-time. So was baldur's gate if I remember correctly, although it had the weird concept of the personal initiative round (Everyone had their own non-synchronized turn sequence, although that affected only some actions, others were fully real-time). So what does continuous turns mean? Or what do you think real time means, because dragon age is as real-time as you can get, it most definitely has no concept of rounds, or turns, or anything but seconds and milliseconds.

Do you mean completely unlike dragon-age but more like Space rangers? Space rangers has real continuous turns I think. If you pressed the pause button, you still had to wait several seconds for the current turn to finish, then the game paused, then you could give orders. Do you mean like that?

IF the continuous turn system works as you describe, it meets with my seal of approval. Since you people generally do not lie, I'll be happy for the time being.

Why did the Elemental team choose this over a more conventional turn-based system?

Raven is spot on.  It is Magic:Total War.  I've already posted my "thumbs up" for this game in the PC gaming section.  They've borrowed heavily from several games.  I suggest you look at the game for the Battlefield style of control points.  Their use of control points on the battle map made unit speed an important consideration.  It works as a game mechanic and provides an alternative path to victory on the battle map.  See for yourself.

Thanks you frogboy, hope you had a nice Thanksgiving

I hopr the tactical battle will live up to our excpectations, bu that what the beta is for.

Warder

baldurs gate was not real time.  There was an arbitrary time limit after taking an action before you could take another action.  That action could be cast a spell, attack with your dagger, drink a potion, use an item, etc.  The movement of your character was not tied to this "turn" which gave a much greater appearance of real time vs turn based.  Starcraft is real time.  as fast as you can select a unit, hit a hotkey, and target an area things happen.  after a unit uses an ability, that ability is locked out for a period of time in some cases, but you can use another if you prefer.  You do not queue an action and the character sits around waiting for their "turn" like in baldurs gate.

The fact that movement IS real time in baldurs gate, can make it seem that the entire combat system is, which is most definitely not the case.

Another example of true real time would be first person shooters (probably my least favorite video games mind you).  As soon as you press whatever key you have bound to "shoot" it fires. your movements and actions all take place as you press the buttons.  there is no delay as you wait for your "turn".

The difference between continuous turns and regular turns,  continuous turns will take place until you intervene to stop the process by pausing.  "regular" turns will stop and wait for your prompt.  The first time I recall ever seeing continuous turns, was final fantasy 6 (released as final fantasy 3 in the US)  The game kept right on going unless you had selected the dummied down mode.  Those of us old enough to remember Dragon warrior,  will all remember the prompting "A red slime draws near, command?"  and it waited for you to chose your action.

So a quick review:

Turn based: Dragon Warrior serries, Final fantasy 1, Final fantasy Tactics, Fire Emblem, Vandal Hearts, Dark Sun Wake of the Ravager, Master of Magic, Master of Orion

Continuous turn based: Final Fantasy 3(6 in japan), Baldurs gate(though the movement in this game was real time)

Real Time: Command and Conquer series, Star Craft, / War Craft, Homeworld / Homeworld 2.

One last note,  continuous turn based games typically have the option to auto pause whenever one of your units no longer has an action queued.   So while a continuous turn based game can become turn based, a turn based cannot become continuous turn based.

I hope this shed some light on a rather confusing topic.

Yes, automatic stop is great thing: no action, unit near death, unit dead.

Will there be fog of war in tactical battle (like in UFO)?

This is exactly what I wanted. Yay.

I've always tried to turn every continuous turn game into a turn based when I could. I guess it depends on the game design if it will work. For strat games generally I enjoy turn based where I don't have to worry about pausing frequently to keep track of everything. I mean total war style is fun and all, but one of the things I always hated about it was frequently pausing to keep the guys walking in proper formation. At any given point in that game a single misclick could shatter your entire formation as the units went int some spastic rotating dance, the only way to fix it would be to pause and redraw the entire thing unit by unit.

Baldurs gate continuous turn works because you only have at most like 5 guys to manage. It is easy to follow the action and see what is going on. I guess it depends here how big the armies are, since numbers can be big, perhaps it would just take too long for each unit to have a turn on the battlefield.

Anyway, continuous would work but it has to have lots of auto pause features AND units need to behave properly when unattended. But honestly, when I settle in for a 4x strat game, I don't have my 'go fast' mode on. I don't want things happening all at the same time. I don't want to have to make sure my archers are keeping pace with my infantry, while , oh look, the guy to the south just got surrounded, SLAM PAUSE BUTTON, ok what do I do back off, unpause, oh look something up north PAUSE. Fix.

Biggest of all, say I roll out a really badass unit. I want to watch him eat through things and cast his world shattering spells. I don't want to have to start his spell up, then have to go away and micro my infantry away from some guy half way across the map, missing the conflation.

These are all RTS things, and sure, RTS is fun, but for 4x I really do prefer turn based. I mean the same with final fantasy, I liked the ATB thing but there were only THREE troops there, and I still had the game pause when scrolling through a large menu to find a spell.

I dunno, I would prefer a turn based combat game...but a done well rts style (continuous turn but still cmon its RTS) could be ok. I guess it depends on exactly what a unit could be doing to make it well.

Long story short, in 4x games, in battle and in the big map, I want to make strategic tactical decisions that gets me through the game. I do not want my reaction time and clicks per second and 'uber micro' to make a difference in the game. When I have a situational awareness failure, I want it to be because I did not send out a scout or look in that area, not because  I was looking at one end of the map hyper focusing on a battle and didn't scroll down to check out what was going on in the corner. While that gameplay is fun, I don't think it fits in a 4x game.

Again just my opinion, which won't mean much, but yeah, this old fart wants complete control at all times over all units, with no need to be able to do 500 clicks per second.

 Any way we could have an option to auto pause at the end of every round?