The Deleter posted:

Tactical combat in 4x games sucks because it is almost always a crappier second game hidden inside the first game, with less thought put into it. There's hardly any actual tactical thought required for most of them. Space 4X games suffer the most because it's hard to actually include things like terrain or meaningful manoeuvres in an infinite 3D space, so they don't bother. There's no excuse when something like Sorcerer King or Stardrive's ground combat doesn't even try and just puts everyone on a flat grid.

I can count the tactical combat systems I've enjoyed in 4X games on one hand - Sword of the Stars 1 is Total War in space and the tactical combat is basically the entire point of the game, and Age of Wonders is so insanely detailed that you can have weird interactions complicate things constantly. Endless Legend's combat is inoffensive but I would rather they committed to it with either full micro or total hands off, and not the half and half we have.