To start with, I would like to say that I have little experience with Medieval II so I don’t know if this problem that is in EB will be in EBII.
The problem I have with EB is the way sally battles take place. The definition of sally, provided by merriam-webster.com, is “an action of rushing or bursting forth; especially: a sortie of troops from a defensive position to attack the enemy”. Based upon this definition I imagine that while I am besieged I send my troops from inside my city to outside the city to fight the opposing force. While I’m playing EB this not always the most sound decision.
To illustrate the problem I will demonstrate how I normally fight sally battles. During the troop deployment phase I place all of my archers and slingers on the walls in front of the enemy or to the corners of my walls to the right or left of the enemy. When the battle starts the enemy units start in range of my archers and slingers, but instead of moving out of range of my missile units most times they move to another spot, still in range the whole time, either to the right or left of their starting position at a corner of my walls. Knowing that the AI will do this every time, I am able to take full advantage of their poor placement and movement habits by inflicting heavy casualties and most times forcing them to retreat without ever leaving my walls. If there are still some leftover then the next turn I do it all over again.
The problem with this is that not only is this unrealistic but it makes the game too easy to beat. I can go entire campaigns without losing a single city. Even though the other factions spam out stacks and stacks of units I can easily and cheaply destroy entire stacks without fighting them out in the open. By being human you have a tactical advantage over the AI anyway but this kind of exploitation is just ridiculous. When I play a game I want it to be fair on both sides.
I have a simple solution to the AI’s problem with sally battles, make the starting position of the enemy army’s far out of range of the cities walls and then to stay out of range during the battle. This will force you to fight them outside your walls or to fight them during the siege battle. There are virtually no cons to adjusting the starting position but there are many benefits effecting realism of the game:
1. It will force you to garrison more troops in your cities, draining your economy.
2. Putting more troops in your cities makes having military campaigns more costly to your economy or dangerous if you leave your cities undefended.
3. This will hamper your expansion and force you to expand slowly and cautiously instead of quickly and erratically.
4. When an enemy army advances into your country you will be on edge, and have to devise a defensive strategy to stop the incoming invaders.
5. Instead of having half of the world conquered in the first 50 years of the game you will not get bored so easily and be able to expand at a checked pace.
The overall outcomes are enhanced gameplay and more realistic gameplay scenarios. I don’t know if this is even a problem with Medieval II, but I think it is a rational concern that should be looked into to help create a more perfect EBII.
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