How long did Roman era battles last?

[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.

[The Stranger]

no longer but that's because your computer can't handle it.