Flat and featureless

Although I have been playing this game forever, I only recently noticed a strange thing. When you start MTW from scratch (not when you start a new game within a session) the first battle always takes place on flat and featureless terrain - regardless of what the Borders text says the terrain should be. I've checked across various Mods as well as vanilla, and this always seems to happen - also regardless of faction or province or era. Has it been noticed before? Is there any way to avoid it? The pre-battle image shows nice interesting terrain - and then up pops flat and featureless to rain on my immersion.

Attachment 19686

Now that's weird, Western.

I've come across the map before, although not in the same circumstances. This is the 'default' map that plays whenever the game calls for a map-type that doesn't exist, and normally when it crops up I am forewarned by getting a black (ie missing) pre-battle image. It can be quite entertaining in castle assaults ~D

However, I have never experienced the general case that you report in the first battle of every campaign. Clearly in your case, the correct map does exist because a pre-battle image comes up, so the question is why the map is not called correctly. For me, it doesn't make any difference between vanilla or mods, I always get a 'proper' map for the first battle - except in those cases where I have a missing map and it would be missing on the first, third or ninety-ninth battle

So I can't offer any solution, I'm afraid, but I'd be interested to try a couple of tests.... on a new session, before starting a new campaign, try a custom battle to see if the same issue arises - if it does, you may be able to then start your campaign normally. And second, try the tutorial campaign, and see if that does the same. Of course, your options on this might be limited with mods.

Excellent thinking Macsen. I tried custom battle with hilly terrain and got the right pre-screen but then flat and featureless default. Then I switched to my real campaign and the first battle popped up with the right terrain - so the workaround worked. I can only play on steam these days, so just maybe the issue is related to steam version. But as you say, it's weird and hard to understand - computer can't find the right map first go, but thereafter it can, so where's the logic?
That's a rhetorical question by the way - there is no logic, but I'm glad I asked for ideas because your workaround wouldn't have occurred to me.