Sounds hella confusing. 

Why not keep it simple for terrain?

You get an advantage in killing power and defending when soldiers occupy the higher ground.

Get slowed down by soft ground.

Just same ground conditions as our real life planet Earth.

Terrain bonuses should be limited to where mana shard nodes is. Represents soldiers tapping into it's power. Soldiers protecting an Air shard will receive an general boost in initiative or something and that's all. Life shard gives an boost in hp. etc.

I've played FFT extensively, it did terrain good. Only reason why I don't play it anymore is because it got old playing on same maps and enemies for like three hundred times.

I'm with you.. I like the quickness of the tactical battles as well, it keeps the pace of the game perfect, imho. I would play something else if I wanted to spend a lot of time planning each battle. I've played the SK beta more than I have FE:LH because it's so easy to just start it up and progress in a few hours.

You mentioned time slices/ticks. Have you considered an action point system similar to many other games with tactical combat (like shadowrun:dragonfall or xcom:enemy within)?

Right now my sovereign can move 4 hexes if nothing blocks his movement and then he can do an attack. What I would like to see is that everything has a tick/time slice cost. So if a round has 20 ticks, then moving one hex costs 5 ticks, doing a basic slashing attack costs 10 ticks, casting a basic spell could cost 10 ticks, casting an advanced spell could be 20 ticks. If you added that with an overwatch feature along with round based cool downs for special abilities and spells, then I think that would make battles far more interesting.

I personally like the idea that player skill and tactics can and should make a difference, particularly in a closely matched battle.  Certain battles should be lopsided, tactical combat can and should have some strategy to it other than just clicking the enemy or why have it?
  

Probably the biggest differntiator from LH is that SK's tactical battles are much more like Master of Magics in the sense that all units have abilities, many of them several and knowing when and how to use what matters.

So knowing what ability or spell to use when matters quite a bit.  

One regret I have in LH is that we didn't give each faction their own unique damage type so that players could design units based on defending against that unit type.

In SK, every minor has their own damage type (poison, fire, arcane, ice, etc.). Now, the trick is making those minor factions matter a lot more.

But that's still planned, riiiiiiiight?

I thought it was worthwhile adding a comment to this discussion, as it covers a lot of interesting ground. First-off: a cave-at that I didn't read every single post; but a quick scan suggests that this hasn't been proposed:

Instead of focusing too much on positional tactical elements (flanking, backstabbing, etc), I think there is a lot more excitement if the focus where on buff/debuff combinations where the sum is greater than the component parts. This is similar to the combat system in Divinity: Original Sin - spells/conditions can interact with each other. Cast a big oil slick, then cast fire on it, that kind of thing. Enemies that are under the effect of water can be stunned with electricity damage.

Where it actually gets interesting, is that this allows strategic spells to be cast in turns before combat happens in an area (to cloak the area in darkness, rain, heat, frost, whatever), to have synergistic interactions in combat later.

Quoting Tattyhat, reply 1

Look here my good chap.  Frog doesn't like tactical combat, so I don't think it matters what you want. You will get what you are darn-well given and like it

And that, my friend, is why Sorcerer King holds very little interest for me. To put it bluntly, a bunch of half-done features clumped together seldom make a good game. 

I hope they will address real issues, not this ethemeric range penalties. 

And, btw, anything can compete with Endless Legend singleplayer mode . 

What does "ethemeric" mean? Geniusisme, I'd like it if they addressed real issues too. One such, rather glaring, real issue is that all range units appear to be equipped with heat-seeking, solid-rock-penetrating missiles. Which real issues would u like to see addressed? 

Quoting geniusisme, reply 62

I hope they will address real issues, not this ethemeric range penalties. 

And, btw, anything can compete with Endless Legend singleplayer mode . 

I disagree. Endless Legend is one of the best 4X experiences I've ever had. Even in single player mode.

Penalties will make no change because ranged troops are not really a big deal. Raiders are better for player and with an army of raider there is pretty much no difference between ranged and melee enemies.

Ok, let it stay that way. I'm not going to argue about EL here. I'd just that I was disappointed that all these clever mechanics have little meaning with game against AI (at least I perceive it that way).

Hi all...

I agree.

Personally I don't think you should loose any sleep on that one, I'm not sure how well that would have worked in LH.  Minor factions in SK sure.

Agree, some kind of LOS or cover would be nice IMO.

Cool game (EL) but kinda boring AI IMO.

Just my random thoughts.

Imho, the interesting thing in tactical combat is making non obvious choices.

High Ground is only a non obvious choice if said ground is either:

A) in the middle of the map, so moving your ranged dudes there risks them getting melleed.

if you have a choice between abandoning the high ground or getting your ranged units melleed.

C) if there are multiple positions with different boni available (f.e. defence bonus in a forest vs. better damage output from a hill).

This is not a very common situation.

Flanking would, generally speaking, have a lot more possible drawbacks:

A) Aggressive flanking is more likely to get your own flankers flanked too (this is the main thing, it will always be a factor unless you are fighting a single unit stack).

B)Your fast moving flankers will probably have a choice between going after the enemies ranged component, or going after his line troops (and do flanking moves).

Some other mechanics that could be fun:

-Something akin to a "defensive swarm" bonus for Pikemen. If you unit has a friendly pikemen in contact, it receives a +1 Swarm bonus against anything it attacks in mellee. This may only be done if the Pikemen has no direct contact with the enemy.

-Generalized trade off, do you want the Pikemen to give Swarm boni, or do you want the pikemen to do actual damage itself?

-Do you want a wide front to efficiently protect your archers, or do you want to focus your mellee component on a breakthrough?

-Do you want to risk getting seriously hit by area of effect attacks?

In general, I am trying to make different units more worthwhile. My reasoning is the following: There arent a lot of units that are buildable in general, and Paladins (due to their enchant abilitiy) are clearly the best units that involve resrouces. Imho, they outcompete all other units so much that any Crystal/Iron not used on a paladin is somewhat wasted.

Maybe other things:

-For units with shields:

--Shieldwall: Extra dodge against ranged attacks, reduced movement. Tradeoff is pretty clear I think.