Time limit in battles? Gives AI a chance?

[Martok]

Heck, I haven't had the timer on since I started playing Shogun back in 2000. It drives me crazy when I lose a battle just because I can't find some guy hiding out in the woods. On the other hand, I also hate winning by simply running out the clock--for me, it doesn't feel like a true victory.

[King Kurt]

The time limit problem has only hurt me once. My English forces had virtually no cavalry and I was facing a Novogrod force of infantry and mounted skirmishers. I routed all the infantry, but a few mounted xbows were still about. Of course, by now, I had no cav left, so we just mulled around until the time limit when, although I had routed 3/4s of the Russkis, I lost.
It annoyed me at the time, but I suppose it does open up a strategy of delaying tactics etc.

[Mithrandir]

Heck, I haven't had the timer on since I started playing Shogun back in 2000. It drives me crazy when I lose a battle just because I can't find some guy hiding out in the woods. On the other hand, I also hate winning by simply running out the clock--for me, it doesn't feel like a true victory.

[Mount Suribachi]

I play with it ON as I don't have the time to play 4 hour battles, and it is realistic in the sense that battles almost always ended when the sun went down.

However, since I upgraded my PC and went to the largest unit size, the whole dynamic of the game changed. What used to be 2 full stacks is now only 1 stack - for the same number of men - and consequently take less time. But thats for another thread.

On smaller unit size I found it easier to run out the timer than I do now.

[Martok]

And to you, Mithrandir.

To Mount Suribachi: Yeah, a few of my battles run a little long, but not that many. Regardless of how long a battle might run, however, I really hate stalling as a tactic to gain victory. Whenever I would run out the clock in a defensive battle, it always felt like I hadn't truly won.

[KSEG]

It seems the remaining time changes depending on the size of the armys.
Usually I get about 40 minutes limit, but last night I had a battle against 15000 mongols with 6000 of myne and the time limit was 200 minutes.

[EatYerGreens]

I was holding off posting to this thread, since what I had to say had already been expressed by others.

Up until the other night, I would have said I am in favour of the time limit, especially if it helps sort out tricky situations like routing AI soldiers getting 'stuck' on a glitch in the map and to press escape to break the loop loses you the battle.

Also, I would have that I'd never run into time limit issues since starting with MTW - in STW it would crop up quite often, working against me as much as in my favour.

I've now had a large battle which I fully expected to win but half the clock went on just maneuvering around the field to a point where I could fire on them (they had no archers but did have superior numbers), not helped by my choosing the wrong hill at first. I think my use of time acceleration gave me a false sense of how much remained and I was so carried away with the action that the timer running out caught me completely by surprise.

Actually, mere seconds before that, half my forces were busy routing, the rest were damaged and exhausted. Thanks to holding back for so long, only my RK's were fresh enough for mashing the peasant reinforcements which were beginning to reach my end. I was considering ordering a controlled withdrawal, so perhaps the battle was lost anyway?

Removal of the time limit (I'm saying I'm now in favour of it) does require a certain amount of additional skill on the part of the player, in that you need to recognise that your forces are spent but the battle is not won and unlikely to be, even if you regroup and allow them to rest. If your faction leader is present, you need to ensure that he does not get himself captured, or killed and that he's withdrawn off the field properly, in such a way that he does not pick up 'good runner' vices, or similar.

[DensterNY]

I've left my time limits on and like other posters here have mentioned I've rarely found myself finishing a fight with less than half of the clock left.

However, one thing that I wouldn't mind with having the timer off is allowing myself sufficient time to sneak troops around to really flank enemies. Imagine the defender is sitting atop of a woody hill and watching your seemingly unenthused line slowly marching towards them. However, oblivious to them you've looped some hard core fighting men all the way around to the other side of the hill and they're creeping up through the woods slowly. Just as they begin firing arrows upon your line your flanking force springs out and hacks through their archers giving your advancing line its break to charge forward and decimate your enemy.

I'd love to pull of these kinds of tactics but always resist doing so as I'm afraid I'll end up losing because of time limits.

[Del Arroyo]

I'd love to pull of these kinds of tactics but always resist doing so as I'm afraid I'll end up losing because of time limits.

The AI tries to do this on EVERY SINGLE MAP WITH TREES ON IT. The first 3 times it scared the hell out of me, now it's just annoying, and usually plays against the AI. As in, I see half their force disappearing into the woods, I isolate it, I kill it, I move on.

AI cav sometimes still comes out of nowhere and tears a few units up, but it's almost always poorly timed so that I just kill the cav and turn back to watching their main force (which will often be broken up into several ambiguous and indecisive "flanking" groups, which often get torn up by archers and then caught unformed when my main force charges and are simply isolated, surrounded, and destroyed).

Seriously, the only situations in which I've seen the AI do well is if they are strong and charge into melee within a minute of first archer contact. Or if I'm totally asleep and do something dumb.

DA