Willem said:Personally I don't see why the two have to be mutually exclusive. Combat has always been a big part of the Civ games, and a reason why a lot of players like the series. In fact, having a combination of the two would be beneficial for the builder types since you could have a quick combat option that would bypass the whole tactical manoeuvring that the 1UPT system requires. You or the AI would simply march your stack onto a tile with an enemy on it, and the computer would calculate the odds and determine who won and lost. While those players who wanted to duke it out themselves would be taken to the tactical screen.
The problem is that auto-resolved battles will always have to favor the AI, otherwise there would be no incentive to do the fighting yourself. Which means that on high difficulties we would be forced to do the fighting anyway, since if the automatic battles were good enough to sustain, the game would become too easy if we were to fight ourselves.
Besides this technical problem, it's the focus shift I don't like. You are right in that war has always been important in Civ, but elements of warfare (at least in Civ 4) are creating an economy suitable for war, building the right units, being able to afford the upkeep, dealing with war weariness, handling diplomacy etc, all things that are on the empire building (strategical) side of the game. I feel the actual combat should not be stressed too much, since wars should mainly be decided by strategical factors (i.e. whose economy was able to build and maintain a larger or more advanced army) rather than tactical ones. That's not to say tactics should be eliminated, but to fight every battle on a seperate screen would be way overstressing them IMO.
EDIT: Thanks for that quote, Verrucosus, it's another way of saying what I mean.