It's not my playstyle that makes tactical control and autoresolve optional, it's my attitude. You apparently cannot have fun if something is somehow suboptimal, and so you make the claim that you are "forced" to choose whichever option gives you better results. I, on the other hand, can have fun even if something doesn't go as well as it could have, or if doing something one way isn't as good as doing something the other way. Beyond that, you (and the others who make the argument that autoresolve and manual control may as well be mutually exclusive) have falsely equated "autoresolve gives results which are equally good as results from manual control" with "you will therefore only ever use autoresolve". This completely ignores the possibility of the manual control option being fun at least some of the time, and since I play games for fun rather than to win, whichever option is the most fun is the option that I take.

This is a classic issue of "power gamer" vs "plays for fun" - for some reason, there are some fools who play games in an "optimal" manner that they don't enjoy just because it's the "best" way to ensure a victor, and there are other fools who play games in whatever way they find enjoyable. This is an attitude issue rather than a playstyle issue, however.

Also, your suggestion that the statement "The shipbuilder is optional because I don't care what my ships look like" is equivalent to the statement "Autoresolve and manual control are not mutually exclusive because I don't need optimal results" is not a very good argument. The ship designer is entirely optional, and always will be unless they decide to remove the basic ship designs which are in the game. Moreover, if you happen to be the type of person who absolutely has to have "optimal" results, then the ship designer itself is likely to be as mandatory as whichever form of combat resolution gives the best results, because custom designs tend to be superior to the standard designs and can be optimized for the situation you're looking at, while the standard designs are more of a "it's good enough on average" kind of thing. Just like autoresolve/manual control, a ship designer is only mandatory in one of two situations: either you have no other option, or you're the type of person who absolutely must have an "optimal" result. Once again, this is a "power gamer" vs "plays for fun" issue.

Yes, there is an effect introduced due to asset allocation. However, I cannot say that I feel that any implementation of tactical battle, regardless of how you happen to define tactical battles, will necessarily take away from the strategic aspect. The strategy aspect of most games which have one tends to be base building and army (or fleet) positioning. This side of things, whether you admit it or not, tends to be rather static across most games, and has been more or less set in stone for a long time, with the strategy side coming in more from where and when and how much you build certain things than in whether or not you can build everything everywhere or not. It's certainly possible for me to turn every city in Rome: Total War into a more or less identical site with all buildings built everywhere, and it's entirely possible for me to build my GCII planet improvements in a manner that gives every world a more or less balanced amount of production, income, and research structures rather than the more commonly used several primary factory worlds + a lot of income worlds + some research worlds. On the other hand, it's not particularly efficient or necessary to do all of that in either game - most cities in Rome: Total War don't really need any military structures, so you might as well save the money, and it's a lot more efficient in GCII to specialize worlds than to have a little bit of everything everywhere. Yes, there's a bit of a difference between GCII and Rome: Total War city-building because GCII city-building gives you a certain number of slots to play with and says you can put almost whatever you want in any of those slots whereas Rome: Total War allows you to build each line of building anywhere, but in all honesty, the difference between these two forms of city-building is skin-deep, as far as game strategy goes. There isn't really a significant amount of design work that needs to go into the 'how' of making a strategy game.

That is certainly one possible definition of tactical combat. There are others that I could use, such as a system which allows you to set the engagement orders of ships going into a battle, which are then used by the computer to fight the battle according to your orders, or a system where I can give limited orders during the battle (e.g. "concentrate fire on that ship" or "ignore enemy fighters"), or one in which the battle is automatically resolved but the auto-resolve function is a full-blown combat simulator which takes advantage of things like terrain, maneuverability, and weapon characteristics and makes tactical choices such as how to approach a given target, what to engage it with out of what is available in the battle area, whether to concentrate fire on one target at a time or have a more evenly distributed fire pattern, and what types of targets to prioritize. That a game has tactical combat doesn't necessarily mean that I'm the one giving the orders - that's manually-controlled or player-controlled combat.

The only "common usage" definition of "shoot-em-up" that I am familiar with is for a game where the entire game revolves around you controlling a player character or a small group which does nothing but shoot things, the "modern" or "high-tech" setting's equivalent of the hack-and-slash style dungeon crawlers or role-playing games.

Also, you call my argument self-centric. Yes, it is. So is yours, and so is the argument of anyone who has ever made any kind of argument whatsoever, because the bottom line is that people only argue for the things in which they believe, or to improve their ability to argue for the things in which they believe, or to impress other people. Your argument for autoresolve and manual control being mutually exclusive is at least as self-centric as my argument that they are not, because your argument is entirely based on that the only way to play is the one in which you get the optimal result in the least amount of time. My argument is that the two options are not mutually exclusive because, you know what, it's not always absolutely necessary to get the absolute best result possible at all times, because games are there to be a fun waste of time rather than something that you must always win in the most efficient way.

By the way, don't bring up the Devil's Advocate as a counterpoint to my statement that people argue only for things they believe in or to impress people or to improve themselves. The point of arguing as a Devil's Advocate is to find potential flaws in an idea, identify potential alternatives, and to in the end convince yourself and the people with whom you argued that the option you end up choosing is the best choice (or at least an acceptable choice) out of those you have available, which is entirely a self-serving process. Yes, it's probably not the ego-trip that arguing your own idea might be, but it's at least as good for you in the long run.

The difference is that I at least try to argue from a position that doesn't limit any play style's options. If a certain feature is put in that will adversely affect one particular play style while significantly improving another, I will generally argue against that feature unless I can come up with an alternative that avoids the adverse affects while having a similar positive effect. I probably don't succeed at this goal as often as I'd like to think I do and I know I did not succeed this time, but that is always the goal. Others don't even try to meet that goal, or even see it as a goal for which to aim.

Before anyone brings up my defense of constructor spam (a play style I like and everyone else - including Stardock - hates), I have often tried to float suggestions on how to improve the mechanics of the spam rather than completely removing it. There are definite negative effects for removing the spam, and I have not yet seen anyone else come up with a system that combines reduced spam with the same level of power, flexibility, and speed that the spam mechanic provided. That is very much a situation where changes to improve a mechanic for some players will adversely affect others, yet people argue to remove the spam without even considering the negative effects of whatever system they want instead.

I argue against tactical combat because it most definitely will hurt the play experience of some players if it is not "truly optional". I continue arguing against it (although there is no longer any apparent need to, since it's confirmed to be excluded) because I doubt anyone's ability to make tactical combat "truly optional". Short of hitting that perfect ideal the play styles are mutually exclusive, so I argue for the proven model that existed in the previous game.

You will get something approaching that final definition of "tactical combat". Certain aspects of it, at least. Where you will get arguments is whether that meets anyone else's definition of "tactical combat". That sort of thing isn't necessarily bad to include, but it avoids the bogging-down effects of the type of "tactical combat" that would meet my definition of the term.

Yes, I worded that poorly. The ability to control the functional bits of the ships is absolutely critical. The standard designs are not good enough to beat an opponent using custom designs, unless the difficulty is set so low the opponent can't build very many of those custom ships. I should have said the ability to control what my ships look like would be completely optional to me. I do completely understand why other people want to be able to make their own ship visuals, I just have no interest or aptitude for it. And guess what? Stardock has made that part of the ship builder completely optional this time around. The functional bits won't have graphics attached to them, so I can stick whatever I want on a ship and have it look like the base hull, while others can build the prettiest ships they can without worrying how that odd-looking laser cannon will mess with their design. Everyone wins! (possible exception: people who liked how that laser cannon looked. Maybe Stardock will retain the weapon graphics as visual design art that can be added if desired).

It seems some people have a hard time accepting that tactical combat means less strategy. I guess it's the same people that would argue Europa Universalis 4 would be a better strategy game if it had Total War-style combat. They would write posts in the forums there saying: Wouldn't that be awesome to combine EU4 and Total War? Wow, it would be the best game ever made dudes...."

They don't seem to understand tactical combat has a cost, and it's not only the cost of development hours. It is the cost of time spent in the game on tactical contra strategical decissions, it's the cost of making strategical decissions less valuable because you can make it good again by fighting tactical battles well, it's the cost of game design having to involve arround tactical combats to fit the rythm of the game, it's the cost of AI being alot harder to program doing tactics well then it is to program it doing strategy well. It's the cost of cool looking battle cinematics, because human played out tactical combats would have to look abit simpler to be playable.

I'm glad Stardock has focus on strategy before tactics in the GalCiv-series, and this is by far my favorite space strategy game/series.

There is nothing wrong in liking tactical combat. I like it myself in games like Fallen Enchantress. It's even not wrong to want GalCiv-series turn into something different. But I think tactical combat in GalCiv3 would come to a too huge cost. A cost so high it wouldn't be the game we love anymore. That doesent mean it would be a bad game, or a game not deserving our love, but then better make a new game series for that kind of game.

In the GalCiv series I prefer the focus on strategy, and that is what the series has been about. And you know what; even though there is no human controlled tactical battles in GalCiv, it's still the richest/deepest space strategy I ever played, with the richest atmosphere too, and still plays well paced and with a rather easy user interface. This is not a coincidence, but well made game design priorities.

Well said.  

Can you imagine tactical combat in Europa Universalis?  *barf*

Completely agree with NorseMan. This is a strategy game by definition. I wouldn't play the tactical combat to be honest. The strategy behind the combat is to send the correctly designed ship to be in the right place at the right time.

No, it's not. But it's basically deciding the strength of your army/unit. Where you put the gun is insignificant and doesn't take a lot of time, you could just double click it and it's there.

It's strategy how many guns and how many shields you can put. Deciding how flexible your units should be/how strong or how defended they are, is strategy.

I would love some tactical combat similar to how Birth of the Federation worked. For those that didn't play this 4x classic, both sides started on opposite side of the map with ships grouped by type (scouts, light ships, medium ships, heavy ships, non-combat ships), and each side gave one of the possible orders to each of the groups or to everyone (it was even possible to give individual ships orders but that didn't always work as intended). 

When each side was done with giving orders and clicked end turn the turn played out at the same time for both sides (like in Frozen Synapse). 

Player watched the battle for that one turn and when it paused it could change orders for his groups of ships. The battles were exciting, fast and fun.

The complexity of battles came from knowing your side strengths and enemy weaknesses and using them well. For instance Ferengi ships were armed with lots of long range torpedoes but weak in close combat, while Cardassia was opposite, so you used tactics each round to play to the strength of your side and your current composition of ships. You could even give ram orders to individual ships

Something like this could easily be done for GavCiv3, especially if they plan to use mass numbers of ships. They could let players create groups of ships(squadrons) before battles and then command whole squadrons during the giving orders phase. 

This system is much faster and more interactive than MoO2, and also less twitchy with little to no need for micro than something like Sins of the Solar Empire or Sword of the Stars. 

Because designing ships is done pre-battle.  Once the battle starts, you don't click ship A and tell it to turn and fire at ship B with guns 1,2, & 3...etc.    

Exactly! If you are going to be penalised for not choosing the full mode tactical battle and you want to instant resolve it it's not fun anymore anyway. Ship designer, you have fun when you are not time limited, you can even do it without playing the game!

I think I'm late in replying to this but anyway.

You evidently don't know anything about programming, I do, and I've done AI programming before. Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it can't be done, don't be so arrogant. The AI can be made competent with time and it is not a valid reason for it not to be included. If you'd like a more in depth discussion I am happy to explain to you. 

Now to more of your recent posts:

It's been said before, and I'll say it again - At MINIMUM there should be an option for tactical combat. Tactical combat was one of the reasons Galciv 2 was never considered better than MOO2 by the majority of 4X players. What could possibly be more anticlimactic than spending time researching and designing ships and never getting to actually play with them. Easily the most disappointing part of Galciv2.

EDIT: Actually, as an interesting aside, the mere fact that this thread exists and is as hotly debated as it is seems to suggest that what MOO2 did was totally right. Offer an option for strategic and tactical battles. Just having one option will never satisfy both crowds. Make it work, do whatever you have to do.

Ultimately it would be interesting to have tactical combat (as being smaller against larger opponents could really make certain games fun and prevent the giant army always wins scenario).

That's my ten cents on it but I don't expect it in this game.

If you do want "polygonal graphics to enhance your perception of reality" (hexs) and tactical combat; Predestination looks interesting.  Overall I am supporting this game and while it would be interesting I'm sure it'll be a great game either way.  And even if you don't have tactical combat, there's always other games that are working on a spiritual successor to Master of Orion 2 so either way I'll let the creators design it to their goals or overall vision and then check it out.

I'm sure it'll be a great game either way so best of luck and keep up the great work.

What would be really cool but will never happen is if combat was a black box to the game itself, and used plugins. So in the base game, when ship combat happens, it calls Stardock's default GalCiv 3 combat plugin (the one with ship roles but no direct ship control).

Then in my idealized world, we get the guy from a game like Gratuitious Space Battles to write a GSB plugin for GC3. So if you install that, the game runs GSB for that specific combat with the ships you have (if you choose to play it out), and then you basically play one mission of GSB. Then the results are sent back to the main game.

That would be totally awesome. It will also never happen.

The devs are already going for a middle ground, as stated here:

"In GC3 we will introduce the ability to assign roles to ships, giving them unique behaviors in fleet battles. These different behaviors will be used to specialize ships and create checks and balances, making the composition of your fleet almost as important as what weapons or defenses it has."

Paul Boyer goes a bit more in detail about it in this podcast (starts around 43:30 min.).