Yes there is one - budget.

He means that your expectations to get depth, complexity and also "combat [that is] like you are watching Battlestar Galactica" are unrealistic. That'd be unrealistic even if Stardock wasn't an indie developer and had a bigger budget than they do.

I like the animations in FE just fine and perfectly functional. If I want to watch a movie, I watch a movie.

They were called Charging Stalks.

The Yor are my favourites too, but they were so even before TotA came out.

Considering Galciv2 is so old I'm expecting a huge huge improvement in Galciv3. More races, more tech and slightly better graphics would be nice. Also much larger battles with maybe the ability to setup different kinds of formations before the battle begins and with designated commanders that you could actually train (academies and combat experience) would be really cool to.  

I don't need better graphics. It's the gameplay that I care most about. They could animate the whole game with scraps they found in the junk box for all I care. (Actually that might even look kind of neat,)

Also shows your poor understanding of the whole collection of games that come from Stardock. Elemental:FE was is a poor example of all the great games that Stardock as financed or produced. Plus you would be amazed on how many good games that are out there that have similar animations. Animations does not a good game make.

I think you have to consider that at the scales that units in tactical combat are animated at, it's questionable how much value is added with high quality animations - unless you have a cinematic cam for kill shots.

Even Skyrim's combat animations are at times a bit crappy in an amusing kind of way, and there you almost always have an up close perspective.  There's simply no way to have an individual animation for each possible enemy you'll be facing, the time and cost would go through the roof.

I hope that the map will be 3D, but I think I will be disappointed and it will be 2D again.

Hexes. What a progress! Civilization changed from squares to hexes and sucked. But this game in not like Civilization set on a planet's surface, it is set in space. And in space, there is a third dimension. I wouldn't mind whether there are cubes, truncated octahedra or rhombic dodecahedra. The important thing would be to use this opportunity.

He also posted on the Fallen Enchantress forums in praise of HOMM6 graphics and how the animations in Legendary Heroes ruined the game for him:

forums.elementalgame.com/444788/

He really seems to be a little bit too obsessed with graphics and combat animations compared to far more important elements in strategic games...

Civ V may have sucked for you but not for everybody. And are you sure it was the hexes themselves or was there something else about its use?

Galactic Civilizations I and II have been on 2d map and that hasn't detracted from making them good games for its fans. Surely Gal Civ III can be good in 2D too while jumping to 3D doesn't automatically mean that it'll be good. Stardock surely has its long list of reasons as to why they stick to 2D and maybe one day they share some insight about it.

Don't get me wrong because I do think that being in space, 3D would be more logical and interesting. Potentially at least, as it would depend on how it's actually done.

Be more specific about the sort of animations should be possible instead of citing an example like BSG.

A computer game has dynamic elements (the player fleet and teh enemy fleet) whereas an episode of BSG with shooty bits follows a set storyboard.  Therefore what is rendered has to be limited to work on the sort of hardware that the game is being targeted at, so that it can play right away.

CGI scenes for TV on the other hand are done on more powerful hardware and can take advantage of lots of post-processing without needing to turn around the result immediately.