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It's become increasingly clear to me that I personally often don't like tactical combats, where the enemy uses all of the resources in ways that logically make sense.
Eg: Ghosts popping in and out of stuff, enemies with swift action teleporting powers moving around everywhere, enemies with at-will AoEs never closing for melee and just retreating + spamming said AoE.
I like challenging combats, and I like tactical ELEMENTS, but often I find myself thinking "Can they PLEASE just come here so we can get this OVER WITH?".
It seems like there's a fine line between combat that is challenging due to tactics and combat that is tedious due to tactics, and that line is in a bit of a different place for everyone, some people enjoying the realism of the enemies acting so intelligently, some disliking that they make supposedly easy combats much more difficult (or long), and people in between, who like it up to a point but wish at some point the enemy would make a mistake or swap up their tactics (if only for variety).
So where does everyone fall on this spectrum? Are you a fan of enemies always using their abilities in the most intelligent way the GM can think of? Do you prefer more straightforward (though not necessarily EASY) combats? A mix of the two, challenging fights where the enemy's opening volley utilizes these tactics but it "devolves" into a simpler combat? Somewhere else?
As a GM my number 1 priority is fast turns. So much so that it is a fault. I don't care if combat takes an hour, but my ideal hour long combat has like 60 turns in it.
If tactical combat requires that my turn as a GM to take long, then I won't do it.
As a player I can take a balance. My current GM runs monsters very tactically and I love it, but combat sometimes drags as we get up in levels as we check every rule and read every spell. Turns can easily take 45 minutes when being "fast".
I like very tactical combats, but as a GM I often don't always feel like running it that way when I have to run several NPC's so I just allow the monsters to make "mistakes". Now in a boss fight I might put in more effort.
One thing I try to do is make the combat hard and direct without playing right into the players strengths at times.
Every once in a while I get an idea to see how the group responds in situation X, or I come up with a new strategy I want to try out. In that case I run it to the script even if it makes the fight go longer than I like.
I vastly prefer any tactics to be real combat tactics, as opposed to game/rules-based ones ones. When that isn't possible (and it often isn't) I prefer combat rules that are as quick and simple as possible. Complex lists of combat maneuvers tend to irritate me a bit, because they focus play on knowing the correct rules maneuver for a situation.
My preferred playstyle is to keep rules in the background (you say what sounds like a good idea to do, then find what rule applies) rather than the foreground (you look up the most effective rule, and do whatever triggers it) - and "tactical combat rules" (especially grid-based ones) tend to pull the game far too much towards the latter for my liking. If I want the latter, I'll play Warhammer.
In my youth I was a fan of having reams of combat rules with tables and subtables for every possible situation - but it seems the older I get, the more I want a simpler, more abstract system that gives narrative freedom and just tells me how much damage was done in as few steps as possible. I'm also not a huge fan of combat taking up large blocks of time in the game session - I'd much rather get on with progressing the story and have the combat scenes out of the way ASAP.
I'm the opposite; when a monster has a cool ability I feel compelled to find interesting ways of using it. That's not to say I never throw a "let's duke it out" encounter at my players, but I'll use a monster like an Ogre or Zombie for that kind of role. If I've got a invisible teleporting flying lightning-bolt-breathing monstrocity at my fingertips, I'm going to want to test drive those features. Certainly you want to consider these things when determining what is suitable as an encounter, just as specific monster abilities or NPC optimization should be considered rather than just blindly using CR.
I can understand that hit-and-run can be irritating or tedious. That can be partially alleviated by weaving the combat encounter into the story, but to an extent I feel that enemies who fight dirty should be something the players characters encounter and have to deal with.
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I think it's good to vary it.
You can use the tactics NPCs use to tell a story.
It very much depends.
Fighting incorporeals popping into and out of walls is always very tedious. Even more so if they have the ability to heal (CC, I'm looking at you) and if not every one has something to hurt them with.
Apart from that I like tactical combats. Or Iat least I think I would. The problem is that I have yet to find a group that uses tactics worthy of the name.
Tactics should depend on a few things
Firstly how smart the monster is are they quick witted and adapted to changes in the battlefield or are they dim and easily fooled
Second are they experienced in combat are they steady under fire or will they panic and run
Thirdly are they well led or motivated to fight , bandits may cut and run when things get tough mercenaries might hold the line for longer but what's the good of money if you can't spend it someone defending home and family will give it there all as failing means death
All these things will effect what tactics are used
Also as players & DM's with have a much better overview of a battle than our characters would so it often hard to not use that info in our decisions , as a DM i don't allow players to have long conversations about tactics once a fight has started they can talk in character yo each other but it must be kept short and to the point
So sorry for the ramble but i think tactics is fine in the planning stage but once you start rolling dice then it needs to be fast and dirty like real life