Depends on the sound effects
That said, I feel the game have done good, now its not perfect (to me) but that is why they continue to develop it

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Well said Hf. I suspect beta 5 will contain major updates to tactical AI. From a developer standpoint, you would want all the bells and whistles in before you start making the music.

"Heavenfall Reply #50: (Imagine all the text here)"

Thats a fantastic way to explain one of the the tactics to use!
Thanks for explaining that, Personally I hope the AI also just use a slightly "less perfect" solution, just to surprise the player.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

HF, the human player is NOT forced to attack the unit.  You can DEFEND once again (or move backwards) if it's not in your best interest to attack.  So if the AI is waiting for you to make the first move and you never do, you get a STALL!  I'm all for the AI making tactically intelligent moves, but I don't want the AI creating stall scenarios.  The AI must come at the player ... as tactically intelligent as possible, but it must come!

I thought spearmen were immune to counter attacks (at least with swords and such)?

Your forgetting that different units have different movement rates. There is no reason to run a unit with higher movement like a wolf into the attack zone of a bunch low movement units. If all the units have the same attack speed then it's obviously more complicated however as Heavenfall said you can still use formations, and retreating only delays the inevitable a few turns because maps are pretty small. If nothing else it is important the AI protects it's glass cannons. I routinely cut the attack of AI armies in half on the first turn of combat by fixing it so all my units get first strike and focus on the high damage and low armor enemy units. Not to mention I retreat my damaged units.

Also the AI needs to learn not to stagger it's forces. It's easy isolate and dispatch individual groups. This is really obvious when the AI hangs back because it has ranged superiority. The AI doesn't move it's troops at all until you get into melee so you can target the units on one side of the map and it takes a few turns for the rest of the AI to cross the map and engage, giving you a huge advantage. When faced with large local superiority the AI should really avoid combat for a turn or two in order to reposition it's units so that they all engage at the same time. It also needs to retreat ranged units behind melee ones.

I don't plan to work on tactical AI until the decision comes down as to whether terrain is going to be added or not.  I would like there to be terrain bonuses but there is concern that this could make tactical battles tedious for those (the vast majority) who don't care that much (yes, I know and the team knows that the people on the forums are very into tactical combat just like they are really into multiplayer).

The magic is getting a lot more interesting, I can say that (in tactical).  Beta 4A (not beta 4) will have a new tactical battle UI that will help the player see a lot more information that will help them know which units they should attack and in what order.

Seconded....

Thirdeded...

Looking good.  I was disappointed that the video ended.  More!

I'm finding it quite amusing that people are criticizing Brad's tactical play in a demo where he was flying thru.

I think terrain is nice, but if it makes the AI more diffcult to implement it should not be added, because it is not as important as an excellent AI. The same applies to multiplayer in my opinion. An excellent singleplayer game is more important.

Exactly, but i think the tactical movement of your units and choosing the right targets are more important battle features.

I've followed these forums for a long time, and I don't think you've quite got the implied multiplayer / tactical ratio right.  Whenever MP comes up, the majority of comments seem to lean 'meh' or 'don't care', probably because turned based tactical games aren't usually that fun / easy to play multiplayer. By contrast, I can't remember hardly anyone saying the same about tactical combat.

That said, while in my imagination terrain features (I picture actual things / structures that perform active actions) could be awesome - especially in special locations or cities/outposts - they might not be workable. On the other hand, the new Kings Bounty reboot seemed extremely successful (didn't actually look at any numbers, though) and that was centered almost entirely around tactical combat, so it implies that TC can be a strong selling point.

That's my $.02, change is always welcome

I'm one of the guys that couldn't care less about terrain bonuses in tactical combat. I'd rather have line of sight or more action abilities (mutually exclusive) selectable for unit designs. I think those would improve the tactical battles far more than terrain bonuses, without slowing them down like terrain would.

Quoting myself from another topic: