I'm not cross, CA. I'm just dissapointed. So very dissapointed.

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?

Were you given an oportunity to intercept the Prussian Army when it moved close enough?

Or might it have approached by another path?

Nope, I wasn't given an opportunity to intercept, and it didn't approach by another path. It couldn't, if you look at the geography, unless Denmark or Hannover gives it acces, the only way across the river is that bridge. I watched it cross over the bridge too.

I have never seen this happen. I see all sorts of things I might be temped to call bugs but no passing a bridge.

I have around 1600 hours of playing the game and I figure I have seen most of its little glitches but this one has escaped me.

Their intercepts always work better than yours, but that is no big deal.

What was your difficulty setting? VH produces some odd behaviors too. I think the game has been geared toward Normal and anything else will allow the AI some weird abilities.

I've actually never had a bridge battle in ETW altough I defend bridges wherever I can. The AI just never wants to attack there against me. How many bridge battles have you guys fought?

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Originally Posted by Fisherking

I have never seen this happen. I see all sorts of things I might be temped to call bugs but no passing a bridge.

I have around 1600 hours of playing the game and I figure I have seen most of its little glitches but this one has escaped me.

Their intercepts always work better than yours, but that is no big deal.

What was your difficulty setting? VH produces some odd behaviors too. I think the game has been geared toward Normal and anything else will allow the AI some weird abilities.

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I was playing on normal. I guess the glitch is caused because the school or town is right next to the bridge, so the AI is able to attack it directly because it's adjacent to it while standing on the opposite side. It's just sheer lazy programming on the part of CA to not anticipate this.

Despite the fact that it's clearly on the other side of the river.

It may be that I have just missed that spot. Usually as GB I seldom bother with Prussia and as Prussia no one ever gets that close.

I have to say that the problems are so very much less with NTW than they were with ETW it makes ETW seem primitive.

It is just a shame that ETW didn’t get the full upgrade so that you had that stupendous scope.

I guess, the reason is that the school was so close to the bridge. Usually though, if the AI army is targeting a piece of real estate or a unit that is farther away than another one of your armies (in this case, the one on the bridge), then the closer one of your armies gets to intercept. The exception to this rule is when the AI army is already within your interception radius before they start the move. In that case, all bets are off.

As far as bridge battles are concerned, I had a different yet nasty experience. I was playing as UP and my defending army was sitting on a bridge next to the border with Flanders. Spanish had accumulated 3 stacks near the province capital and French were camping in the same spot with two more stacks. Finally, the Spanish AI decided to attack me across the bridge. French, being their allies, joined the battle. Fine, I thought, I can hold the river crossings and beat them all back. The battle started as epxected with the Spanish storming the crossings. Then came the big FUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!! moment. The French army merrily marched onto the field BEHIND my back, on MY side of the river, having magically teleported themselves across the water.

The lesson learned is: never trust river crossings if the enemy has reinforcing stacks. Reinforcements appear in random locations on the battlefield and those location have no relation to the original placement of the forces on the strat. map.