A dagger? None whatsoever, except that it's cheaper to produce. A short sword is lighter, reduces unit fatigue, and is quicker, so is less easy to dodge. A mace on the other hand does more damage when it connects.

Traditionally Attacks of opportunity do not take place when entering a ZOC, only when leaving it.

I think I agree with an initiative based attack system, as long as we get a giant number above each unit's head (friendly or enemy) so we can plan our moves.

Chrono Trigger!!!!!!!

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.....

Wait, what were we talking about again?

Pshhhh...enough about this nonsense special ability discussion, let's hear more about Kenata's day, what did you do, how was it, what does Stardock look like and the team.

Oh...a personal one...did you talk to Jon about...you know...that thing which can't be mentioned?

Oh...how I wish that could be discussed.

bad NDA bad NDA

It gets more interesting when you have multiple varied units and you have to plan tactically for them to engage enemy units that they are best equipped to deal with, while trying to deny the same edge to your enemy.

PS: Chrono Trigger is great.

All good ideas above (although didn't get to read it all yet). Couple points/ideas:

- what about allowing for positioning on the tactical map before the battle begins. Don't know how many times I start a fight and my mage is up front. Brave but stupid!

- I love the idea of special abilities, but call me an old D&D player... I think special abilities should be linked to level. Level goes up, special abilities get better. Either the ones you have improve (stat linked or something) or you get to pick a new, more powerful one. The latter choice gives the option of specializing each hero with trees of abilities to focus the hero's role in combat (or maybe running the kingdom/empire).

My 2 cents.

Sounds promising.

More variety in combat will make it a lot more fun.

Throw in my two cents, and I like the throwing knives idea

1.  Range Limits---throwing knives 2 squares and as the bow improves increase from 3, to 4, to 5

2.  Ammo Limits---6-8 shots, what ever it is.  Then have a secondary weapon default for melee combat.

3.  Special Shots or enchantments---such as flaming arrows, poison arrows, etc. Could be magic or equipement based.

4.  Can you two link two units together for some kind of combo attack--that would be cool

5.  Select Defense Postion-unit is harder to hit and damage but does half damage

6.  how about obstacles on the battle field---squares that cannot be entered, shot around, etc.

7.  More unit buffs 

Its true that a 1v1 battle is hardly a great example for why damage types shallow tactical combat, but it is a good method of illustrating a specific point. Planning for an enemy army is not a tactical decision, but a strategic decision. In the most general case, damage types ad resistances add a large amount to the strategic elements of war.  You carefully consider the enemy forces and create armies best suited to engage those forces. Yet, none of this has yet to actually deepen tactical combat in any meaningful way. Let assume for a moment that only damage types and resistances are added to the game, in lieu of any other consideration - abilities, terrain, positioning, etc. Now lets call these damage types rock, paper, and scissors for all intents and purposes with the standard definitions for counters. Thus, our entire tactical choice becomes abundantly clear, as the entire combat devolves into a grand ballet where rock tries to attack scissor while avoiding paper and so on. This does not expand the tactical choices for the player, but simply refines tactical choice to the minimization and maximization of a set of game mechanisms. 

Do not misunderstand me that I believe adding damage types would be a bad thing for WoM or FE. As I pointed out before, it does add a very interesting strategic element to the game as well as gives a framework by which a natural advantage can be given beyond simple unit attack power and accuracy. However, with respect to the actual combat itself, additional combat actions are a simple and easy solution to greatly expand the tactical choices of a player. The term "special ability" is something of a misnomer as a special ability need not be all that special in fact. Consider adding something as simple as a "Block" to the current actions fight and move. This command could confer a defensive bonus of some kind representing a unit preparing to be attacked. The action is not necessarily anything special nor would it be a replacement for either the attack or move actions. Yet, this one action would greatly increase the tactical possibilities of combat, but would be something the player would have direct control of. Now, if this action was applied to a shield, then a player who brought sword shield units would not simply gain some mechanical bonus, but would have a real choice whether to strike or block. The big one for many players is the spears v mounts mechanism, yet spears are not great against mounts for some magical reason. The reason a spear is so great is because it can be braced, and thus become deadly to a charging enemy while being unable to attack directly. Therefore, a spear could confer a "Brace Spear" ability which has this type of effect, while still allowing the player to the choice of how to proceed. Does he then brace for a mounted charge or move his spears to join an attack? Thus, we gain both strategic depth in selection of units to attack an enemy as well as tactical depth in how to proceed in the battle itself.

The thing I would like to see changed most in Tactical Combat is unit spacing and footprinting in tiles. It really bothers me, especially in the early game, that individual friendly units cannot be or move through tiles which other individual friendly units occupy. It would not only greatly increase options, but also immersion, if a tile could hold X number of friendly human-sized units (say, 16), or 1 gigantic-sized friendly unit (a dragon) before being "full" -- with the number decreasing/increasing proportionally, e.g. (say) 8 mounted friendly units, 4 troll-sized units, 2 giant-sized units, with appropriate numbers for squads.

The only difficulty would be melee targeting for targets in tiles in which more than one individual enemy unit occupies that tile. For ranged targeting, this shouldn't be a problem, since the missile could simply hit a random target in the tile if the number of friendly units in the tile >1, or all of them if AoE. An easy, if suboptimal, solution would be to make melee targeting random as well; a better solution, if not an elegant one, would be to have an immediate pop-up like window or sub-menu appear when melee-targeting a tile with more than one individual enemy with a selection of possible targets; targeting an enemy unit which is itself surrounded by friends might also make the attacker susceptible to attacks of opportunity.

Special abilities 

These are certainly things that would be useful in E:WoM also, not just E:FE...

Considering I just live down in Lansing.... Ah, well. Too busy anyway.

Would definitely like to see TacCom fleshed out more. It always felt a little too vestigial, even though I know a lot of work went into it.

Tactical Combat is still the reason I don't play the game in moment. It feels for me like exploiting the AI whenever it comes to it.

- I always get "First Strike", why? There need to be a mechanism someone is attacking and the other more defending.

- I can easily kite opponents around.

- with defense structure the AI has no plan how to attack effectivly. It often move only a small part of his army

Tactical battle needs a lot of AI improvement. I'm not sure I like the idea to make the battle even more complex. Make a better battle concept first before improving tactical spells, etc.

Look at a game like Final Fantasy Tactics.  The combat is interesting with a lot of depth simply because each unit has a number of unique abilities at their disposal.

A very good point.

Type of damage against monster, exemple only fire magic or magical weapon can damage golem.

All of these suggestions in this thread are nothing less than a major AI project, but that doesn't change the fact that it must be done. If you're going to have tactical battles and have them be fun, then you have to be willing to accept that the battle AI might take twice as many lines of code than what you currently find in the strategic AI.

TacCombat is what keeps me from really enjoying the game. It's too damn easy to exploit the mechanics and bad AI. 

If this part of the game gets treatment, I'll likely not stop playing.  Still boggles the mind how simplistic this element of the game is considering even simply copying many things out there would have made it better. 

*sigh*

Great suggestions all around, I'll see you in, what, June to see the Beta of changes?

I think if you look at GC2, it explains why tactical combat is so simplistic. The current system is essentially the same format as the automatic battles we had, except now the human can choose its target and the computer has to deal with distance and obstructions. These are new concepts and it is no wonder that it has taken a good while to get the kinks works out. 

Can't wait to see the finished 1.2! 

Are really there plans to improve tactical battles in E: WoM, Derek? If it is so, I´m back to the party. Otherwise i wait for E: FE.

I think this one has a great point about some low hanging fruit to improve combat currently.  Giving the shields a "Block" ability would really add to their combat utility, I have a mod that does this type of thing if you could ever get the AI to actually use a shield.  I also think adding some more "basic" actions could really help speed up tacticle:

Volley: unit with a ranged attacks uses all action points making them against selected target

Full Attack: unit with actions points uses all of them making melee attacks on a selected target

You might kill yourself with the counterattacks, you might waste an action point or two firing arrows at nothing, but hey that is the price of speed!  Uses the slower ones for maximum control, Volley and Full Attack when they make sense.

I did not read all the replies however...

I do believe that special abilites and attacks should be limited. Giving a unit better attack will not make combat more tactical... But giving a unit one time special attack which can be usefull depending on situation can make combat much more interesting.

if it eases your mind Jon wasn't in the office that week, he was forced to talk to me instead  

Heyyyy I live in Lansing as well

Yeah, I just got old second string Toby Though actually, Toby is a pretty interesting guy to talk to, and has a incredible amount of knowledge of various games. Then again, he does favor Civ IV BTS over SMAC so I guess he has his moments of heresy.

The issue with Kenata's mod is that, although it's an amazing piece of work, it's extremely constrained by the limitations of the moding engine right now. There's a lot of stuff that could add strategic depth that currently cannot be coded into the game. Passive, reactive or conditional abilities aren't in the game yet, for the most part.

Also, abilities and a richer environment for tactical battles go hand in hand. Stealth/speed related abilities need a larger battlefield with cover and hiding places. Wall crushing/climbing requires walls to crush/climb. Etc. They could also benefit from somewhat more complex combat rules: positioning, D&D-style attack of opportunities or zone of controls. Abilities that interact with those rules could add a lot to the game.

Otherwise, yes, Kenata is right. Take a simple example, magic the gathering: a huge number of cards and creatures, almost all different, and many interesting and useable in a way or another. Almost all of them have abilities (the ones that don't actually become interesting because they're relatvely unfrequent and trade their lack of abilities for slightly increased straight power).

The point he makes, though, is still interesting. The point of AoO is to allow you to prevent the opponent from ignoring your line of defense in a turn-based environement. In a Total War game, in there's a hole between 2 units of the defender's front line and the attacker just goes through without any other backup tactics, the attacker will have its flank naturally exposed and will put himself in a pincer formation. But this is real time: if someone goes between 2 of the units of my defensive line, I just ask my 2 units to attack on both sides while he is moving. 

In Elemental, there is neither facing (sides and front are the same) nor flanking (having 2 units around an enemy units doesn't give a bonus) and you can't react in real time to an opponent going through your line of defense. AoO model the reaction in a tactically interesting (if not very realistic) fashion, allowing you to maintain a real line of defense.

In other words: abilities aren't enough: we need more importance given to positioning. Interaction between this and abilities could give much richer tactical battles.

I'd say a nice improvement to tactical combat would be adding 'feats', gained once per level up available to all units (with special feats available to champions) - a lot like promotions in Civ IV.  To avoid just replacing their base attack, these feats could either add specific enhancements to your attack (armor has reduced effect, chance of slowing opponent, etc) or give specific tactical abilities (unspent action points are used against enemies entering melee range on their turn, shield bonus applies to adjacent allies, spells cost 10% less mana, etc.).

With enough feats to choose from, this could solve a lot of problems with the game - it eliminates the feeling of generic heroes defined by some numbers and what they wear, and helps make tactical combat interesting, rather than being either "Team A and Team B swings swords at each other until one team doesn't have any more guys" or "Spell casters A, B, and C cast Spell Blast, everyone on other team dies".

If you're worried that adding a multitude of abilities could make the game imbalanced - I'll say this.  First, this is primarily a single player game, and suffering from flagging interest, so multiplayer balance shouldn't be your concern now.  Second, a lack of interesting abilities is a bigger problem than having certain choices offer an easier path to victory.  Honestly, the best course should be to just brainstorm a whole bunch of abilities covering a wide range of character concepts, do a spot check to make sure they're all reasonably balanced (nothing crazy powerful or useless), and then implement them.  Given the scope of what you're trying to do, and the number of people willing to inform you if they find something overpowered, that seems like the best way to ensure this game lives up to its potential.