Flat and featureless

[western]

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.