A lot of the visual impact of the battles really relies on your video card. We're in the process of tweaking the batching for Shader 2 cards, but it looks like drawing skinned meshes (animated characters) is going to be significanly more costly when on older cards. This means that you're not going to get the full effect of your giant armies (unlike Shader 3 cards, where batching will allow more units to be rendered at a time). The system will scale, but the overall feel of battles will lessen because of it (in Kings Bounty they get around this by having only one character her hex).

Wait 'till May, and perhaps before gold I can do a comparison between the different shaders and video settings to show what batching allows (in terms of visual appeal...gameplay will be identical).

It's an important part, but how can you say it's the most important one..?   I thought gameplay was the #1 priority for everyone.

I can say this much to your defense though, that if you've played Heroes of Might & Magic III, there was this fandmade addon called "In the Wake of Gods" (or WoG for short) where you could disable animations and increase the battlespeed so when you clicked to attack an enemy stack the result was instant. I would never play with that option, multiplayer or not. Not gonna do it. Cool animations really helps with immersion and is something I really appreciate.

There will be Shader 4 stuff in the game though so I think you'll get what you want.

I'm not worried about graphics card, nor should you.

I now have RADEON HD5770,GDDR5 1GB, I think most people will have far above min.sys.req. by the time the game will be ready for release, so you should spend less time making it available for a very marginal percentage of the market, and focus more on various visual effects and animations in the combat portion of the game so it would be more appealing for a larger percentage of the market.

P.S.

By the most important part in that previous case I meant the combat part of the game.

You're not using that phrase right and it appears you're just trying to throw big words into the discussion to make yourself look smart. My supposition is not a false dichotomy as I made no reference to a 'either/or' scenario. There are many many aspects to game development. Gameplay is one of them and I happen to think it is the most important one.

I very much agree that graphics enrich FPS games like Mass Effect and if your graphics are lackluster the quality of the game is at stake. However, in the RTS/TBS genre the quality of the game is very much in the eye of the beholder and their subjective opinions, I happen to think the game better be fun whether it has good graphics or not. 

How about Demigod? Did Demigod fail (and, yes, it did fail) because of the quality of animation? Absolutely not, that game is a beautiful game. Stunning in fact. It didn't even fail because of gameplay. The gameplay is great in that game. The game failed because of the many many problems with netcode and patching mishaps and bugs that still aren't fixed. I happen to love the game but it can be frustrating to play sometimes because of these connectivity issues and exploits people use.

Now, we can rephrase your assertions thusly:

'Will I enjoy seeing combat action as much as I do in King's Bounty?
This is the most important part of the game (to me), after all....'

Did you just make that statement to a PC developer?

Come back in May, watch whatever video footage provided and we can talk about things less abstract. 

Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 will cause a mass upgrade shift as number 1 most anticipated PC exclusives, so the number of people you are adapting the game for is really going to be irrelevantly marginal.

Oh jeeze, and I just saw that declaration.  There are several experts in the industry that would disagree with you...many of them being the minds behind the above titles. Gfx, animation, sound, music...those are all icing on the cake when talking about what makes a game fun.

There are COUNTLESS mroe examples of games that focused on these things and flopped due to stale or broken gameplay mechanics.

Of course, accumulative effect goes without saying, it's just that in many cases animation is key to gameplay enjoyment or gameplay annoyment.

I'll reiterate what I said before, you need to grow up or get out. You come on here and start lambasting respected forum members opinions (I speak of GW Swicord) there is nothing wrong with you having a difference of opinion, but your shithead trolling flamebait assertions - assertions by the way which have been inundated with contrary responses, have no place here.

You may not get it, but you coming here and posting, not as opinion but as self evident fact what is or is not important makes you look like a complete ass. Maybe you like to be abused, and posting stuff like this gives you a quick fix, or maybe you just like pushing people's buttons. Whatever...if you want to give constructive input and help determine how the final game turns out - my FRIENDSLY suggestion is that you make a STRATEGIC change in the TACTICS you are using - your current tactics are clearly not welcome here.

Hm, I would have never even tried to play King's Bounty: The Legend if animations of units and spells weren't as good as they are. I'm positive that's the case with most people.

You really don't know what you are talking about.

Hortz you can't be serious. Gameplay elements [strategical / tactical] & diversity >>>> GFX anytime. Who the heck gives a damn about pretty graphics? Which game was your example? Ohhh right, King's Bounty.  Elemental will be a grand strategy game, unlike King's Bounty. Besides you cannot even compare these games at all. You can compare Elemental to AoW II. - SM maybe...but King's Bounty? You gotta be kidding. Also just one more thing. Ever heard about Dominions 3.? It's an awesome strategy game, which has crappy graphics. Real strategy gamers don't care about graphics. I don't even want to mention Dwarf Fortress.....

Hortz, please go away. 

Come down from your happy world: by the time the game markets the world will continue to have a ton of SM 2.0 cards. And I can assure you that SM 2.0 limitations are a pain for developers (for example in lighting), but sadly they aren't going to disappear this year.

And btw, Kings Bounty is nice (not really anything special graphically but it works), but really, if you want animations so much, go play FIFA and learn what are GOOD animations.

When you have a developer, telling a potential customer to PLEASE GO AWAY, said potential customer should register that he has probably crossed several lines...possibly self evaluate...I realize this is a special case we are dealing with here. C'mon Hortz, I would prefer that you stay and quit being a tool. But if you just can't bring yourself to do that, then I second this - Please go. This game is not for you.

That's right, because everyone on the planet cares SOOO much about those two games, they will all rush out to buy $5000 gaming rigs just to play them. I can see it now, in about 6 months everyone who plays PC games will have 16 GB of RAM, 2 TB of hardrive space, 5 ghz dual quad core processors, 5 GB of grahpics memory, and 32" monitors. Alienware will be out of stock for months trying to fill all the back orders.

With all the stupid claims you've made in this thread, it's hard to pick one that is the stupidest, but that one is up there. Everyone is obviously fithy rich, and will obviously purchase spur of the minute computer upgrades, obviously just for those games. Or are you offering to purchase these computers for everyone?

This is the first time I've ever done this, but this constant (and unfaltering) argument of the importance of graphics over gameplay just raises my blood pressure too much, so I'm going to just lock this thread.

Hortz: We'll be putting up videos of the battle stuff in a few months. You're welcome to come critique them once up, but I have a sinking feeling that a 4x game may not be for you.