The argument has good merits, but I'm not totally convinced.
First, even a single, properly (or poorly) fought/planned battle can turn the balance in the game of power. Happened in history several times.
Second, if tactical battles are included, they should prove satisfying - if they are meant to mean little, maybe it's better to remove them.
The argument about the target player base has more weight imho, but to me it seems most FE players actually agree that tactical battles do need that little something to spice them up.
I don't really subscribe to that point of view. One of my favorite games was Balance of Power which was a diplomacy game. Fallen Enchantress has diplomacy but it doesn't hold a candle to Balance of Power. I don't think, however, that means we should remove diplomacy.
Speaking just for myself (not Stardock but as a long time gamer who is passionate about this topic):
I would rather have tactical battles that are sophisticated enough to be satisfying but not so sophisticated that the computer players can't fight them effectively. I think Fallen Enchantress strikes that balance. I know of many games that have tactical battles (land and space) and in each case, the AI fights them with varying degrees of incompetence. As a result, I feel like I have to personally play out each battle because I know that if I don't, I will severely compromise my civilization's ability to win. Specifically, I know in the typical tactical battle game that I can make a total loss into a total win easily by playing out the battles personally which sucks the fun out of it for me.
But in Fallen Enchantress, if I might be so bold, you can set your units to auto-play and know that the computer players will play it competently. Maybe not as good as an expert player but well into that "good enough" realm for most players.
Playing out the tactical battle should give some advantage to the human player vs. autoplay. But it shouldn't take an obvious defeat and turn it into a victory. It should be more of a tilting the tide.
Not to mention, we have a reasonably sophisticated tactical battle system in place. Initiative based combat (as opposed to side A, side
, differing effectiveness of different types of weapons vs. different types of defenses, and lots and lots of spells that, on the whole, the AI uses fairly well (and before someone suggests otherwise, I would ask them to list a game that does it better -- and I'm talking about a 4X strategy game, not say a game that only has tactical battles like XCOM).
In other words, the complexity of the tactical battles shouldn't get ahead of the capability of the computer AI to make use of it.