What about interactive Tactical Combat ?

[Taqwus]

Hullu said:
One more comment on the information people.

*snip gratuitously insulting strawman*

Try again without a bogus reductio ad absurdum. You don't play Dominions 3 blindfolded, do you? If not, you play with information. The question is what information is one likely to have.

I submit that any sane commander will, given time to prepare, attempt to determine his troops' capabilities before ever seeing an enemy. Ever hear about training exercises and war games? At the moment, you can't even see the placement of your troops without a battle -- if your squads are large enough, you can get some fairly silly or dangerous results. It would also be obvious to see how mixed-unit squads behave, what commanders might consider casting or doing -after- they've finished their scripts, how eager your troops are to charge through killing clouds, et al.

If you wish to object to excessive information, the obvious points to object to include the lack of fog of war during battle replay regardless of whether it's real or simulated -- you know EXACTLY what happened, which is tricky -- while you may be able to count bodies on the field if you win, would you really know how many enemies were wounded, or what was cast, or all the equipment belonging to enemy leaders? Units are never misidentified or miscounted. In particular, information would justifiably be worse with a rout, while individual details are more likely to be lost in a large battle... and if everybody dies and you have no scouts there, where are your eyewitnesses?

[Taqwus]

Now, the obvious retort to that is that information on enemy capabilities before and even after contact is made is going to be fairly dubious; furthermore, that some capabilities are difficult to simulate safely.

That would suggest
(a) simulated melee, with minimal lethal spell use, between units one actually has, and

(b) actual combat against target summons that one has little compunction killing -- for instance, summoning Mechanical Men, phantasms, low-level undead, any living units if you're the Ashen Empire... that -would- allow demonstration of lethal capabilities or lack thereof. Done in-game, this would cost resources.

Ex. in-game command 'Stage attack' for a leader, where the mage serves only to direct the target units in an attack but does not actually participate.

That would be fairly realistic, avoids the palette / spoiling issues, and still gives useful information regarding what troops might do (whether they tire too easily, whether they can hit the broad side of a barn, et al)... and, as a battle, it would actually give experience to the units.

[Cainehill]

Heh. The "broad side of a barn" / accuracy issue is always a worthy question, given that archers with 13/14 accuracy can still generate more friendly casualties than enemy. But then again, some question exists whether that's accuracy or AI.