Time limit in battles? Gives AI a chance?

I was just thinking about this, last night I had several small battles, a couple of hundred strong expedition forces against fairly devastated Russian holdings.
It took an inordinate amount of time to hunt each unit down since they were mostly small woodsmen hidden in woods all over the place.
So in the end boring for me and Russia was still dispossesed of her Balkan holdings.

What I'm wondering is does anyone use the time limit on battles? Does it make things more interesting? How do large battles work out with so little time? I've fought 3-4 hour battles against the Horde as the Turkish before, they were exhausting but still a lot of fun. Is the time limit determined by the size of the forces or anything?

edit: hah, I forgot my main point! Would the time limit affect AI battles? As in it might prevent the rise of superpoweres raging across the map, since a small unit hiding in a wood could foil a massive advance across the Bosphorus or into Georgia for example.

It save me from super large mongol stacks.

In the Game settings, time limit is the only thing unchecked.

My guess is that the time limit benefits players rather than the AI. Seems like players would be more tempted to 'run out the clock' by scattering units or playing hide and seek with a couple cav archers.

I keep my limit off

ichi :bow:

Heck, I haven't had the timer on since I started playing Shogun back in 2000. It drives me crazy when I lose a battle just because I can't find some guy hiding out in the woods. On the other hand, I also hate winning by simply running out the clock--for me, it doesn't feel like a true victory.

The time limit problem has only hurt me once. My English forces had virtually no cavalry and I was facing a Novogrod force of infantry and mounted skirmishers. I routed all the infantry, but a few mounted xbows were still about. Of course, by now, I had no cav left, so we just mulled around until the time limit when, although I had routed 3/4s of the Russkis, I lost.
It annoyed me at the time, but I suppose it does open up a strategy of delaying tactics etc.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ichi

My guess is that the time limit benefits players rather than the AI. Seems like players would be more tempted to 'run out the clock' by scattering units or playing hide and seek with a couple cav archers.

I keep my limit off

ichi :bow:

---

I don't like fighting againt huge amounts of HA.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by antisocialmunky

I don't like fighting againt huge amounts of HA.

---

Antisocialmunky, you're preaching to the choir! ~:cool:

The time limit gives the defenders an advantage, albeit a small one. Since I'm the one usually doing the attacking, the advantage goes to the AI.

I'm pretty sure the amount of time allowed varies from battle to battle, depending on the number of units involved.

I also think it makes for a more realistic game. Most battles had to be fought while the sun was still up- which created a natural time limit.

I've always left it on, and I've never had a battle where the limit ran out. It's rare that I even use up 3/4 of what's allotted.

The amount of time allotted to a battle does vary, depending on the number of units involved. The game will set the limit for big horde battles at 3 hours or more - small battles at 20 minutes.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Procrustes

I've always left it on, and I've never had a battle where the limit ran out. It's rare that I even use up 3/4 of what's allotted.

The amount of time allotted to a battle does vary, depending on the number of units involved. The game will set the limit for big horde battles at 3 hours or more - small battles at 20 minutes.

---

Hmm I may turn it on.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ichi

My guess is that the time limit benefits players rather than the AI. Seems like players would be more tempted to 'run out the clock' by scattering units or playing hide and seek with a couple cav archers.

I keep my limit off

ichi :bow:

---

Yeah, I've done that before.

One time, I only had 2 royal knights vs 3 squads of spearmen toward the beginning of the game. I desperately needed to keep this providence and not lose it, not even to the stronghold. Luckly, I forgot to uncheck the Time Limit box after I installed the game and I won by running around the map.

After that, I unchecked the box.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by antisocialmunky

I don't like fighting againt huge amounts of HA.

---

They are the bain of my existance. I am mostly an infantry person and rarely rely on missle and horse.

GO BILLMEN!!!!!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Budwise

They are the bain of my existance. I am mostly an infantry person and rarely rely on missle and horse.

GO BILLMEN!!!!!

---

I hate HA's too, but I rely mostly on Heavy Cav...so I could take them out if I made the effort, but I'm lazy, so I auto-calc against stacks of HA's anyway.

~D

I have to admit that I like the timer. Especially with the HRE and poor troops I have to rely on it to win sometimes. Believe me: it is hard enough to last that long as well...

It also helps to end the stalemate battles and does not make me lose my nerve and fail the defensive battles. I believe it is realistic to give that much advantage to the defending player.

Well I know one battle were the time limit was essential.

The comp got a guy trapped when he withdrew.

Find the time limit quite good, it's rarely annoying (unlike in Shogun) and helps in the extremely slow battles that happens sometimes. Only time were I depend on it is in castle sieges.

I have actually lost to the AI because of the time limit, once, and all I needed was another thirty seconds.

I like the time limit because I don't like to spend hours fighting a battle. I have lost a handful of times because I took too long in cornering and engaging the AI.

IMO the time limit definitely plays into the AI's hands, with its tactic of constantly shifting positions as you begin to approach them. If you're too slow to charge once you get them cornered, you can lose due to time.

I've also won maybe once or twice thanks to the time limit. I think the time has run out on the AI attacker a few more times than that, but I'd basically beaten them at that point anyway.

The time limit keeps battles from dragging on TOO long. And gives you an incentive to get your butt moving.

DA

hmmm, it seems to me that the time limit is really meant to provide the edge that Defenders have.

If you are the defender - and you are attacked by an overwhelming force - one of your best tactics (hell, read Sun Tzu), is to NOT engage them. To drag them out, wear them down, whittle them away - use the terrain to your advantage etc.

If the enemy cannot find you and destroy all your forces, eventually they will have to give up and go back home - until next summer...

just my 2 florins

DE

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Del Arroyo

IMO the time limit definitely plays into the AI's hands, with its tactic of constantly shifting positions as you begin to approach them. If you're too slow to charge once you get them cornered, you can lose due to time.

---

That sums it up for me, too. The battles I had where I used up most of the time tended to be ones where I was slow in getting off the starting block on an attack, or when I spent too much time crapping around getting my men in perfectly straight lines or manuvering my cavalry.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Procrustes

That sums it up for me, too. The battles I had where I used up most of the time tended to be ones where I was slow in getting off the starting block on an attack, or when I spent too much time crapping around getting my men in perfectly straight lines or manuvering my cavalry.

---

Az an attacker time has never run out when I did not want to. (There is a rare occasion when I cannot defeat but I would like to thin the enemy). You have to pay attention to the clock though. You have to be efficitent and manouver you to assault position by the time reaches 3/4 of the available amount.

Just imagine one Welsh bandit holding off the Horde.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Vladimir

Just imagine one Welsh bandit holding off the Horde.

---

They'd find, corner, and kill him relatively quickly. Even HA are pretty easy to corner and kill in MTW, as long as there's only one of them.

DA

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Martok

Heck, I haven't had the timer on since I started playing Shogun back in 2000. It drives me crazy when I lose a battle just because I can't find some guy hiding out in the woods. On the other hand, I also hate winning by simply running out the clock--for me, it doesn't feel like a true victory.

---

:bow:

I play with it ON as I don't have the time to play 4 hour battles, and it is realistic in the sense that battles almost always ended when the sun went down.

However, since I upgraded my PC and went to the largest unit size, the whole dynamic of the game changed. What used to be 2 full stacks is now only 1 stack - for the same number of men - and consequently take less time. But thats for another thread.

On smaller unit size I found it easier to run out the timer than I do now.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mithrandir

:bow:

---

And to you, Mithrandir. :bow:

To Mount Suribachi: Yeah, a few of my battles run a little long, but not that many. Regardless of how long a battle might run, however, I really hate stalling as a tactic to gain victory. Whenever I would run out the clock in a defensive battle, it always felt like I hadn't truly won.

It seems the remaining time changes depending on the size of the armys.
Usually I get about 40 minutes limit, but last night I had a battle against 15000 mongols with 6000 of myne and the time limit was 200 minutes.

I was holding off posting to this thread, since what I had to say had already been expressed by others.

Up until the other night, I would have said I am in favour of the time limit, especially if it helps sort out tricky situations like routing AI soldiers getting 'stuck' on a glitch in the map and to press escape to break the loop loses you the battle.

Also, I would have that I'd never run into time limit issues since starting with MTW - in STW it would crop up quite often, working against me as much as in my favour.

I've now had a large battle which I fully expected to win but half the clock went on just maneuvering around the field to a point where I could fire on them (they had no archers but did have superior numbers), not helped by my choosing the wrong hill at first. I think my use of time acceleration gave me a false sense of how much remained and I was so carried away with the action that the timer running out caught me completely by surprise.

Actually, mere seconds before that, half my forces were busy routing, the rest were damaged and exhausted. Thanks to holding back for so long, only my RK's were fresh enough for mashing the peasant reinforcements which were beginning to reach my end. I was considering ordering a controlled withdrawal, so perhaps the battle was lost anyway?

Removal of the time limit (I'm saying I'm now in favour of it) does require a certain amount of additional skill on the part of the player, in that you need to recognise that your forces are spent but the battle is not won and unlikely to be, even if you regroup and allow them to rest. If your faction leader is present, you need to ensure that he does not get himself captured, or killed and that he's withdrawn off the field properly, in such a way that he does not pick up 'good runner' vices, or similar.

I've left my time limits on and like other posters here have mentioned I've rarely found myself finishing a fight with less than half of the clock left.

However, one thing that I wouldn't mind with having the timer off is allowing myself sufficient time to sneak troops around to really flank enemies. Imagine the defender is sitting atop of a woody hill and watching your seemingly unenthused line slowly marching towards them. However, oblivious to them you've looped some hard core fighting men all the way around to the other side of the hill and they're creeping up through the woods slowly. Just as they begin firing arrows upon your line your flanking force springs out and hacks through their archers giving your advancing line its break to charge forward and decimate your enemy.

I'd love to pull of these kinds of tactics but always resist doing so as I'm afraid I'll end up losing because of time limits.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DensterNY

I'd love to pull of these kinds of tactics but always resist doing so as I'm afraid I'll end up losing because of time limits.

---

The AI tries to do this on EVERY SINGLE MAP WITH TREES ON IT. The first 3 times it scared the hell out of me, now it's just annoying, and usually plays against the AI. As in, I see half their force disappearing into the woods, I isolate it, I kill it, I move on.

AI cav sometimes still comes out of nowhere and tears a few units up, but it's almost always poorly timed so that I just kill the cav and turn back to watching their main force (which will often be broken up into several ambiguous and indecisive "flanking" groups, which often get torn up by archers and then caught unformed when my main force charges and are simply isolated, surrounded, and destroyed).

Seriously, the only situations in which I've seen the AI do well is if they are strong and charge into melee within a minute of first archer contact. Or if I'm totally asleep and do something dumb.

DA

I was delayed going to sleep last night for several hours because of a bridge battle, 1000 vs. 5000.

Next time I load up my current campaign, I'm turning it on.

As soon as I figured out how, I turned the timer off.

But as I've said elsewhere, I"ve had a couple of occasions to really wish it was on.

One situation has happened a couple of times. I'm playing the Welsh in VI; I've finally teched up to the point where I'm cranking out a few Welsh Bandits, and I finally get to fight a defensive battle against a Saxon or Mercian army. I carefully place my Bandits out front and to the side, turn off fire at will, and start the battle.

But for some reason, on these few occasions, the AI refuses to attack. There being no time limit means that my only option (aside from staring at them for hours with speed tripled hoping they move at me) is to attack THEM. Very frustrating, that; and the last time it happened I lost because of it.

The other situation has only happened to me once; it's the famous "AI-guy-gets-stuck-on-the-mountains-while-withdrawing" trick, where my only option here is to escape and lose the battle, even after I've just had an epic victory. The last time this happened to me it was after a 4-way battle: me & my allies the Irish vs. the Vikings and Saxons I believe. We won a crushing victory but ultimately had to lose.

Times like that make me want to switch the timer back on when I play "defensive" factions like the Welsh, just so I don't get burned when the AI refuses to do its job and attack.

I've just left the timer on by default and have no complaints. Since it varies based on the number of troops involved I rarely have a battle that runs out of time; and when it does happen I feel it justified.

Realistically a defender can win by attrition. Avoiding battle and waiting for the enemy to run out of supplies, get ripped apart by dysentery, etc. can be more effective for the underdog than open battle. For example, the French between the battles of Poitiers and Agincourt led a primarily guerrila style conflict against the English which was the most effective technique they used in the entire war until the time of Joan of Arc. This is more strategic than tactical, of course, but it's how I interpret the battle timer.

If the Saxons are unwilling to risk climbing the hill to attack your Welsh defenders, they can't take Wales. Sitting at the bottom of the hill indefinitely doesn't beat the defenders or force them to take the offensive.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ajaxfetish

If the Saxons are unwilling to risk climbing the hill to attack your Welsh defenders, they can't take Wales. Sitting at the bottom of the hill indefinitely doesn't beat the defenders or force them to take the offensive.

---

well said! ~:thumb:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by CountMRVHS

The other situation has only happened to me once; it's the famous "AI-guy-gets-stuck-on-the-mountains-while-withdrawing" trick, where my only option here is to escape and lose the battle, even after I've just had an epic victory.

---

I've been through that a couple of times. If you have any archers left sometimes you can still shoot them, even though you can't reach them.