Quote Originally Posted by Dead Moroz
- All armies in surrounding (to both attacker and defender) tiles must participate in battle. (In RTW even fairly close armies often could not take part in battle.) "Reinforcement" armies should not come into battle in the same time right from the start, but appear one after another according to their distance from main participants. Armies that stands on the sides of main participants should begin action from the start, armies that stands behinds backs of main participants will come into battle later. But attacker's reinforcement/ally standing behind defender's back should participate in battle from the start.
I don't know... I do want to see the AI focusing more on larger armies, but a forced encounter system like this might limit our strategic options too much.

When my army is understrength, and I see a reinforcing stack headed to a nearby enemy army, I'll often rush an attack to make sure I hit the enemy before his reinforcements can reach the adjacent map square. Conversely, if I'm feeling strong enough, or I just want a more challenging battle, I'll wait for the enemy to merge stacks or be within the one map square reinforcement range. I can play it either way.

After the battle, I have the option to move elsewhere, or take on the nearby enemy stack... just like real life, basically. Real armies don't always sit around and wait for everyone in the countryside to show up, especially if the attacker sees an advantage in hitting an isolated element quickly.

The 3D map in RTW is all about flexibility in movement and strategy. Yes, I do want to see more of the massive, decisive battles.... but I also don't want to lose the ability to do opportunistic attacks on just a single element of the enemy's presence in an area. Some of the other ideas mentioned above would help insure bigger battles, without boxing in the player with this "all or nothing" approach.