I lament the poor tactical combat too. I'd compare it to a kitchen that never uses any herbs or spices for fear of being labelled 'a restaurant'. Tactical combat without tactics... is just combat.

Consider this quote from the wikipedia article on military tactics and ask how many actually apply to tactical battles in SK.

"Military tactics are both a science and an art. They answer the questions of how best to deploy and employ forces on a small scale.^[2] Some practices have not changed since the dawn of warfare: ambushes, seeking and turning flanks, maintaining reconnaissance, creating and using obstacles and defences, etc. Using ground to best advantage has not changed much either. Heights, rivers, swamps, passes, choke points, and natural cover, can all be used in multiple ways. Before the nineteenth century, many military tactics were confined to battlefield concerns: how to maneuver units during combat in open terrain. Nowadays, specialized tactics exist for many situations, for example for securing a room in a building."

I'd say none... or maybe 1 or 2 if you're being generous. (some maps have a choke point, sometimes you can swarm the enemy)

Going further:

General tactics

• Force concentration - the practice of concentrating a military force against a portion of an enemy force^[1]

• Exploiting prevailing weather - the tactical use of weather as a force multiplier has influenced many important battles throughout history, such as the Battle of Waterloo^[2]

• Night combat - combat that takes place at night. It often requires more preparation than combat during daylight and can provide significant tactical advantages and disadvantages to both the attacker and defender^[3]

• Reconnaissance - a mission to obtain information by visual observation or other detection methods, about the activities and resources of the enemy or potential enemy, or about the meteorologic, hydrographic, or geographic characteristics of a particular area.^[4]

• Fire Attacks: Reconnaissance by fire is used by apprehensive soldiers when they suspect the enemy is lurking nearby. Basically, fire into likely enemy positions and see if anyone returns fire, or otherwise reveal themselves.

Small unit tactics

The use of suppressive fire is a key part of modern small unit tactics

• Infantry Minor Tactics
  • Fire and movement (also known as leapfrogging) - working in 'fire teams', one team attempts to suppress the enemy while the other moves either toward the enemy or to a more favourable position.
  • Basic Drill - A standard drill that all individual soldiers are supposed to perform if they come under fire.
  • Contact Drill
  • Immediate Ambush Drill
  • Counter Ambush Drill
• Hull-down (in armored warfare)
• Shoot-and-scoot
• Infiltration tactics
• Marching fire
  • Four Fs: Find, Fix, Flank, Finish
  • Overwatch
    • Bounding Overwatch
  • Center Peel
• Patrolling
  • Reconnaissance Patrol
  • Fighting Patrol
  • Standing Patrol (OP/LP)
• Ambush
  • Linear Ambush
  • 'L' Ambush
  • Area Ambush
• Guerrilla

Offensive tactics

The cavalry charge is a quintessential offensive military tactic

• Charge
  • Highland charge
• Ambush
• Skirmish
• Trench raiding
• Peaceful Penetration
• Rapid dominance
  • Blitzkrieg - a method of warfare whereby an attacking force is spearheaded by a dense concentration of armoured and motorized or mechanized infantry formations, and heavily backed up by close air support,^[5]
  • Carpet bombing - also known as saturation bombing, is a large aerial bombing done in a progressive manner to inflict damage in every part of a selected area of land.^[6]
  • Human wave attack
  • Shock tactics
  • Swarming (Military)
• Planned attack
  • Use of Supporting Fire
  • Indirect Fire Support
  • Base of fire
  • Flying wedge (used by Alexander the Great)
  • Armoured spearhead
  • Encirclement
  • Hammer and anvil
  • Inverted wedge
  • the "refuse" (cavalry formation)
  • Frontal assault
  • Holding attack - to hold the enemy in position while other offensive or defensive activity takes place
  • Penetration or infiltration
  • Pincer movement - An army assaults an enemy by attacking two sides at opposite locations, often planning to cut off the enemy from retreat or additional support in preparation for annihilation.
  • Pincer Assault - An army assaults an enemy force by sending troops to the enemy's flanks and by attacking their front attacking three areas at once, often planning to cut off any retreat or support as well as confusing the enemy in preparation for annihilation.
  • Flanking maneuver
• Interdiction- Severing or disrupting lines of communication and supply
  • Air interdiction
• Control MSR (Main supply routes)
• Envelopment tactics
  • Circumvallation
  • Finnish motti tactics
  • Siege
  • Vertical envelopment
    • Airborne Forces
    • Air Mobile Forces
• Rapid deployment
  • Capturing key points
  • Airborne operations
  • Air Mobile operations
  • Amphibious operations
  • Motorized operations
  • Tank desant
  • Mechanized operations
  • Armored operations
  • Raiding: A small team is inserted deep behind enemy lines to capture a high valued individual or destroy a vital enemy installation then extracted before the enemy can respond.
• Preemptive Strike
• Disrupting Communications
  • Electronic countermeasures
  • Radar Jamming
  • Radio Jamming

Defensive tactics

Defensive trenches were used commonly during World War I

• Basic Principles
  • Defence in depth
  • Mutual Support (e.g. by crossfire)
  • Phalanx formation
  • All round defence
• Fighting withdrawal
  • Reserved demolitions
  • Scorched earth
  • Booby traps
    • Minefields
  • Trench warfare
• Counter attack
  • Breakout
  • Counter battery fire
  • Rapid reaction force
• Delaying Defence
  • Break contact
• Hedgehog defence
  • military bottleneck
• Pakfront
• Fortification
  • Field works (entrenchments)
    • Over Head Protection
    • Revetting
    • Sangars: In areas where the ground is too rocky for troops to dig in, they construct bullet resistant fighting positions by stacking stones.
    • Shell scrapes
    • Foxholes
    • Manholes
    • Spider holes
  • Strong points
• Use and improvement of terrain
  • High ground
  • Protection
  • Natural barriers - e.g. rivers
  • Obstacles and barriers - man made
    • Barbed wire
    • Anti-vehicle ditches
    • Anti-vehicle berms (knife edges)
• Multiple Axis of Movement

Deception

A mounted archer of the Ming Dynasty Army fires a parthian shot

• Deception and misdirection
  • Deception: Sun Tzusaid that all war is based on deception back in the 4th century BC; a wise commander takes measures to let his opponent only react to the wrong circumstances. Diversionary attacks, feints, decoys; there are thousands of tricks that have been successfully used, and still have a role in the future.
    • Perfidy: Combatants tend to have assumptions and ideas of rules and fair practices in combat, but the ones who raise surrender flags to lure their attackers in the open, or who act as stretcher bearers to deceive their targets, tend to be especially disliked.
    • False flag: An ancient ruse de guerre - in the days of sail, it was permissible for a warship to fly the flag of an enemy power, so long as it properly hoisted its true colors before attacking. Wearing enemy uniforms and using enemy equipment to infiltrate or achieve surprise is also permissible though they can be punished as spies if caught behind enemy lines.
  • Military camouflage
  • Stealth technology
  • Disinformation
  • Feint or diversionary attacks
  • Reverse slope defence
  • Electronic warfare
  • Electronic countermeasures
    • Electronic counter-counter-measures
    • Radio silence - while traveling, a fleet will refrain from communicating by radio to avoid detection by enemy forces.
  • Force multiplication
• Use of surprise
  • Parthian shot
  • Hit-and-run tactics
  • Irregular warfare

I certainly agree with everything you say ditoLoco. The thing that annoys me most is that the engine supports all the tactics stuff... it's a design decision not to include it. (Or spend the required time prototyping, testing and researching what to add).

The argument to include terrain bonuses is that it is fun in other very similar games, and feels like a shortcoming in the Elemental series. This means that it can be done well, and, speaking bluntly, you just haven't managed it. Go and play Eador - Masters of a Broken World if you want to see it well done. 

Instead of putting in some bonus tiles, each tile should have properties. Thusly you force the player and the AI into a choice, and it also directs the battle. What ground do I want to hold on to because it is valuable, and what ground do I want to deny the enemy from controlling because it will be difficult to dig him out? It provides HUGE gameplay value to spells with knockback and spells that alter tiles, not to mention AOE spells. 

It also provides important strategic differentiation. A unit might be able to pass through a forest tile without losing movement, and a woodelf ranger might be able to ignore the penalty for hitting units in forests. Furthermore, the importance of different ground changes depending on your own units and the enemy's units. This means I have to be careful about where I fight and who I fight.

First, you want tactical battles to be very short. But if we want short battles we autoresolve them. What is more important is if the battles are fun to play, and if they offer meaningful choices. They aren't, and they don't, even in Sorcerer King. Forcing them to be short contradicts those goals.

Second, you want tactical battles to be determined largely by what units go into the fight. This means the fight itself mostly doesn't matter. We want them to matter more. We don't want ONLY tactical to matter, just a tweaked balance towards it mattering more.

PS. Screw flanking.

If you attack Gibbai from the mod Children of Storm they take you into a nightmare dimension where they get +50% damage. If they attack you, you get a normal battlefield. That sort of thing would be neat to have as well.

Well that's not really the case is it?

You have research in the form of your sovereign skills. That's the tech tree. 

But that's all besides the point, I agree that warfare is more important. This is a post regarding flanking specifically and the nature of how tactical battles should be fought.

My view is that it's about what skills, abilities, and powers you bring into the battle and how you use them.  

But I also feel that we're not doing all we can to make tactical battles be what they could be.  

The question is, specifically, what are some things we could do that do NOT result in tactical battles taking substantially longer to play out.

I have always thought a lot of depth and fun could be added to tactical combat simply through better unit role design. Have different enemies require different tactical strategies. Force players to innovate and experiment instead of repeating the same rush to gang beat enemies every single time. Repetitive AI is a large problem as well. 

Here are some interesting enemies...

-Units that can sit back and stall melee units using movement restricting spells or waves of disposable summons. This only works if the AI actually targets your most dangerous melee units and keeps them out of the battle instead of webbing your archers and then rushing to die at the hands of your melee units. 

-Units that can teleport in and attack vulnerable units while being smart enough to avoid strong melee units. Or at least wait to attack in concert with other units if that isn't possible. 

-Powerful casters that use high speed or teleportation to keep away from your melee units while attacking from a range.  A high cooldown could keep it fair.

-Powerful melee blockers that knockback your units back or just cut them off from reaching their more vulnerable allies. Again they can't just exist and flail around they have to actually block your units from advancing using ZoC. Would also not attack first in order to keep their defensive stance bonus. 

-Healers that target weakened allies, and units smart enough to retreat to get healed when damaged if a healer is present. 

-Fragile high damage melee units that hang back and engage only after their tanks have absorbed your first attacks and left you vulnerable. Could also have cleaving attacks and be smart enough to position themselves for maximum effect. 

-Suicidal bomb units that explode on death. 

-Anti magic units that can protect allies from spells. 

-Units that can set up smoke clouds or barriers against ranged attacks, if they are present. 

-Powerful casters who sit back ,while their allies hang back to protect them, and charge up big nasty spells with large casting times. 

Adding things like terrain and flanking won't matter at all if the answer to every single situation is still the same, and it will be if the AI isn't more adaptive. In every single tactical battle in LH the tactics were always the same, the AI would run at me and I would run at him and then I killed everything with powerful melee units. I would pick out his more vulnerable units as they rushed to attack me leaving huge holes in their line and exposing themselves.  Why would you ever need tactics to deal with a mob of suicidal individualists? 

I would rather also have weather effects than just day/night in tactical.

Blizzard - snow fall effect. Everyone gets -20 cold resistance and +20 fire resistance.

Heatwave - everything looks washed out, lighted up. +20 cold resistance, -20 fire resistance

Rainstorm - random lightning strikes, rainfall. -20 lightning resistance for everyone, +20 ranged dodge

Blackest night - everything turns dark. -10 dodge for everyone. Bonus for shadow creatures?

Daylight - normal, no benefits.

I'm finding myself agreeing with lots that has been said. Weather, interesting terrain, interesting units, good tactical AI are all missing and would add to the tactical 'fun' of the game.

But going back to the start I disagree with this quote:

"In my view, the purpose is to put to the test the collection of units you have versus the enemy."

I think, as you dislike tactical battles you are misunderstanding the entire purpose and fun of tactical battles for other people. I don't think people enjoy tactical battles to 'test' things. I think people enjoy fighting a seemingly unwinnable fight (your collection of units is technically inferior) and, by clever use of terrain, weather, cover, synergistic bonuses and special manoeuvres turning the tide of battle and earning a win. Something clever and amusing enough to put into song and be sung in the halls of Valhalla. There is no sense of... triumph, of achievement given by tactical battles where your army of strength 20 beats an army of strength 10. Autoresove should deal with those fights, not with the fun ones. (It's like how much enjoyment I got out of forcing a draw in chess in one of my first ever games, I was losing badly, only through tactics could I hope for a pyrrhic victory.)

My recommendation: If you do not enjoy the tactical battles then find someone (on the team) who really does, and then trust them to deal with them as they deserve to be dealt with.
(I wouldn't take on another's geography project because I hate geography (not because I'm bad at it, but the two are often tied together), and could never do it justice.)

Or, personally put in the time and enthusiasm it deserves.

Or, try to think of battles not as a chore or test. (words that really indicate a dislike of the thing), but as an engaging, enjoyable, immersive diversion. A chance to prove your skills or be surprised by enemy tactics. A chance to experience the world intimately and viscerally, to see the beautiful horror of battle, to feel your units hope and despair, take pride in their accomplishments and feel sorrow for their loss. (Especially if that unit was key to your strategy, had personally turned the tide of a dozen heroic battles against superior foes.)

I think first we need to prove to you that battles matter to people, before we start listing the whole range of tactical elements that could be added... there are lots and lots and lots. Adding a few to appease people isn't the same as changing your entire approach from 'battles are an optional test' to 'battles are a core, fun and challenging part of the game'.

Frogboy, I am not sure I can agree with your reasoning.

I think it is only normal that a tactical battle takes time to resolve.

I don't understand why they should be called tactical battles if they are perceived as a bother that should be resolved quickly.

In the case of spells for example, you added a different layer of strategy by adding terrain morphing spells you previously could not exactly because this is a different game from LH.Their implications and consequences is something that needs to be considered and takes time as well, but it's part of the fun in a strategy game.

The same holds true for tactical battles. Deciding where and when to move the units is part of the fun, if they last longer but they are fun, I don't see where is the problem. The real problem would be if they lasted longer but they were not fun. Then yes, we would have a problem.

I think that things like weather and day/night cycles can be cool, but they need to be more than a simple switch like "-1 chance to hit", they would need to affect things the game does not have, like line of sight, range of the ranged weapons.

Different types of terrains and bonuses would help, even terrains that give penalties (or bonuses, maybe if the fight starts on a tile with roads?) to the movements of units.

Mostly though, I am afraid that the game would need different dynamics that by now are impossible to implement because they would take too much time to be worked on, like the above mentioned line of sight, morale... they would make battles more complicated of course, but in a good way.

You make some very good points here Dr. Franknfurter.  I wholeheartedly agree.

Wow, have read all the posts in this thread and an interesting discussion.

Surprisingly I should be agreeing but I find I am not. Over the last 30 odd years I have played a lot of turn-based games everything from Panzar General, Tthe Operational Art of War, SSG's series of games (Korsun Pocket, Battle of Normandy, etc), John Tiller's Civil War and WWII games, and Gary Grigsby's games, most recently his War in the East (which just got another new big beta patch) and very much looking forward to his soon War in the West, the other week the lighter Battle Academy 2: Eastern Front (only about 3 hours so far). Mention this list purely so as people do not think I am talking out of my hat and get an impression of the depth and battle time length I like in turn based strategy games.

I find the quickness of the tactical battles refreshing, (yes I also have 80+ hours logged in Eador), and the example above of games in the ilk of Tactics Ogre (love this game) Final Fantasy Tactics, those tactical battles can last at times 20 + minutes. I can not see a way to introduce flanking without removing or limiting to a point, where it should be removed, the swarm tactic.

I am obviously in the minority but as I said I find the quick battles with the combination of spells/attacking/swarming refreshing, to let me get on with the exploring/questing/rpg side of it. I suppose the problem is though, if the majority disagree will they look elsewhere eg: Age of Wonder 3, which I consider a relatively simplistic (although enjoyable) tactics system but with battles still sometimes taking 20 - 30+ minutes, and that is a simplistic tactics system. I have no impression of how to implement more meaningful tactics without adding significant play time to the tactical battles. I would still be perfectly happy playing such a game as I do very much enjoy that, but I already have that option in so many other games, this quick tactical battle system is a nice pace for a change in my opinion.

Interesting discussion though. 

Regarding Frog's comment about flanking "just being a bonus for being behind another unit". It's not like that. It requires that the player use the fact that enemies face our units when we attack them to our advantage by drawing their attention and then placing subsequent units to reap a moderate benefit. Flanking in AoW3 DOES NOT TAKE SIGNIFICANT TIME, but adds a great deal to the tactical strategy of it all. 

Weather effects sound great. At the end of the day, I feel like a game with such a strong focus on battling needs a bit more in the way of tactical variance. Perhaps weather, minor flanking bonuses and the Sorcerer King slinging spells would be enough. 

Again, I agree with most of what FF says. His idea for the name of the game makes a lot of sense. Too bad it's probably too late.