Brad said this in his Day-0 update post:

One piece of good news on MP. Originally we had planned to eliminate tactical battles from MP entirely because of balance. Some people correctly guessed the misguided (in hindsight) reason for this: We were approaching MP from a purely competitive point of view.  Based on the persuasive arguments made by our players, we have decided that tactical battles will be made available in MP – as an option – at a later date as a free update.

As I created a thread asking them to re-think their stance on multiplayer, I wanted to create another one to express thanks for them re-evaluating and changing their position.  I know that the multiplayer community of any TBS game is a small minority so having the devs respond to our cries is greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Stardock, for making the changes we requested.  The prospects of Elemental multiplayer just got that much better!