Failed attack causes retreat

[runyan99]

This is something I have noticed in the game. A stack with an attack or assault posture that fails in combat will retreat to another region.

This seems unessasary. Why doesn't the attacking force simply revert to passive or defensive posture, and remain in place until the player can issue new orders next turn? The game seems loathe to allow two enemy armies to occupy the same region for any period of time.

When the game gets to pick a random region to retreat to, bad things seem to happen. The game often forces a retreat to the worst possible locations.

[Wilhammer]

In all fairness, you did retreat to the best location relative to your level of control, but it was also the most rugged place of all; with a move, it should of taken a couple of weeks to move into those mountains, while a retreat makes your guys into world class sprinters.

Right now the game does not have any co-existence of opposing forces in a region - but at the size of those regions, it could support them.

But wouldn't it effect gameplay quite a bit to have that feature?

[Pocus]

the game retreat to the region with the highest control... true, when you break combat, you try to retreat to another region. I'm unsure we should change that, because this is a great safeguard for the weakest side.

[runyan99]

Right now the game does not have any co-existence of opposing forces in a region - but at the size of those regions, it could support them.

But wouldn't it effect gameplay quite a bit to have that feature?

I don't think it would effect gameplay in a major way. It would only increase the instances where two armies are allowed to occupy the same region for a turn, which at the scale of the regions, seems like something that should happen fairly often.

[runyan99]

I'm unsure we should change that, because this is a great safeguard for the weakest side.

It makes good sense for an outnumbered defender to retreat, but I'm not sure it makes sense for an attacking army to retreat. I've had several bad experiences with this myself.

These random retreats can easily lead to Yorktown like situations where your army gets trapped, or moves in a direction which makes no sense to the player. Best to eliminate them where possible, to ensure the players have maximum control of where their armies go.

A number of my recommendations on this board lately are designed to be put together. I'm thinking of a system where an attacker will not reduce itself to destruction in one turn (the 25% casualty rule), a failed attacker will then revert to defensive stance and remain in the region. Then next turn there will be a random delay before a combat or a retreat should the defender then decide to counterattack the original attacker before it can leave the region, possibly allowing them to withdraw with no further engagement.

These ideas put together elimintate most of the uncontrolled retreats, stop the 90% casualty suicide battles, give maximum control to the players, allow armies to occupy the same regions more often, allow armies to sometimes move past or away from an attacking army, and make the start of battles unpredictable.

Sounds pretty neat to me.