Battle Time Length?

[USS Providence 1972]

My guess is land battles will be longer but it will depend on the number of units involved. The ability of infantry to form squares should prevent the RTW tactic of bringing cavalry around behind engaged infantry and causing them to panic. That, plus the ranged nature of battles and more involved terrain factors should extend the length.

Naval battles I don't know about but this video is a clue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxiRP1A0uKU

The battle entailed five ships on each side and appears to be nearing a conclusion after 8 1/2 minutes. There didn't appear to be much tactical maneuvering, just toe to toe fighting for the most part.

[Polemists]

A interesting conversation.

I'd say 20 minutes sounds about right, bare in mind while some of the fanatics here may play battle after battle again and again, alot of casual gamers eventually just do auto resolve later on. So to do anything as elborate as a hour long battle is a bit much for the CA staff.

You can still have it with high enough numbers I assume, but we will see.

Usually for it comes down to how quickly morale breaks. So if morale starts breaking 10 minutes in, another 5 minutes to make it scatter through army, 5 minutes to mop up, and yep 20 minutes sounds about right.

Judging by the screens and videos i've seen it appears that musket fire is pretty deadly, so units will be dying alot faster then in past games I assume.

As for naval battles, all depends how many volleys a ship takes before sinking. However I've seen alot of people comment on 20 v 20. Just a small note, so far, in the game, it seems the standard encounter is about 5 v 5 or 3 v 2. So 20 v 20 will be the odd circumstance not the norm i assume.

I mean this is only a 200 turn game, and CA has stated ships will take time to build, so you may be quite a bit into the game before you can get a 20 ship fleet.

[Sir Beane]

On average I think many of my battles tend to take a lot longer than 20 minutes. I have a tendency to micromanage formation and tactics for minimum casualties, and that can result in rather long battles.

A 20 minute average seems reasonable to me, not too long and not too short.

[Thermal]

20 minutes may seem to short for many, but if you have 4 decent sized battles in a turn, thats 80 minutes, and if that happens next turn (it probably will, with naval and land battles) 80 minute turns arent so appealing as when you begin to get many enemies im sure that will be feasible amount of battles.

The battles are obviously going to be longer because of land mostly shooting, which could be lengthy, plus theres all these abilites to lay down fortifications and garrison buildings, that could delay things massively. Sea battles will take a while because boats will take ages to be destroyed and even if you board a ship the fighting will take a while and the other ships will still be fighting.


Whether there long enough for orgahs or not, there almost guaranteed to be longer than in previous total war games, and i wouldnt want them to drag on forever.