I'm not sure there's enough return on the investment here.  TBS fans are going to buy this game regardless, and adding in the extra system isn't likely to attract more customers outside that group.

Continuous turns are turn-based. 

The difference is that the turn button is held down by default.

Baldur's Gate was most certainly turn-based in its combat but, like Elemental, it was continuous turns.  It literally used the D&D combat system in which every action used up X number of time units and such.

A player can turn off the turns at any time they want in the battle and literally just do it themselves if they want to be the one pressing the turn button.

With Continuous turns, you can literally pause the action, give orders to your units and see how many  "turns" it'll take for that to happen.  But when the action is moving, it moves fluidly.

Master of Orion had continuous turn tactical combat as well.  You could, however, stop the action at any time and give new orders to your ships.

I think you should reserve judgment until you've tried it.  

Baldur's gate you could set the options to pause at the end of every turn and force you to push the 'end turn' button.  (which I believe was space bar)  making it true turn-based.   Very few people did this, because  it was kinda annoying (you say  "go here and attack" and that command doesn't really change 

It might "feel" like real time, and that is the point.     But its not.  You're talking 'damage per turn' rather than per second, which makes for a very fine line, but still not the same.  Instead of Blizzard style cool-downs, you have x-turns until it refreshes.  Because everything would  be based on a mechanical level around "turns" it should provide a little more ability to us as players to   conform the  battle mechanics to our liking.

It does open for options to pause at the end of every turn, and allow for orders to be issued that way, if so desired.  So it should be possible to have complete turn-based combat without much more work (so if  the devs focus on their battle system and do not spend any time on making it non-real time.    Then we modders should be able to make that  adjustment for them with only little effort)  But  it does not force multi-player to be the  common bore of waiting for the other person to end their turn.  

Of course a lot of  this depends on how SD actually makes it,  I am projecting a bit of my own interpretation and hopes I'm sure, especially because I want to see official support for turning off "continuous turns" as an option at release.    but I wanted to try and translate Frogboy's words another way that might make sense  to those having  trouble grasping the  'continuous turns'  idea.    Its not just the ability to "pause and assign moves" there is a  major distinction  on the coding  side of things to run things based on "turns" rather  than "seconds" and  it makes  a big change in  how  the development of  the tactical system is going to go.    There will likely be a lot of adjustment  to  'how  long is a  turn' as well as the possibility of denying player's turns, and all those other  things that  might in any way be  unique to turn based combat.

I personally would like to see  a paused time at the begining and every few turns where  you could queue up moves for the next few turns for multi-player.   Supreme commander-like I suppose (its the best queue system that can think  of, though it could still be  improved).

@Landisaurus

the "rounds" in nwn were 6sec = round (afaik) ,it was similiar in bg. So you could make a direct conversion between damage per second to damage per turn, attacks per seconds ...

so i ask what is the difference between pausing the game every 6 seconds or every round? in a turn based system things like initiative are far more important (i.e. pool of radiance), i played a lot of continus turn rpg games (bg, bgII + addon, icewind dale2, nvn + addons, nvn2 +addons) and although there are minor differences to a real time game on the whole the games feels very much like one. (@Wahngrok i don't know if it would be a lot different if you say 1 turn = 18 sec, well maybe, i don't know)

My biggest gripe with continus battles are the simultanus turns, imho one should go for a classical turn based battle system (i.e. no simultanus turns) or real time one, i really do not see any major  points for continus simultanus turns.

I am not trying to talk it down, but to me the differences between the two are too minor, to make a distinction.

Age of Wonders had simultaneous turns rather than uh, politely take your turn turns.  Far superior.

To what extent are the tactical battles obviously rule driven? ie. Do units move in uniform increments of squares/hexes? What sorts of formal elements call attention to the game as a game with its own rules (and not a simulator which strives for realism)? etc. (RTS's are just as just as rule driven, it's just harder to see what goes on under the hood.)

Simultaneous turns != continuous turns.

I still don't get how will it work. Units move & fight in real-time, but every turn (every 15 sec.) the game pauses & I can send orders? Of course my & foe's units move in the same time (after the order phase). How will it be resolved in the multiplayer? Will every player have a period of time, during which he can send orders (30 sec.)?

This is IMO the biggest problem with Gal Civ the auto resolve combat. I want to command my troops on the tactical level as well as the Stratigic level.  I sure hope that Elemental will not be like this.  Also this Continous TBS Combat system sounds to much like a RTS system. And if this is the case then I will not get this game because I really hate RTS games. Only two have been any good and that is the Total War series and the Homeworld series. I just hate click-fests.