I finally went out and got ETW after months of procrastinating. I was quite pleased with it until I came across the following situation.
So I was playing as great britain and Prussia declared war on me over the succession. No big deal, whatever I'll just raise an army and send it over with John Churchill (and jees isn't he doing well for an old man, 78 and still campaigning!).
Now my plan was to blockade their ports, land troops in Hannover and march into west prussia. I notice that there's a river effectively locking off part of the western boundary with a single bridge. I quickly advance to the bridge (having played TW games before) and while I'm doing that, I break off a detachment of cavalry to capture and burn the university that was on my side of the bridge. To hell with books, chaps!
So there's a group of infantry there, no big deal my cavalry should wipe them easily. 2 Cavalry vs 1 line infantry. Suddenly, my whole army wants to get involved as reinforcements. There doesn't seem to be a way to stop them, but oh well. It's not what I wanted, but it's not a big problem either.
I don't want to deal with having my reinforcements blundering around the map on what should be a straight forward fight. With a small detachment and a large stack of renforcements (infantry artillery and cavalry)on my side and 1 single infantry regiemnt on theirs, I figure it should be a quick and easy spank, no need to manually control what should be a brief and thorough spanking.
By the way, that regiment of prussians deserves medals for just sticking around to fight, I mean come on. So I hit the auto-resolve button without realising that I was apparently facing the Von Rambo regiment! Every unit takes 10-15% casualties. Even the artillery. With a 7 star general commanding! John Churchill, I am dissapoint. I know you're an old man, but jees.
Well, it's irritating, but I figure no big deal, I'm still able to fight, and hey, I have a whole birdge to hide behind, right? So I leave the cavalry to occupy the school and take up position on the bridge in the approved Total War fashion. Now the expected prussian counterattack comes,they send a large army but then (this is the fun part) it crosses the bridge occupied by my main army and bypasses them in order to attack the cavalry at the school directly.
....
WTF? No serious, wtf? What just happened? Did they teleport? Do they have magical flying horses to take them across? Do they have their own personal Moses to part the rivert?
I mean, what happened on the bridge:
"HALT! None shall pass, by order of John Churchill in the name of the King of England!"
"Oh it iz alright! Ve are not here to attack you, simply to crush your massively outnumbered cavalry over zere!"
"Well that seems very reasonable. I never liked those donkey wallopers anyway. Pass friend!"
So the prussian army directly attack my cavalry detachment. But here's the worst bit, my main army is dragged in as reinforcements. Now with a birdge to hide behind and properly deployed from the beginning I'd have had a good chance of beating the much larger prussian army. Deploying piecemeal into a battle, I was predicatably slaughtered.
It wasn't even funny, and it totally ruined my enjoyment of the game to be basically held down and kerb stomped and not be able to do anything because of a stupid bug. My army was wiped out and I quit the game in disgust. I'll have another go tomorrow, but seriously. This isn't good enough. Did they not test army routing or something?
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