Happy Thanksgiving!

I like your idea for the tactical battles. Would be an improvement over the standard MOM-style.

Sounds good. I have a daughter that is 4 years old and could supply some graphics here

Enjoy your holidays!

Good to hear!

Happy Thanksgiving, even tho we don't have something like this in Europe.

That sounds amazing.

Happy thanksgiving!

Tactical combat is a big part of strategy games and Elemental's tactical combat sounds just like what I'd want. Also Happy Thanksgiving. 

But dragon age is fully real-time. So was baldur's gate if I remember correctly, although it had the weird concept of the personal initiative round (Everyone had their own non-synchronized turn sequence, although that affected only some actions, others were fully real-time). So what does continuous turns mean? Or what do you think real time means, because dragon age is as real-time as you can get, it most definitely has no concept of rounds, or turns, or anything but seconds and milliseconds.

Do you mean completely unlike dragon-age but more like Space rangers? Space rangers has real continuous turns I think. If you pressed the pause button, you still had to wait several seconds for the current turn to finish, then the game paused, then you could give orders. Do you mean like that?

Im looking forward to testing it out!  

IF the continuous turn system works as you describe, it meets with my seal of approval. Since you people generally do not lie, I'll be happy for the time being.

I support the request for Magic: TW.  Especially if they'll add support for multiplayer campaigning.

Why did the Elemental team choose this over a more conventional turn-based system?

Frogboy, you need to check out that new game "King Arthur: The Role-Playing Wargame" for inspiration. They did indeed make what I'd call "Magic: Total War". I also think they stole some idea's from Elemental and were just lucky beating you to release. The battle engine for the game, in appearance, is what I would call "Magic: Total War". In it's use and implementation though it's not quite as deep as a Total War game, but it's close. It has fantasy units and magic spells that can be cast by heroes on the battle map. Definitely go check it out. I'd love for the engine for Elemental to be like this only with the Elemental art style.

I'll be posting a review of it in the Off Topic PC Gaming section of our forums later if you'd like to read it. If not I'm sure there are plenty of gaming sites that have reviews of it up.

Raven is spot on.  It is Magic:Total War.  I've already posted my "thumbs up" for this game in the PC gaming section.  They've borrowed heavily from several games.  I suggest you look at the game for the Battlefield style of control points.  Their use of control points on the battle map made unit speed an important consideration.  It works as a game mechanic and provides an alternative path to victory on the battle map.  See for yourself.

do you seriously want us to rally together to  create a petition  or something to send  to  creative  for a total war game with magic?     (like an actual total war game, rather  than King Arthur...     which  I'm  more  interested  in now that ravan is waving it around)

Thanks you frogboy, hope you had a nice Thanksgiving

I hopr the tactical battle will live up to our excpectations, bu that what the beta is for.

Warder

I'm not sure who this "ravan" guy is you're talking about , but it's a pretty cool ass game, Landi. Check it out brother, you won't be sorry.

baldurs gate was not real time.  There was an arbitrary time limit after taking an action before you could take another action.  That action could be cast a spell, attack with your dagger, drink a potion, use an item, etc.  The movement of your character was not tied to this "turn" which gave a much greater appearance of real time vs turn based.  Starcraft is real time.  as fast as you can select a unit, hit a hotkey, and target an area things happen.  after a unit uses an ability, that ability is locked out for a period of time in some cases, but you can use another if you prefer.  You do not queue an action and the character sits around waiting for their "turn" like in baldurs gate.

The fact that movement IS real time in baldurs gate, can make it seem that the entire combat system is, which is most definitely not the case.

Another example of true real time would be first person shooters (probably my least favorite video games mind you).  As soon as you press whatever key you have bound to "shoot" it fires. your movements and actions all take place as you press the buttons.  there is no delay as you wait for your "turn".

The difference between continuous turns and regular turns,  continuous turns will take place until you intervene to stop the process by pausing.  "regular" turns will stop and wait for your prompt.  The first time I recall ever seeing continuous turns, was final fantasy 6 (released as final fantasy 3 in the US)  The game kept right on going unless you had selected the dummied down mode.  Those of us old enough to remember Dragon warrior,  will all remember the prompting "A red slime draws near, command?"  and it waited for you to chose your action.

So a quick review:

Turn based: Dragon Warrior serries, Final fantasy 1, Final fantasy Tactics, Fire Emblem, Vandal Hearts, Dark Sun Wake of the Ravager, Master of Magic, Master of Orion

Continuous turn based: Final Fantasy 3(6 in japan), Baldurs gate(though the movement in this game was real time)

Real Time: Command and Conquer series, Star Craft, / War Craft, Homeworld / Homeworld 2.

One last note,  continuous turn based games typically have the option to auto pause whenever one of your units no longer has an action queued.   So while a continuous turn based game can become turn based, a turn based cannot become continuous turn based.

I hope this shed some light on a rather confusing topic.

Continuous turns sounds great, my favorite style.

Taking a page from Dragon Age, it would be cool to assign leaders to unit groups and have them managed with preset tactics. Like making the archers leader target light infantry type or run when units get close. This would reduce micro-managment when you start to get huge armies, but would still have the option to issue direct orders to all groups if you perfer to. These leaders could also be tied in with the family trees and hero's.

Yes, automatic stop is great thing: no action, unit near death, unit dead.

Will there be fog of war in tactical battle (like in UFO)?

Man I loved those Dragon Warrior games. I got the first one when I was 9 or 10. It took me almost 6 months to finally beat it I think. Those were the days.

This is exactly what I wanted. Yay.

Indeed, it's an excellent game! The combat AI is not the best, but ah well...the Total War AI was easy to beat also.

Btw, ranged units are way too powerful imo, but I just started the second chapter [Book 2.], so this might change later on.

I've always tried to turn every continuous turn game into a turn based when I could. I guess it depends on the game design if it will work. For strat games generally I enjoy turn based where I don't have to worry about pausing frequently to keep track of everything. I mean total war style is fun and all, but one of the things I always hated about it was frequently pausing to keep the guys walking in proper formation. At any given point in that game a single misclick could shatter your entire formation as the units went int some spastic rotating dance, the only way to fix it would be to pause and redraw the entire thing unit by unit.

Baldurs gate continuous turn works because you only have at most like 5 guys to manage. It is easy to follow the action and see what is going on. I guess it depends here how big the armies are, since numbers can be big, perhaps it would just take too long for each unit to have a turn on the battlefield.

Anyway, continuous would work but it has to have lots of auto pause features AND units need to behave properly when unattended. But honestly, when I settle in for a 4x strat game, I don't have my 'go fast' mode on. I don't want things happening all at the same time. I don't want to have to make sure my archers are keeping pace with my infantry, while , oh look, the guy to the south just got surrounded, SLAM PAUSE BUTTON, ok what do I do back off, unpause, oh look something up north PAUSE. Fix.

Biggest of all, say I roll out a really badass unit. I want to watch him eat through things and cast his world shattering spells. I don't want to have to start his spell up, then have to go away and micro my infantry away from some guy half way across the map, missing the conflation.

These are all RTS things, and sure, RTS is fun, but for 4x I really do prefer turn based. I mean the same with final fantasy, I liked the ATB thing but there were only THREE troops there, and I still had the game pause when scrolling through a large menu to find a spell.

I dunno, I would prefer a turn based combat game...but a done well rts style (continuous turn but still cmon its RTS) could be ok. I guess it depends on exactly what a unit could be doing to make it well.

Long story short, in 4x games, in battle and in the big map, I want to make strategic tactical decisions that gets me through the game. I do not want my reaction time and clicks per second and 'uber micro' to make a difference in the game. When I have a situational awareness failure, I want it to be because I did not send out a scout or look in that area, not because  I was looking at one end of the map hyper focusing on a battle and didn't scroll down to check out what was going on in the corner. While that gameplay is fun, I don't think it fits in a 4x game.

Again just my opinion, which won't mean much, but yeah, this old fart wants complete control at all times over all units, with no need to be able to do 500 clicks per second.

... We need a beta update! Need to test new stuff... NOW!

 Any way we could have an option to auto pause at the end of every round?

the only thing I would caution about is putting too much emphasis on battles.  Magic: Total War would be fun, but I think there comes a time in every Total War game that I've played that I've looked at the map and said, "Ugh, not another !@#$! battle."  Usually a good number of hours in.  Not that the battles aren't fun and exciting, but they take so damn long.  That and the AI resolution usually doesn't do anywhere near as good of a job as the player would, and the size of the battle maps makes for a long, protracted battle each and every time.  Battles are important and I would like to see a more complex battle style then, say, Civ4 stack-wars but maybe less time consuming than ME2 Total War. I think an overly complex battle system would take away from the rest of what's out there in Elemental.  I want to be clicking "next-turn" far, far, far into my "just one more turn" rationale.