Not enough field battles?

[pat the magnificent]

i fight plenty of field battles. probably about a 1 to 1 ratio of field to siege battles.

[TevashSzat]

Yea, i dont find that there isn't enough field battles and fight plenty on them. Just try to advance towards Constantinople from the west and you will see that you have to fight at least 3 or 4 relatively large Byzantium armies.

[Garnier]

I fight mostly field battles by using the following houserules:

I always autoresolve assault defences, and always wait about 3-4 turns or more when I am besieging a settlement so the enemies have a chance to attack me and drive me away before I take it. I fight sieges on rare occasions.

[Alcorr]

I agree with the thread starter. My field battle vs. siege battle ratio is something like 3:5 maybe 1:2.

I liked the AI ideas he gave too, agree 100%

[dopp]

Is everyone using vanilla M2TW though? Most popular mods increase campaign map movement speed.

[dismal]

First, I agree that the constant siege battles is a problem.

Maybe the suggested fix would have some merit.

I see the issue as one of incentives. All of the economic benefit from a province comes from holding the city. The ability to replenish troops comes from holding the city. Cities are excellent defensive turf (for me.) Ergo, when attacking, I head straight for the city. When defending, I wait inside the city.

The AI compounds the problem in two ways:

- The campaign map AI It does not garrison cities well enough
- The battle map AI does not do well defending cities

If I feared taking cities more, I might try to maneuver the AI into a field battle.

Though, of course, if the AI were good it should still want to hunker down in its city with its strong garrison. So, this alone would probably get us mostly siege battles but they'd be better, more costly siege battles.

To get more field battles I think ultimately requires some sort of incentive to get defenders out of cities. I think this simply requires a greater cost to having troops wandering about your province. This perhaps could come in the form of increasing unrest, or loss of cash as the enemy pillages your country side.

Frankly, I think fixing the AI is about 90% of the issue. Since I spend most of the game on offense, more costly siege battles is probably enough to get me to fight in the field. Even as it is, I sometimes resort to the tool of starvation (which results in a field battle of sorts) when I have a siege that looks like it might be particularly costly.

[diotavelli]

Realism is the issue here, for me. Medieval warfare involved far more sieges than field battles - and probably far more skirmishes than sieges.

Most people aren't interested in fighting dozens of tiny battles with one or two units on either side - which, as I recall, is why CA changed the AI so it no longer sends such armies out into the field. In this case, realism lost out to playability.

I think the responses already given indicate that it's possible to get more field battles if you want to. If I feel like being realistic in a campaign - or if I feel I've got great siege troops, I head for the walls more often than not. If I fancy a load of pitch battles I march around until I find the enemy stack and pitch into it. The option is there and it seems daft to me to complain that the enemy doesn't initiate enough pitched battles when you have the chance to do so yourself.

In terms of encouraging the AI to fight more field battles, I'd be concerned by this. Now that the AI tends to gather decent stacks of troops, it's important that it conserves these, rather than charging headlong into engagement at the first opportunity. The human player normally wins these battles ceteris parabus, so it would be a worry if the AI constantly sought battle, lost stacks in short order and left factions subsequently unable to defend themselves.