Carthage: A bug story

[Owen]

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I'm in the middle game of a medium/medium campaign as the Julii. I captured Carthage fairly early on, and, not realising quite how ridiculously quickly the population of that city grows, I chose not to enslave the populace.

1. (Game issue) Trading grain has too much of an effect on city growth. Historically, grain exported from North Africa was mainly sent to feed Italy, not transported between each of the local regions.

Reading the forums, encouraged me to force a revolt so that I could recapture and enslave them. By this time, I'd built an Imperial Palace there, and the population had reached 26000.

As expected, the city immediately revolted. Unfortunately, I'd already built an arena by this point to make the people happier, so I got a gladiator revolt, with 5 gladiator units and 7 units of peasants. Not a bug as such, but it was annoying. Nonetheless, I set all my town watch, peasants assault army to building siege equipment.

At the end of my turn, the rebels sallied and attacked my army of 10 town watch units. I fully expected my main assault army, with good general, barbarian cavalry, Principes, gladiators and equites to crush them. Instead I found that the army was commanded by main town watch captain, and both sets of reinforcements were "delayed". The town watch had a reasonable go at flanking the gladiators, but eventually routed, after which all three of my siege armies ran off to my ships.

2. (Bug) Reinforcements should not be delayed when an enemy sallies to break a siege. They should have all been available on the map.

3. (Bug) Sallying units should have to face the strongest army besieging them, not choose to sally against the weakest

4. (Bug) To lift a siege, it should be necessary to defeat each of the besieging forces

Just solving one of these bugs would have been enough to prevent those problems.

So, I returned to the siege, this time with my assault army, now also reinforced. Once I had waited a turn to build siege equipment, I began the assault. It was here that the problems really started.

I had plenty of troops to assault, especially after the town watch had worn the rebels down before. Here's what happened:

First attempt: Found the most weakly defended spot at the northeastern corner and attacked using one sap point and two siege towers. Principes and the arrows from the towers I'd taken easily killed the gladiator unit that came to attack the breach. Rebels on the walls just sat around defending the gates even after I'd got in. Sent cavalry galloping forward (1 general, 2 barbarian cavalry, three equites, 2 Numidian mercenary cavalry) to get it over with. Found that cavalry kept trying to form really long thin lines before navigating round corners to get to the next waypoint. Decided the problem was that the Numidian cavalry were on skirmish mode. It wasn't. Barbarian cavalry and general almost reached the city square and the time ran out.

5. (Bug) Battle time limit is far too short for capturing cities.

6. (Bug) Cavalry (and other units?) cannot handle moving around corners in cities, because they have to complete their formation before moving on to the next waypoint. If the AI pathfinding wasn't so poor, this might be less of a problem.

Second attempt: Seeing the time problem, I attacked from the same place, but got cavalry in position quicker. This gave me enough time for my cavalry to arrive in the city square piecemeal and my general to be killed by Mirmillo gladiators.

Third attempt: Thinking I could get to the city square quicker, I attacked using siege towers at the north gate. Principes took too long killing the peasants defending the gate, so cavalry only got halfway to the square.

Fourth attempt: Attacked south gate. Peasants and gladiators meant I didn't even capture the gate before time ran out.

Fifth attempt: Attacked east gate. Took gate quicker, once I'd found that you can kill peasants on walls who are fighting to the death much better by clicking to make them run to a point immediately behind the enemy. Got enough cavalry to the square to kill off gladiators and gain control of square, just seconds before rebel counter ran out. Julii-coloured counter then started up, though with under 3 minutes left. I assumed I just had to hold the square, but I was wrong, and was left with a "close defeat".

7. (Bug?) I'm not sure how this is supposed to work. I was expecting to win by holding the square for three minutes, but maybe the design decision was that the overall time limit trumps city control.

Sixth attempt: Attacked east gate again.Managed to take city square. Equites coming through as back up managed to kill Samnite gladiators trying to return to city square. When I took the square, I found I had about a minute remaining, and realised I must have to kill all the rebels to win. Finally managed to kill the last few peasants fighting to the death on the walls with 5 seconds left.

8. (Bug) Soldiers defending city walls should not fight to the death if they can escape down the tower behind them.


Other than struggling to beat a Greek 9-star general and some hoplites, that was just about all I managed in an evening-long session last night.

[R'as al Ghul]

1. (Game issue) Trading grain has too much of an effect on city growth.

I don't see this much as a problem, but chances are that it will be balanced better after the patch!?

[..] Instead I found that the army was commanded by main town watch captain, and both sets of reinforcements were "delayed". The town watch had a reasonable go at flanking the gladiators, but eventually routed, after which all three of my siege armies ran off to my ships.

2. (Bug) Reinforcements should not be delayed when an enemy sallies to break a siege. They should have all been available on the map.

3. (Bug) Sallying units should have to face the strongest army besieging them, not choose to sally against the weakest

4. (Bug) To lift a siege, it should be necessary to defeat each of the besieging forces

2. Reinforcements are delayed when they have run out of movement points. Forward planning is the solution. This is not a bug.
3. If several armies besiege on different sides of the city, you can choose on which part/ side you attack. In the end you have to defeat all units who besiege. Not sure what you mean. This is not a bug.
4. So it is in my game. You do need to give the siege order, not just lurk around in the red zone. Again, no bug.

5. (Bug) Battle time limit is far too short for capturing cities.

Again, no bug. It may be too short, although I only had problems 1 or two times in about 50+ sieges.

6. (Bug) Cavalry (and other units?) cannot handle moving around corners in cities, because they have to complete their formation before moving on to the next waypoint. If the AI pathfinding wasn't so poor, this might be less of a problem.

Pathfinding in cities is a problem. Try to click only on the destination point. Leave out any waypoints. In my experience they find their way immediatly.

7. (Bug?) I'm not sure how this is supposed to work. I was expecting to win by holding the square for three minutes, but maybe the design decision was that the overall time limit trumps city control.

If you take the square and the timer begins to run with your flag, you'll win if the enemy doesn't capture the square back. I've won sieges with few enemies left.

8. (Bug) Soldiers defending city walls should not fight to the death if they can escape down the tower behind them.

True, but the AI may order them to do so.
Sorry to hear that you've had problems when attacking a city. I think all of us agree that it can be very challenging. On the other hand you use the word "bug" way to often too describe what annoys you. A bug is a programming error not something that could have been better designed.

R'as

[Owen]

I don't see this much as a problem, but chances are that it will be balanced better after the patch!?

2. Reinforcements are delayed when they have run out of movement points. Forward planning is the solution. This is not a bug.

They had moved one square from the city to immediately outside. It is a bug.

3. If several armies besiege on different sides of the city, you can choose on which part/ side you attack. In the end you have to defeat all units who besiege. Not sure what you mean. This is not a bug.

Ah, well if the reinforcements don't turn up despite being camped just the other side of the city then you don't have to. Even though I had three separate armies besieging, they all ran to the boats after one was beaten. In some ways, 2 and 3 are just the same bug really.

4. So it is in my game. You do need to give the siege order, not just lurk around in the red zone. Again, no bug.

Ho hum. I did give the siege order.

Again, no bug. It may be too short, although I only had problems 1 or two times in about 50+ sieges.

It takes a third of the time to get onto the walls, another, say, sixth of the time to capture a gate, and most of the remaining time to get to the city square. You could shorten things slightly by using sappers to get in the walls, but that increases the distance from your entry point to the centre. If the only constraint on my battle tactics is the battle timer, I consider that is has such a significant impact on gameplay that it is a bug.

If you've only had problems once or twice, can I guess that this is the number of times you've assaulted a large or huge city?

Pathfinding in cities is a problem. Try to click only on the destination point. Leave out any waypoints. In my experience they find their way immediatly.

I'm not sure I follow you. Pathfinding is a problem, but in your experience they "find their way immediately"?

If you take the square and the timer begins to run with your flag, you'll win if the enemy doesn't capture the square back. I've won sieges with few enemies left.

Yes, but only if there is long enough left for your three minute timer to complete before the timer for the whole battle finishes.

True, but the AI may order them to do so.
Sorry to hear that you've had problems when attacking a city. I think all of us agree that it can be very challenging. On the other hand you use the word "bug" way to often too describe what annoys you. A bug is a programming error not something that could have been better designed.

R'as

I am aware of the difference, hence my use of the words "game issue" or "bug?" at certain points. I stand by all of what I wrote, though points 2, 3 and 4 could be mostly solved by a single bugfix.

[Oaty]

Heres what I do when the A.I. attacks the smaller force. I withdraw, the larger army maintains the siege and it goes on. No this is'nt gaming the comp either as its the comp not seeing the overall picture.

Heres what the A.I. sees 1000 men besieging 1 side and a few hundred besieging the another side. It sees a small army it can handle so attacks. The A.I. does not see the overall picture it just sees an easy victory.


As far as the timer you can DL a mod for the timer, do a search in the dungeon. Theres a chance they will bring back the timer/notimer option with a future patch or recalculate time for a siege.

26,000 people in Carthage is not a big problem to deal with. Of course not executing or enslaving upon first conquering it is a lesson well learned. It takes time to convert the city.

Look in the ludus magna forum for topics on better city management and you will see Carthage is managable.

In my current campaign I was conquering Spain and Parthia at the same time. The key here it takes time and you need to be using a general with good traits especially influence. For each influence a governor has that adds 5 percent loyalty bonus. A 4 influence governor can just about keep any city under control and if I lose it I wait for that uber 8-10 influence general to smash them to pieces. For Carthage find a good general and put him there.

[R'as al Ghul]

Ok, I guess I'v to clarify a bit.
First of all I'm annoyed at the overuse of the word "bug". I do appreciate it that you (more than others) differentiate between "game-issue" and bug, though I don't agree with all your bugs.
Concerning the siege problem, if three stacks are given the order to siege and the besieged sally against one of those stacks, all three should be on the battle map. If they don't, I agree that it is a bug. Additionally I agree that you should have to defeat all the besieging stacks to lift a siege.
But, if you move a stack close to a city which is already under siege, spending all your MP's to get there but only reach the red zone without being able to order a (second) siege, chances are high that if the defender sallies in this turn, the second army won't appear.

If you've only had problems once or twice, can I guess that this is the number of times you've assaulted a large or huge city?

No. Well, in my current campaign there are only wooden palisades but in my last campaign I played Greece, fought almost exclusivly against stone walls and I remember a lot of close battles. Ok, point taken. I guess the larger the city, the more time you need and the more you're in a hurry.

I'm not sure I follow you. Pathfinding is a problem, but in your experience they "find their way immediately"?

Oops, my fault. My experience is that, as you already said, they (mostly Cav) have problems with their formations in cities. You can work around this when you just click on the destination point. My experience is that they will find this point without problems. Of course it takes a while for them to get there and it's always good to have an eye on them. When I order my Cav to gallop to the town square from outside the city, they will go there.

Yes, but only if there is long enough left for your three minute timer to complete before the timer for the whole battle finishes.

Ahh, okay. I did get you wrong here. Hasn't happened to me. Hmm, that sure needs fixing.
BTW, no offense intended in my first post and sorry for misunderstandings.
Generally it's good to find out the bugs that shorten the fun but I'm sure you'll agree that not every bug that is reported by patrons is a bug.

R'as

[Owen]

Heres what I do when the A.I. attacks the smaller force. I withdraw, the larger army maintains the siege and it goes on. No this is'nt gaming the comp either as its the comp not seeing the overall picture.

Heres what the A.I. sees 1000 men besieging 1 side and a few hundred besieging the another side. It sees a small army it can handle so attacks. The A.I. does not see the overall picture it just sees an easy victory.

Well, that sounds great, except all three of my armies (town watch, peasants and assault army) withdrew when the AI beat one of them. I suspect but can't prove that this is because the other two armies were listed as reinforcements but then "didn't arrive in time".

As far as the timer you can DL a mod for the timer, do a search in the dungeon. Theres a chance they will bring back the timer/notimer option with a future patch or recalculate time for a siege.

I think that what is needed is for the time allowed for assaults to vary with city size, with those on huge cities taking something like three times as long as a normal field battle. I don't think the timer/notimer option is really sufficient.

26,000 people in Carthage is not a big problem to deal with. Of course not executing or enslaving upon first conquering it is a lesson well learned. It takes time to convert the city.

Look in the ludus magna forum for topics on better city management and you will see Carthage is managable.

True. I'd already reduced the culture penalty a lot, and it was manageable. The reason I still did it was to boost my Italian cities and regional capitals towards 12000 population.

In my current campaign I was conquering Spain and Parthia at the same time. The key here it takes time and you need to be using a general with good traits especially influence. For each influence a governor has that adds 5 percent loyalty bonus. A 4 influence governor can just about keep any city under control and if I lose it I wait for that uber 8-10 influence general to smash them to pieces. For Carthage find a good general and put him there.

That's a good point. I don't really consider the happiness penalties to be a problem, and I only mentioned it as background in this thread, nothing more.

[Owen]

Ok, I guess I'v to clarify a bit.
First of all I'm annoyed at the overuse of the word "bug". I do appreciate it that you (more than others) differentiate between "game-issue" and bug, though I don't agree with all your bugs.
Concerning the siege problem, if three stacks are given the order to siege and the besieged sally against one of those stacks, all three should be on the battle map. If they don't, I agree that it is a bug. Additionally I agree that you should have to defeat all the besieging stacks to lift a siege.
But, if you move a stack close to a city which is already under siege, spending all your MP's to get there but only reach the red zone without being able to order a (second) siege, chances are high that if the defender sallies in this turn, the second army won't appear.

OK, I have no problem with that, but it isn't the case here.

No. Well, in my current campaign there are only wooden palisades but in my last campaign I played Greece, fought almost exclusivly against stone walls and I remember a lot of close battles. Ok, point taken. I guess the larger the city, the more time you need and the more you're in a hurry.

Thanks.

Oops, my fault. My experience is that, as you already said, they (mostly Cav) have problems with their formations in cities. You can work around this when you just click on the destination point. My experience is that they will find this point without problems. Of course it takes a while for them to get there and it's always good to have an eye on them. When I order my Cav to gallop to the town square from outside the city, they will go there.

OK, thanks. I'll try that next time. I haven't had good experiences with pathfinding using only a few clicks in smaller cities though.

Ahh, okay. I did get you wrong here. Hasn't happened to me. Hmm, that sure needs fixing.
BTW, no offense intended in my first post and sorry for misunderstandings.
Generally it's good to find out the bugs that shorten the fun but I'm sure you'll agree that not every bug that is reported by patrons is a bug.

R'as

No problem. I am very wary of the difference between bugs, quirks, historical pedantry and programming decisions that make the game harder.

[Pellinor]

On a related but unconnected note, I too have been having trouble with Carthage (Bruti VH/H - decided to go for a three front war, so I'm invading Gaul and Greece as well. No, it's not going as well as I'd hoped).

I'm attacking mostly with Hastati and velites, plus a few merc hoplites and peltasts (it's only about 263 BC).

In my case, the problem is that there are two lots of elephants in there (plus cavalry and only one infantry unit). This leads to the following situation:

- Siege towers capture the walls in no time. Javelins from the wall massacre cavalry, and in conjunction with infantry rout the elephants.

- Elephants flee to town square, outpacing the equites pursuing them.

- Elephants hit the edge of the town square and immediately rally.

- Remainder of my army engages and is trampled into the ground. Flanks, rear, missile weapons, melee, open order or close - it makes no difference. In the square, units rally immediately after their morale breaks.

- I must therefore kill every last elephant to take the city. This is not possible in the time limit.

I managed to take it eventually on about the sixth attempt, after disabling the time limit and suffering 60% casualties (with a 4:1 kill ratio), 59% of which were to the elephants in the square. The final success came when the split second between routing and rallying coincided for both elephant units.

The first time I lost the battle, of course, was at the end of a turn and the timer ran out before I got to the square - it took too long to rout the elephants by the walls. The entire army evaporated, despite the fact that only about three units had suffered any casualties in the attack so far and the assault had met no serious hiccups.

OK, chalk that up to experience: reload from autosave, play through the other battles of the turn, SAVE JUST IN CASE...

Anyway, the three issues (design issues, not bugs) I have:

- The town square seems to have far to great an effect on morale.

It is magical the way a single light infantryman will suddenly turn to face his 200 pursuers as soon as he steps on the paved area.

This is not much of a problem for infantry and cavalry, as the fool who stops fleeing will die quickly and can't do much damage before he does. It's a killer for elephants, as it takes much longer to kill them and they do a lot of damage (and even when they die they crush half a dozen people under their corpses).

- The time limit is too short for stone walled cities

- The effect of defeat on a stack is too harsh.

Having a routed army disintegrate is one thing. Having almost unscathed units in a defeated army disappear is perhaps justifiable, but they should have a chance if they have an escape route. Having an almost unscathed army evaporate because it still can't get over the walls it has been looking at for three years is stretching credulity. Having an unscathed army destroyed because the five o'clock hooter went while they were still chasing down the last few fugitives in a city is just ridiculous.



After Carthage, the few pathetic little Light Lancers in Corinth were a lovely refershing change :-)

Cheers,

Pell.R.

[Owen]

- The effect of defeat on a stack is too harsh.

Having a routed army disintegrate is one thing. Having almost unscathed units in a defeated army disappear is perhaps justifiable, but they should have a chance if they have an escape route. Having an almost unscathed army evaporate because it still can't get over the walls it has been looking at for three years is stretching credulity. Having an unscathed army destroyed because the five o'clock hooter went while they were still chasing down the last few fugitives in a city is just ridiculous.

Nice post, I particularly agree with this.

When an assault fails, the siege should only be lifted if the enemy sallies and drives them from the map. At the moment any failed assault terminates the siege, which is just plain wrong.

[Maltz]

2. (Bug) Reinforcements should not be delayed when an enemy sallies to break a siege. They should have all been available on the map.

Jupitar always has his plans, which is best for you. Let's say you did see the reinforcement on time. So... your family member, with lots of stars, lead the reinforcement, controled by the AI...

He charged to stand beside some arrow tower, and got shot to bee hives. Now you know how lucky you are. (Just kidding, you are extremely unlucky to experience so many adversity in a row.)

I have not personally experienced any reinforcement delay, but I have seen AI with missing reinforcement. It happened to be a similar situation. The main attacker was the smallest among the 3, and I tried my best to rout them in 2 minutes, and I won the battle. There is no damage on the no-show reinforcement.

IMHO reinforcement delay is a good feature, because it happens all the time in the real world, often resulting in catastrophy. It might be a "bug" if the hidden factors controlling the delay is broken, so you get unreasonable chances for getting the delay, though. This I am not sure.

3. (Bug) Sallying units should have to face the strongest army besieging them, not choose to sally against the weakest

Sorry, I have to disagree, because I would have done exactly the same thing if I were the AI.

However, you are absolutely right that it is super annoying to have your weaker army sallied by the garrison. Many players lost family members because the AI would control the reinforcement.

So it might be good to avoid this like hell in the future - just combine the troops into a best-20. That's all you can have on the battlefield, too.

4. (Bug) To lift a siege, it should be necessary to defeat each of the besieging forces

Yes, indeed. I have not experienced it but I know what you mean.

5. (Bug) Battle time limit is far too short for capturing cities.

Indeed. But everytime I fail, I could find out something I did wrong, so I could avoid it in the future. Here are a some tips I learned from my own stupidities:

- Breach multiple openings to spread the defender out
- Don't try to fight melee unless I can rout the enemy fast, say by overpowering them preferrably from multiple directions
- Arrow towers are killers, keep away at all cost
- If there are quite a few garrisons on the wall, I send my men on the wall not to kill the defenders, but to open the key gate that I will rush everybody in. After I rush in those units on the wall will go down, and sometimes I can intercept them on the street
- Don't charge my general to city square until I know it is safe or totally necessary - enemies units there never rout, so they will stand a lot longer. There is a higher chance that they will kill my general by luck.

I tend to think it is ok to give some advantage to the defending site, though. If daylight is short, then it is our own bad luck. Hopefully you are lucky next time to get 35 minute battle.

My best record is about taking a 7-8 garrison, regular stone wall city in 20 minutes. So I would expect to fail for anything worse than that.

6. (Bug) Cavalry (and other units?) cannot handle moving around corners in cities, because they have to complete their formation before moving on to the next waypoint. If the AI pathfinding wasn't so poor, this might be less of a problem.

First I found pathbinding sucks, so I tried a little more micromanagement. Here is what I do, and since I start to do that, I never experience any trouble.

- Go to the place you want them to go, drag out the final formation there, and hit "run" (on the bottom right. hit again to "walk").

- 2 turn is about the safe limit that AI can handle for good pathfindings.

7. (Bug?) I'm not sure how this is supposed to work. I was expecting to win by holding the square for three minutes, but maybe the design decision was that the overall time limit trumps city control.

Yes, overall time limit has the first priority, then the 3 minute town square thing. I failed a few sieges for this, too.

8. (Bug) Soldiers defending city walls should not fight to the death if they can escape down the tower behind them.

Good point! Even more strange is that when the start to fight to the death, they just freeze there. If you don't kill them and just leave them there, they will remain frozen and broken for the rest of the battle.

[Owen]

...Indeed. But everytime I fail, I could find out something I did wrong, so I could avoid it in the future. Here are a some tips I learned from my own stupidities:

- Breach multiple openings to spread the defender out
- Don't try to fight melee unless I can rout the enemy fast, say by overpowering them preferrably from multiple directions
- Arrow towers are killers, keep away at all cost
- If there are quite a few garrisons on the wall, I send my men on the wall not to kill the defenders, but to open the key gate that I will rush everybody in. After I rush in those units on the wall will go down, and sometimes I can intercept them on the street
- Don't charge my general to city square until I know it is safe or totally necessary - enemies units there never rout, so they will stand a lot longer. There is a higher chance that they will kill my general by luck.

I tend to think it is ok to give some advantage to the defending site, though. If daylight is short, then it is our own bad luck. Hopefully you are lucky next time to get 35 minute battle.

My best record is about taking a 7-8 garrison, regular stone wall city in 20 minutes. So I would expect to fail for anything worse than that.

Well, part of the reason I consider the time allowed for assaulting huge cities to be bugged, is that I understand all those tactical considerations, but I had to ignore all but the ones that helped me beat the time limit.

First I found pathbinding sucks, so I tried a little more micromanagement. Here is what I do, and since I start to do that, I never experience any trouble.

- Go to the place you want them to go, drag out the final formation there, and hit "run" (on the bottom right. hit again to "walk").

I'll try that, thanks.

- 2 turn is about the safe limit that AI can handle for good pathfindings.

Ouch. That's a lot of micromanagement. The reason I had enough time to get my cavalry to the square on the last go was that it "only" involved four corners.

Good point! Even more strange is that when the start to fight to the death, they just freeze there. If you don't kill them and just leave them there, they will remain frozen and broken for the rest of the battle.

That may have been happening. I have to admit I was concentrating on my non-moving cavalry most of the time.

[Maltz]

Thanks for the fast response. First sorry for the many typos and grammar errors (I was in a hurry so no time for proofreading). I forgot to mention that during a siege, if you issue order to "groups" (more than 2 units grouped as I, II, you know), say "group I charge this unit", "group II run here", then they always screw up. Usually they run backwards to wait outside the wall.

I guess this happens because when you hit "group", the program remembers the relative positions and since the city streets are too narrow, the closest place the program could find to obey your command & to maintain that formation, is to go outside the city wall.

So the only solution is to give out orders to individual units. A lot of pause for micromanagement is not very enjoyable, but it also drags a 20-min. battle longer...

[NicSO]

Battle time limit is wayyyyyyyyyyy toooooo short.....and u cant use any strategy because u must battle with the time also...I switched of damn time.

I quess people from CA never heard for BETA TESTING!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Medieval Assassin]

Some people never heard of english class...

[Maltz]

Regarding short battle time limits:

First I totally agree that time is short. In many occasions I ran out of time and left in frustration.

I guess it is good to allow more time to larger castles. For wooden forts 20 minute is reasonable, for 30-35 minutes for stone castle, 40+ for epic stone walls, etc.

Switching the timer off is quite bad, though. There was a time I turned the battle timer off after a frustrating assault, and it made everything so easy - I feel like an idiot commander. I can issue one order every 1 minute or so, watching 1 unit of archer march foward and shoot, the back off, then the next... it feels even more unreal. I think it is even more devastating than the frustration of timer running low - this makes me think my brain is running low.

So I would recommend not to turn the battle timer off, instead try to fight with timer on and see how much you can improve. Timer off is like a tavern, making you "unsharp" (-1 command, -1 management, -1 influence).

[Owen]

Some people never heard of english class...

How's your Croatian doing? ;)

[bmolsson]

I think that the time limit is valid since the battle result is decided rather early anyway......

[Medieval Assassin]

How's your Croatian doing? ;)

PPPPPPfffffffffffft..........He's doing fine.

[NicSO]

I had English in school but that was long ago (Im 24) and most of the time Im not writing on English but I understand it perfectly....grammar is the problem. I always hated it:)

[jjnip]

- The effect of defeat on a stack is too harsh.

Having a routed army disintegrate is one thing. Having almost unscathed units in a defeated army disappear is perhaps justifiable, but they should have a chance if they have an escape route. Having an almost unscathed army evaporate because it still can't get over the walls it has been looking at for three years is stretching credulity. Having an unscathed army destroyed because the five o'clock hooter went while they were still chasing down the last few fugitives in a city is just ridiculous.

I wondered what happened to my army, 900 of them, 700 of me, I killed 450 of them, lost 60, ran out of time during siege. Then without looking closely or thinking too much, I ended turn. Then it said, both generals were killed, then I thought, hmm, then looked at map, and "poof" no army. This was vh/vh. I thinking I dont like vh/vh too much. It seems to make their militia cav equal to my Head Hunting Maidens, which I dont even have yet. Just thinking.

Their Milita Cav are 6/6 2 charge 6 missle but with the bonus to vh they prob more like 11/11 7 charge 11 missle with 340/110 for AI, and they already have boost to income.

I cant match that as Scythia till Head Hunting Maiden 10/11 6 charge but at 600/141 and 2 turns.

It like boxing match with 1-arm behind your back,with a eye patch plus Sycthia income is bad. I think I go back to normal, and just win in vanilla and keep eye on modders. Go Go modders.

In normal or medium diff all the units are mathematically, across factions acting in battle as math would have it. You learn the numbers, but then play harder levels of difficulty and then you have to "learn" that their peasants equal your militia hoplites, their militia hoplites equal your Phalanx pikemen, their Phalanx Pikemen equal your Royal, plus you got hard time making money.
I dont use tributes or bribes.

However its kind of hard to except all factions are stronger than you, better breast milk I guess.

Other than that, timers are the nut, units in cities is frustrating, I however still love this game. Go Go RTW.

[Owen]

I think that the time limit is valid since the battle result is decided rather early anyway......

No. Your conclusion only follows from your statement if the strength of each army at the end of the time limit is used to calculate the winner. Since the defender wins if they reach the time limit and have a single unit which isn't dead, off the map or routing, then you are wrong.