No MP Tactical Battles, tell me it aint so

Devs confirmed it. But don't worry, it would be added to MP in patch.

oh well

Again, if true, this is a deal-breaker for us.  We went through all that "in a future patch" stuff with Demigod.  Tactcial battles ARE the reason for this entire game.  Why would we all spend all that time making towns; to make resourses/gold; to make units; to make huge armies only to click in a "roll a die, you lose/win" button like they use to do 2 decades ago in MP games?

I'm just going to have to see for myself.  I just can't beleive they'd release the game without it.  No way. 

What do they mean "it was not fun"?  That is what WAS fun in Age of Wonders and Heroes of Might and Magic for Decades now. . . . ?

Heh, that just shows you that people have different tastes. I for one consider the tactical battles one of the features that least interests me.  I'll do it for the big war deciding battles, but for everything else I prefer to auto-resolve them as much as possible. Anyway, Brad did confirm in post last night that they have been convinced by the players to add them to MP in a patch. The original plan was not to have them in MP at all, that's why it's not ready for release.

He said that it was not fun to watch every single tactical battle being fought by all the players and that the game in general takes far too long to progress. He also admitted that he personally doesn't think multiplayer is worthwhile in a TBS game because of that, but that they will try to implement a valuable system for the fans. Nevertheless, the focus of Elemental is clearly the singleplayer sandbox mode, not multiplayer.

Purple Paladin, Frogboy said in a post last night that they have been convinced to add tact. battles back in to MP.  It will be coming in the future.

Let's see: you just have to do what games like Age of Wonders have been doing since the dawn of MP: You can watch the battle or not watch it.  Easy.  If you don't watch it, you can still fiddle around with all your own units/towns/econimics while the battle takes place.  I feel like I'm buying a used car, and the salesman is trying to convince us how we would really not have fun with passenger seats anyway. . .

Well, a friend and I had several days of co-op games planned when we got this game tommorow.  I just informed him there is no tactical in MP.  He was in as much shock as I.  In fact, he actually thought I was kidding, and it took me a minute to convince him I was totally serious. Luckily, I told him before he purchased his game, or he would have been furious. 

I can promise you, there are going to be a LOT of people out there, purchasing multiple copies of this game to play against and co-op with people/friends, who are going to be shocked (and or just plain major ticked) that such a basic feature of any TBS game was left out.  I can just see their faces when they pair off to start their very first MP battle, after possible hours of building up their economy/units, only to see "Die-Roll, you win/lose"

And with CivV comming out soon, I can't imagine anybody "waiting" for a standard MP feature to be implemented "in the future".  Heck, my friend said we will just get our old Age of Wonders: Shadow magic out and play that till Civ5 comes out.  Sad, sad, sad. . . .

THIS!!!!

once a battle is initiated, each player should see a flag representing the two teams involved, and the combat ratings of each team (nothing more). Then they can click Observe or Ignore. If they click ignore they can continue playing normally.

If I ever learn some serious code, I think I'm just going to rip out the current tactical battles and create something more RTS-ish (with Dominions-esque orders so that you don't have to touch a single unit if u don't want to)

Because the civilization series is well known for its awesome tactical battle system.....

You are complaining about tactical battles not currently being in the game which you consider a basic feature of any TBS game, but you are waiting for Civ 5, a franchise which is the standard of TBS 4x, and has NEVER had tactical battles in it. Why are you willing to give Civ 5 a pass on not having tactical battles, but you hold it against Elemental?

Here's another player eagerly waiting for multiplayer Good thing I didn't know about the plans for not including tactical battles in multiplayer, I'm sorry but for me it sounds like madness   No matter though, if they're going to be added in the future. I've been playing AoW: SM multiplayer with friends for six years now, still do sometimes, and we are hoping Elemental will be a worthy replacement for it one day. Games taking long isn't an issue for us really, but I understand that we probably are kinda a niche crowd withing a niche crowd... Most people won't be interested in playing like this. Considering that it's extra nice that guys at Stardock are making the effort for it! Multiplayer with tactical battles, doesn't matter to me whether other players watch them or not (though not watching would be nicer, so you won't reveal your forces to them that way), and this'll be the best RTS ever for me

Yeah, its a bit like the whole Total War games no multiplayer campaign idea they had for the better part of the series. They also claimed the reason was that "it would take too long, its not fun, ppl dont want to play it that long".
Its all a load of bollocks. People love long games. Look at Civilization.

I love how devs think they know what gamers want just because Call of Duty is popular. The thing is, rts and strategy games arent call of duty, there's no point in making them fast paced in any way, we dont want that. We want a slow long epic great strategy game, EVEN online..

For the record, i play both CoD and 4x games, and when i play an RTS or 4x game i do NOT want it to be fast paced, then i'd play CoD instead.

Tactical battles will actually see their way into the MP side of the game pretty soon, according to a very recent post by Frogboy. Your friend shouldn't worry and just buy the game.

Indeed... stacks of doom is so much fun... or not.

People need to stop skipping the posts pointing this out, seriously.

I, for one, do not plan on playing a game like this Multiplayer. The only real TBS I got into for Multiplayer was Sword of the Stars, and even then, I'd never play on anything but the smallest of maps, as games just take far, far too long otherwise. Well thats not true, I did Dominions for a little while but there you played maybe a turn a day, and my schedule always forced me to bow out of games early which wasnt fair for the other players. Plus that game had some serious micro/interface issues.

I wouldn't consider Non-auto resolve in a TBS 4x game to be an industry standard.

I liked how Dominions did it, where you'd issue general orders, maybe script a few orders for specific units, and then you could watch a little movie of the result. I'd be happier if more TBS games did it that way.

I like tactical battles being optional for multiplayer. Me and my friend would like to play.

But overall i understand the exclusion it just for me takes away the depth so i hope its added back.

Tactical battles are making their way into MP again, as a couple people have already said. I'd still put off buying the game for MP though. Tactical battles is just one of many issues with MP.

my friend and I just bought the game installed and there is NO WORKING MULTIPLAYER...  its not even MP GAME right now???

I don't know how people could stand a 6+ player MP game with tactical battles always being used

Age of wonders was pretty rough with just waiting on one other person to do tactical battles, let alone 6 heh