How long did Roman era battles last?

[The Stranger]

well i suggest don't pursiut routing units when defending. i allways put my units in a small battle line of three units behind each other (it's works great with pilum infantry)
the come and rout, then they rally and come again. it can last for 20 minutes and then you fought to the death.

[RollingWave]

The main thing is, RTW battle speed isn't that exagerating.... for the numbers of men it suggest is on the field. in RTW you could have most around 3000 men in a fight while most involve usually about 1-2k... that would be a very small battle in most historical time periods.

obviously, fighting with 10x the men will take a whole lot longer than a battle involving much less number (everything else staying the same). most of the major battles in roman times both sides will have well over 10k men, that's 10x more than what we could achieve in the game, and usually the extra number is not simply a x10 factor, but usually much longer.

Another thing on battle was that usually in larger confrontations neither side will move in very fast unless they are positve (or precieve positive) of their superior strength. for example Ceaser vs Pompey, both side faced off on the field trying to lure each other to attack for days before they finally engaged, the battle itself didn't last all that long as Pompey's cav charge got demolished by a surpise hidden wing of ceaser.

Let's face it, fighting on walls or in cities in RTW (if both sides are relatively close) takes forever, that's kinda realistic, but most ppl don't like it much either.

[The Stranger]

yes that's true. in wall battles i usually use double speed. you know what, we just like to complain about the bad things in the game and take the good/great ones for granted

[HarunTaiwan]

This is the one thing that is actually realistic about the fast speeds, is that the general could not micromanage too much once it hit.

Yes, maybe a wing, or the Cav, but not each single unit.

[hrvojej]

In TW games one thing I really like is total control. Some small things are ok, such as the command delay, but I wouldn't enjoy it half as much if it took some derivation of hands-off approach. I loathe the games that take the "operational" point of view, and just let you issue some general commands to your troops after which you can only watch the battle unfold.

And wall battles take forever and are not really interesting because 1) only one unit of each side is fighting, the rest sit and wait; and 2) not much is going on in general since only two units (out of say 20) are fighting. Having the AI rout on contact in 95% of the open-field battles is however not fun for me.

[The Stranger]

well then stop wall fighting and start street fighting.

[Red Harvest]

The main thing is, RTW battle speed isn't that exagerating.... for the numbers of men it suggest is on the field. in RTW you could have most around 3000 men in a fight while most involve usually about 1-2k... that would be a very small battle in most historical time periods.

Sorry, but this part about the speed is patently false. If you believe that a formation of armed men will cut another to pieces in seconds you are mistaken. A group of armed fighting men against naked unarmed men would take longer than RTW combat in many cases. A person's innate defense (survival instinct) is higher than what we see in RTW. And formations rely on *mutual* defense. It usually would require more than one successful blow to eliminate an opponent--even if the wound was itself of a fatal nature it does not necessarily incapacitate immediately (especially fatal bleeders.) Single combat can end very rapidly (but then again even old bare knuckled boxing could sometimes take many hours.) Fighting in groups generally takes longer.

Small battles were not uncommon...you just don't hear as much about them as they are generally considered skirmishes. In reality they were probably more common, but they rarely were recorded in detail.

Even after legions of Cannae were surrounded and defeated, it took hours for Hannibal's army to kill the trapped mob. In RTW if you could render such a large battle I doubt it would take more than a minute or two.