Or do they?

I love tactical battles and I find empire building actually in both games quite boring ... For me battles and preparation for them is why I play both games. Building cities is like this: I am building +15 mana, b/c I need, and in this city +100% gold, b/c I need more troops. Sometimes I even do not know the names of buildings  

I am also surprised that magic is such meh in AOW - global spells are immediately dispelled, and you are limited to like spell per battle till your heroes are really levelled. I like it way more that FE. In general surprisingly I feel distinction between factions/races way and its influence on a style of play way more in FE than AOW. In overall, I would just move tactical side of a game from AOW and add it to FE, that's in my opinion it is the only way it could be really improved from AOW. 

My ideal would be something like Total war's series or dominions with the battles that are turn based. We do not have really any game were you can fight big epic battles with lots of troops (and which are turned based), but where the battles are the consequence of strategical choices.

If I could I would get rid of levelling of the units and champions - more you are invested and dependant on high level troops, more one-battle wars become. 

But those of course, are my personal preferences  

In Master of Magic, I really enjoyed just clearing out the map of monsters and lairs, collecting experience and loot along the way. I play AoW and FE the same way, leaving the AI as "dessert" unless they get too annoying early on. In MoM, there were some very challenging fights against Demon Lords, Death Knights, and  flocks of Sky Drakes. Even with a powerful army, there was a chance of death, even a complete wipe. 

I have never felt such things playing any other 4x game. The bosses in FE were laughably easy against my stack of doom and died in 1-2 turns. AoW doesn't really have any creatures that provide a challenge beyond the early/mid game which is unfortunate. Warlock at least had nice assortment of powerful creatures that requires lots of preparation and tactics to defeat without losses. The god slayer victory condition was pretty cool for this reason.

I like shorter tactical battles, too. I'd like to see true line of sight and limited range with ranged attacks, like AOW, and deeper tactical considerations, but I don't like a battle lasting more than five minutes, ten if it's a "boss" or big faction fight. 

Brad, what are the battles going to be like for Elemental 2015? 

How far will LH 2.0 go in changing things? Will it mainly be bug fixing or will we see those UI updates previously talked about? What about more map stamps, or other additional content?

PS: can we please have 1.6 sometime soon? 

Of course they function like the conquest victory, but how does the Master Quest fit into that variant of the conquest victory? You don't even have to have contact with the other civilizations to win this way. Similar to the spell of making. I would claim conquest victory would require you to have contact or met with other civilizations. It is conceivable that you can win the game without any civilizations having met each other.

In essence these are war games because they function like war games, you fight other civilizations. But the victory conditions do define what approach to one may apply to the game. In AoW, you must defeat your other major players through strength of arms or direct diplomatic accords. A basic definition of war game.

With the spell of making, as soon as you start building the towers, everyone wants to go to war with you, so you need to have defeated them earlier, or have a high enough power rating to fend them off. Master quest, same thing. While you're busy with that, the other civs will take the opportunity to attack unless your power rating is at the top.

I disagree, Borg. I have played games where I completely ignore other factions and went through the master quest. Did not feel like a conquest game at all.

the Spell of Making is the same thing. It is NOT a war game. 

I would like to see more diplomatic ways of winning in E15, though. 

Both games are war games, but you do not have to win via conquest. aka The losing civilization is laid to ruin. AoW follows more this mentality than LH, so much so it makes AoW seem more like a War Game, where the main focus is on tactical combat and domination of the strategic map, vs. LH where you do not have to seek domination of the strategic map to win. You need to be powerful, yes... do you need to lay every civilization to ruin to win... no. (Does LH encourage you to lay ruin to every civilization, of course).

I look at the spell of making as more of a research / production victory than anything else.

I look at the Master Quest as a wonderful victory condition in the 4x genre. It is not a conquest victory, it is not a diplomatic victory, it is not a production victory, it is not a research victory.

Tatty, how would explain the popularity of the Civilization series, then?

I've had the "is LH a military driven game" conversation before in another recent thread.

While I agree that a military presence is required for every victory condition to be met (yes even the master quest needs some military), the miltary victory condition requires elements to varying degrees of teching, questing, and diplomacy to be successful as well. Thus, I do not attribute LH to being solely a war game. It requires mulitple facets. 

I'd love to see a new victory condition introduced into the game, Cleasing the Land, whereby it is up to the player to clear the world of Elemental of all Wildlands. Naturally, for this to work the master quest would need to have it's wildland aspect removed or slightly redesigned so that it is not a wildland. This victory condition would be another that is not entirely dependant on warefare.

That said, I'd also really appriciate if you disable the Master Quest victory condiction, the Pit of Despair does not spawn onto the map. It wastes precious space.

About Soul Binding: I woudn't appreciate a soul binding mechanic at all. Having the ability to swap equipment to meet your empire's demands is, imo, paramount. Having a method of transporting equipment over distances should be possible though.

Suggestion: Is it possible to have a 10th unit automatically embedded into each city that is founded? The trick is that this unit would be the SAME unit in each city, effectively making the unit seem to exist in multiple locations. Any ability to move....and perhaps even attach it to a special building that you can construct in your cities, and voila: city to city transport of any item. The obvious prereq: Your heroes need to stop by your empire's closest city to drop off or pick up an item.....imo, way better than having to go the full distance and meet the other hero in the field. Thoughts?

About Independant Cities: Isn't there some way these can be coded into the existing game? Independant cities exist in the scenario. Could they not exist in the sandbox mode as well? Remove there ability to construct pioneers and give them some base amount of metal and crystal and gold to play with.

About mounts: Would love to see several more mounts to mount. Pretty please.

About tactical battles: Imo, you've really done an excellent job with the current length of the tactical battles. They are long enough to make you really need to think about how to defeat your enemy, yet short enough such that once you've done your thinking the enemy can be quickly dispatched. I'd love it if it wasn't so easy to kite melee opponenets....I've dispatched a juggernaut with an lone archer before. Siege warefare and Dynamic terrain is wishful thinking...

Lastly, thanks for your continued attention on LH. It really is shaping up to be a fabulous game.

ps. I'm probably in the minority, but I think going back to single tile cities in E15 is a step backwards. I love being able to design and develop my multi-tile cities in LH. So, that said, PLEASE allow us to rotate our buildings again in the 1.6 update.

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I'm on board with this - the AI for me is there to provide more of a backdrop to the eXploration part.  I also personally like games where you can go the path of fewer more experienced/expensive resources vs masses of units - i.e. Tarth, but more-so.  

I do like the quicker tactical battles, but at the same time I like the decisions I make in unit/character building to matter and provide variety.

For me the biggest difference between the two is the empire building and decision making.

I'm only on part 4 of the campaign, but I haven't had to make a settler yet.    Cities are too easy to come by, are too generic, and other than gold and unit generators - very boring.     Minimal decision making - hmm, my front line cities can churn troops - I'll build a couple +mana and +research then put it on +gold (and continue).

Even character building is relatively limited - lots of choices, but very few actual hard decisions.   Few 'trees' per se, so you aren't giving up much by selecting this other thing.

Overall - it all seems very simplistic - hard decisions are few and even impactful decisions seem rare.

I have really high hopes for LH to continue post 1.6 (and all the mods to get updated).  

I also have really high hopes for Warlock 2 as well.  That was a fun game to explore/PVE and the individual unit upgrades were very cool.

World of Magic has potential as well as a MoM successor - but kind of skeptical the developer can pull it off.    Funded it though, so we'll see.

One of the things I like about the tactical battles in AOW3, is that if you really think your moves through, even with equally strong army's, you can win without losing a unit, or one at the most.

It's all in the movement.

The green, yellow and red hexes are a great idea.