I think the devs have decided to stay super tight lipped about the future of tactical combat. I am sure we all have different ideas on what tactical combat should be like, but it is ultimately their decision. However, I will give my two cents on the subject and hope as always that I can strike a chord with the community. I shall lay this out like most of my thought posts as a list of ideas, which makes it easier for me to flow from one thing to the next.
- Elemental currently lacks a kind of rock, paper, scissor quality. While I find that this mentality for combat can be taken much too far, without this quality, the combat simply devolves into picking the strongest guys at any time and mass producing them. Without some form of rock, paper, scissors, there is nothing to stop single units from gain too much strength and dominating the map. In GalCiv 2, there were three weapon types and three armor types, meaning that a unit which was strong vs one type would be weak against the others. The problem with damage and defense typing is that the player is incentivized to simply build tough fleets for each type. A better approach for Elemental would be something closer to the RPG idea of classes, giving each unit a combat role. This way players would be promoted to build armies which combined the various strengths and weakness of each combat role, and the actual combat would promote tactics over some form of min maxing numbers.
- Most combat units in Elemental have only two possible actions in any given combat turn. You can either move or you can fight. Since fighting comes down to straight number crunching, the tactics of Elemental moves towards simply min maxing each turn. If this were expanded so that each unit had more possible actions, then players would be given a lot more tactical possibilities. For instance, units could have multiple grades of attack, some of which might have cooldowns, thus allowing the players to decide how to approach each unit's turn. Players would be forced to choose whether to use a powerful attack immediately or perhaps to use a block/parry move, or to wait and use weaker attack until their opponent is out of position.
- Expanding upon the last point, units should have some kind of fatigue/readiness rating. This could be tied to all combat stats so that as a unit engages in combat, it becomes weaker and weaker. This would prevent solo attackers with amazing stats, like a late game champion, from solo killing entire armies without breaking a sweat. In fact, the rating could even carry over while out of battle so that a single army can not simply hold back overwhelming odds simply because they never tire of battle.
- Regular units should level up more than their hp and some accuracy. If I have a club dude from the beginning of the game and he has reached level 10 or 11, this unit should be fairly powerful and have gained some kinds of bonuses due to his combat experience. Yet, this unit will find himself weaker and more useless as time wears on since his weapon becomes more and more useless and his stat does not keep pace with the other units. Some have stated they would like some kind of upgrade system, but I think that if this unit was classed and gained real bonuses for leveling, upgrading would be ultimately unnecessary and not as interesting.
- Champions should be given combat buffs based on their charisma. This would allow them to act more like generals in the sov's army instead of merely glorified units.
- Tactical maps should have interactive buildings. This is something that was absolutely amazing in the AoW series and would be a welcome addition to Elemental tactical combat. Walls which the units could hide behind, or perhaps houses capable of concealing troops.
- Tactical Combat should allow players to set up their troops. This is something that is long overdue and I think everyone who has found themselves in a battle with their strongest dudes far behind a layer of crummy dudes can agree with this.
- Reimplement moral to effect combat stats, yet broaden it to allow for things like fear based on being overmatched or unhappiness due to fighting troops of a certain type. I think it would be interesting if some of the monsters could actually have an inherent advantage simply because the units were afraid to fight them, like pack drakes or shrills.
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