Not enough field battles?
Recently, there has been a virtual flood of people who feel that there are indeed not enough field battles. While I'm sure that nearly everyone would like to find a solution to this problem, one has not been forthcoming.
In MTW, one would enter an enemy's territory and engage any army in said territory unless the enemy decided to flee to the castle. While this sort of battlemap may have been simplistic to the point of being compared to "risk", it was entirely effective in guaranteeing plenty of field battles.
With the introduction of a new campaign map in Rome, armies could wander around within an enemy's territory for the entire game without ever engaging each other. While this did add an element of realism to the campaign map, it also meant that many battles had moved to the walls, so to speak. Since too much of one thing becomes annoying over time, the constant sieges were becoming a bit boring for most players.
Is there a way to encorporate the best of both worlds though? Could a player have a more realistic campaign map with the same ratio of siege/field battles that people hark back to from MTW? Hopefully, yes, but it will require another slight diversion from reality.
Now let's imagine that you are the English, marching a newly recruited army towards the province of Paris. Your troops near the border in good order, but once they cross the border into french territory the French are given two options- They either "Engage your forces at the border" or "Ignore advance and Manuever".
The immediate engagement at the borders option would allow the player to engage in many more field battles. The computer could consider the size and quality of both armies, and if the odds are good then engage in the border fight. The computer could even be coded to accept a certain ratio of these battles if they meet the above conditions, a ratio that might also be programmed to change occasionally. This would make the system seem more random, so that the players can't expect a battle on the border every time.
Now what if the French army isn't equipped well enough to survive the battle, or have any hope of winning? Well the computer/player would opt to manuever instead, which would give more time to build troops and set up ambushes, things that would give the computer/player an advantage in the coming battle.
A new system such as this would also mean that Military Access would be twice as valuable, since one would be given the option to defend as soon as one's borders were breached. It would also inadvertantly give the player reason to maintain overall diplomatic integrity, so that military access would be easier to achieve.
Any thoughts, revisions, or suggestions are entirely welcome, and I would also appreciate conversation on the topic. If the idea is good enough and can withstand scrutiny, I suggest that we send the idea to CA for possible future implimentation.
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