No, that's not right. I quote Frogboy from this thread:

What exactly this means has been discussed to no real end. We don't really know exactly what they have planned for the tactical combat, only that it is not strictly turn based combat ala HoMM, but that it isn't really real time, either.

That would be lame. But rather than enforce a time or turn limit to resolve this problem, I'd rather the game just recognize that there is no possible resolution to combat between units that can't harm one another and force a draw. Although this would be complicated by magic, which is kind of a wildcard.

Edit: Goddamn this forum's broken quoting!  I can't fix it. I don't know what's wrong. I suspect the regular quote is somehow the culprit but the HTML all seems to be in order.

Edit: I took Luckmann's anti-poopface advice and it 'worked.' I also stole Luckmann's name for NTJedi because Jedidude is more fun. I couldn't think of a good, clear monicker for Luckmann - and I am most certainly edit not /edit referring to him as any form of president! (Wow, leaving out the not really changed the meaning of what I meant to say... Sorry Luckmann! )

:p

From the sounds of it, he means exactly the kind of simulated realtime that you've got in, say, Neverwinter Nights. What I'm more interested is in how the pause function will function in multiplayer, since it's incredibly annoying to have someone else pause "your" game. Ask the friend I played through Baldur's Gate II with.

And pigeonpigeon, if you remove all "who="Poopface" reply="42", etc and strip it down to just quote and /quote, it should work. It ruins quoting entirely, but it gets the job done.

/sadface

Edit: I edited my post and moved some quotes around, and suddently all quotes are broken. Le SIGH.

So, just for reference.  Where did somebody say it wasn't turn based?   I think that source should be brought to front, because from what I understand it is.   If its going to be like "X-com meets dungeons and dragons" (I'm pretty sure that is a quote from somewhere in an article about elemental, possibly an interview) that means E:WoM is turn-based.

Would anyone seriously raise the argument that, for example, Total War or Baldur's Gate are truly turn-based? There's all the rolls, all the turns, it's all theoreticly there, if someone wants to raise the argument. But would anyone, seriously?

(and now I know that someone will)

Total War is not, Baldur's gate is.    Baldur's gate had the option that would pause it every turn and you'd have to hit 'end turn' to continue.  You could turn this off though and the turns would tick by on their own, which is how most people played since I believe it was the default.   Total War has no such feature, so while mechanically it is turn-based perhaps, there is nothing like that on the surface.

I *think* I know what you are talking about though.  I do not remember Frogboy saying it wasn't still turn-based though.  He said it here on the forum somewhere.  To me it sounded more like they were trying things and was intentionally vague since it hasn't been finalized yet.  Like, when he said it I remember thinking "they are adding non-turn based elements to the otherwise turn-based battle?  That is going to be interesting" 

Having it auto-turn bauldur's gate style is fine to me, it keeps the action flowing and helps minimize the amount of time spent in battle.   That being said I've seen interviews say both "like X-com or the original fallout" and "like the total war series" in recent interviews.  (the 1st is IGN and the 2nd is Gamespot)   The first example is quite specific by using like examples, the 2nd is again seems to be intended to be more vague.   So we'll see.

*added note:   I know that the place where frogboy inplied it may not be entirely classic turn based was something to do with this picture:

But it was never a turn-based game.

Even in Total War, or almost any RTS game, there's turns. The amount of them and how they work vary greatly, but it's still all there. At what moment is something a 'turn' and at what moment is it not?

Right, I guess I wasn't very clear by using quotes.  Sorry about that.   I should have used brackets I guess, since I was changing the original name.  But yes, it is unpause.  But it is the spacebar which is end turn in most games.    Also, in my manual here it says "combat is played in turns".   I understand what you are trying to say, but BG is an exception because it DOES have turns.  They just created it in such a way that you can play real-time as well.    You assign your actions, *turn happens* you assign your actions *turn happens*  isn't exactly like TW or any other RTS.   But I guess from here its just getting nit-picky.

So, now I just wish SD would go ahead and tell us about combat.   I guess we will know by at least June when the beta comes out.   Maybe they will release more accurate screenshots (or screenshots that don't give the wrong idea anyway).

It's exactly like, say, Total War. Except that Total War doesn't have that optional "pause after every action", or that it doesn't measure it's timespan in rounds. In both cases, it's a relatively arbitrary measurement of timespan - they just differ.

Actually, that was a typo . It was sort of in response to you calling yourself 'El Presidente Bär' (I stole your name for NTJedi but was not willing to adopt the name you chose for yourself :P).

I apologize for getting your hopes up (but thank you for the karma anyway! mwahahaha).

Turn Based Strategy games with multiplayer and how they resolve combat:

Master of Orion (2?): Enforced Autoresolve global setting (instant behind the scenes dice throwing) or Turn based tactical combat global setting. Both worked in multiplayer, the turn based one had the usual issues that system has.

Sword of the Stars: time-limited real time combat, with optional (per case) autoresolve. This is the model to follow if you want non-turn based multiplayer combat. It get's around the turn-base issues, and is essentially identical in both "continous turns" (Starfleet Command is a great example of those) and "real time" versions.

The difference between cont. turns (Baldurs Gate, etc.) and real time is essentially none. Just think of real time as cont. turn where the "turns" are 1 second long.

Can anyone think of any other games with different solutions to the multiplayer combat problem?

Let's try this again indeed...   now just because the battles are not TURN BASED  does not mean the battles are immune from lasting forever.  There are many situations which can cause a battlefield to last hours or days even for continous turns and as far as real time strategy.  Two sides of a battle may each have one or more units/champions which are immune to attacks from the other side.   Understand?   I hope so. 

So my questions remain

1) What's planned for the  time / continous_turn limit?   How long can the battle last?  (Otherwise the next world map game turn would never arrive)

2) What happens to the defenders and attackers which cannot retreat from the battlefield after reaching the above unknown limit?

Again, I'm going to reply by saying instituting a time limit is only one possible solution, and in my person opinion an inferior one. A much better solution to this problem would be to implement the ability to request a draw, and in certain circumstances to force a draw.

Explanation: Any time during any battle one player can request a cease-fire (just for that one battle; the war continues, but the battle ends). The other player can obviously refuse. All remaining units on both sides survive. Now, if you're in a battle in which no damage has been dealt by either side for a while (should be a setting), either player can force a draw, without the permission of the other player. Again, all remaining units survive.

In fact I am actively opposed to an actual time limit. I want to be able to fight massive, truly epic battles that take a long time to come to a conclusion just because there are so many combatants, or extremely tough ones. A time limit doesn't allow that sort of versatility.

ah Pigeonx2.  I have a compromise idea about those time limits.

Let us make the time limit feature an option BUT!  make the battle scene so awesome it is a game in and of itself.  

In the total war series you could play multiplayer battles that are just that.  You get like X points to get whatever units you want, upgrade to vetran if desired, and so on.    This game is going to have oodles of custom units to play with, and sometimes you may just want to play with whatever bizzaro units without having to actuall tech to them in the game (maybe related techs have not yet been perfected so you can't even do it). 

Now, then we could host tournements of JUST the battles.   That includes super epic battles where both players take all the time they want, as well as rapid "you have 30 seconds to move"-chess style battles, or just "who ever is doing best after 10 min".   Like having the option for time limit opens up a bunch of doors for tournement play and such that were previously closed, and we can still get those long epic battles as well.  Everybody happy!

I am kinda disappointed int he direction the tactical combat seems to be going. I guess I will take a "wait and see" and hope I am pleasantly surprised.

For a game like GalCiv2, the continuous combat is cool,but I really wanted to have a little more hands on in the battles, and yeah there is the pause feature but I really envisioned the tactical combat as being turn based. So I would say this is the first thing about the game that I am disappointed to hear.

In multiplayer it will be annoying to have the other player pausing battles to change orders. How many players can play at once in multiplayer? am I gonna need to go make a sandwich while other players are resolving battles? (not that turn based would change that).

To me it really seems like it is the worst of both worlds - either make tacitcal combat a "mini-RTS" where you have to select and give orders in real time, or go turn based. Again I will withohold judgement until I see it, but I am not enthused atm.

@Denryu  -   I know what you mean.   To me it is still a battle system like HoMM or MoM, everything else is just hypothetical brainstorming to me.   I personally don't expect it to be RTS at all, expect whatever isn't classic TBS about it will be something new and innovative that won't be the obomination I think we fans may have constructed in our discussion thread.   I do expect some dungeon crawling of sorts in an X-com/Fallout style, but again I don't see how that could be Real time since X-com and fallout are the examples given and are very NOT real-time.

Being Turn-Based vs. Real Time vs. Continuous Turns does not inherently change how hands on combat will be. The only thing that will determine how hands on combat will be is how Stardock implements whichever combat system they choose (currently continuous turns). And the combat in GC2 isnt really continuous - there are very discrete turns there, it's just the player has no control over anything and the computer decides it all. Don't like at GC2 to get ideas of how Elemental's combat will work.

Now, I will admit I'm also somewhat skeptical about the direction they're taking with combat (either TB or RT wouldn't have phased me), but I'm withholding judgement until we actually have something to work with.