Quick question, and probably an obvious one, but here it goes, when you drop into a battle (a seige is easy enough to sort on this, I know who the attacker and defender is), but in a land battle where I just pop in, it's not clear to me who has the onus of attacking vs defending, since I just drop in I don't know what led up to this little engagement, and therefore don't know if it's proper of me to get into a decent defensive position on wooded hills for example or if I should move on out and attack.

I've run into the typical gamey behavior of the SP opponent just sitting up on a hill with a thousand archers waiting for me to send my ashi to their deaths on the open field in front of them. The problem I have in sending them to their deaths is this, I tend to play this game as a sort of strategy RPG, and by that I mean I wouldn't as a commander stupidly send all my men to their deaths under such circumstances. Now if I'm the one with the burden to attack, then I'll play my role and find the best way to attack the position I can. But if I'm the defender in this engagement, I don't see why I would do anything other than find my own best defensive position and sit there and stare at him.

So, how do you tell?