Choosing your ground

[Colovion]

I find that it makes no difference which place I choose to fight, it's nearly always the same. Bridges are an exception. For the most part though your army doesn't inhabit a large enough area for having a mountain pass really be all that strategic or much of a difference to fighting in an open plain as opposed to the tile between two mountains. Even if you choose to fight in an area and feel it's good enough for duking it out with your opponent, when the battle loads, you find your soldiers in the most awkward of places. And it isn't as if you have the time to skirt up a mountain pass and hold that, there just isn't the time or the terrain detail for that kind of thing. So basically I see no reason to choose the ground for the battle aside from the meagre area you can maneuver around in one the battle commences.

[Uesugi Kenshin]

I have set up hoplite armies in the passes of Greece to fend off the Brutii and Macedonians, but they are usually attrition wars, not war-winners.

I have also used hoplite walls in sieges in the city of Tarentum to bleed the Romans dry in RTR while I fight my main abttles against the Thracians and Carthaginians, again mainly attrition not generally war-winners.

[Lord Adherbal]

RTW maps are quite a disappointment. Virtually no terrain features that offer any strategic options, only elevation (which results in a MUCH too big combat bonus) and forests (which are a bit bugged, projectiles shot from inside a forest at an enemy in the open dont seem to suffer any penalty).
If you see that creating impassible terrain is impossible even in the battle editor then you realise the terrain system is very simplistic.

[Deus ret.]

Virtually no terrain features that offer any strategic options, only elevation (which results in a MUCH too big combat bonus) and forests (which are a bit bugged, projectiles shot from inside a forest at an enemy in the open dont seem to suffer any penalty).

I think due reference is payed to the influence of elevation. Have you ever tried to fight uphill in battle gear? To face a charge down a hill? Or to shoot arrows with the hope of bypassing the enemy's armor, since the lower ground largely prevents it from punching through the cuirass? I haven't really, either, just went to some live role playing cons some time ago and learned a few basic things about combat. Yes, the higher ground does matter that much.

As for the forests, though, you're right. And indeed they could have added some terrain features which would make a difference to plain grass not only in the graphics.

[The Wizard]

Since RTW vanilla does not feature any terrain of importance, or very rarely, I don't choose ground. It's not needed. Just have some good warriors and charge. GGNORETHX, my 200th win with no losses!

Deus ret., what Adherbal is saying is that RTW vanilla does not have any terrain. Occasionally a hill, but the AI just leaves it. Terrain should matter like it did in MTW, but in RTW, due to such things as mountain passes having to be as flat as sea-level ground (probably having to do with the tile system), terrain never shows up in campaign battles. And territory listed as 'hils' when right-clicked is really just flat ground with slight elevation differences here and there. A world away from MTW's hills. A big pity that the new campaign map, perhaps inadvertedly, perhaps not, took away terrain as a feature of importance.



~Wiz

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

The worst out there are some small hills. It's like, "Oh no. A small hill. Knoll? Oh, my soldiers will have to fly slightly faster to win in 5 minutes."

[pezhetairoi]

Not to mention that NO amount of uneven ground whatsoever will make your impregnable phalanxes lose formation, therefore overpowering them in their front. There has only ever been one battle that I choose my ground to fight on--that is the Rome sally battle that I will always fight--I land on the river ford just next to Rome, and besiege it. The next turn the combined Senate army comes pouring out (often at numerical disadvantage but qualitative advantage) and hits me. No matter where their field army is, it and the garrison will ALWAYS hit me both on the same side of the river, so I just form a semicircle and have fun. It's always a real slaughter, a real scream. Yeah. that's the only battleground I choose, because it's the only place that I'm guaranteed a battle in any campaign save the Senate campaign.