My initial impression of tactical battles is not good at all,and not only from a visual standpoint.
Indeed... so I'm assuming that the implimentation in 3B is just the skeleton of tactical battles to come. clearly some more depth is needed to make the battles compelling and fun.
Here, in no particular order, are some of my favorite features from other tactical combat games that i think could be implemented in Elemental
* Age of Wonders: The whole system was pretty good -- in particular, I liked the way that the turn was broken up so that you could either attack 3 times, move a lot and not attack, or move a little and attack once or twice
* Heroes 3/5; King's Bounty: Obviously stacks have their own problems, but even with stacks, the strike & counterstrike system is pretty solid, and magic has a nice variety buffs & debuffs, direct damage, aoe's, and traps.
In both AoW and HoMM/KB: Something i really want to point out though is that almost every unit other than the basic goons have a couple special abilities either activated or passive, like Whirlwind attack, Charge, Fire arrow, etc.
* Total War: RTS of course, so not everything applies, but there's a pretty compelling underlying tactical system based on maneuver and zone of control. You have your line infantry (whether men at arms, hastatii, musketmen ...) who can pin the enemy down for some time, and then you have your guys who deal lots of damage when stationary but are fragile (archers, howitzers...). Then you get a couple of ways to disrupt the battle lines to your own advantage: assault (cataphracts, grenadiers..) or maneuver (horse archers, cavalry). Toss in a few activated special abilities like Testudo and Phalanx, and then mix in units that break the paradigm in interesting ways (like dragoons)
* Battle for Wesnoth: hex, turn based system also based on zone of control -- good example of how interesting gameplay can emerge from a very simple system. interface is clunky though.
* Starcraft: the hard counter (marines are great, aoe kills marines, assassins kill aoe; melee beats missle if they can catch them) was pretty good at encouraging combined arms