My only gripe with EB

[vonsch]

See, I am of the opposite mind. I just fought a battle, odds slightly in my favor, but I wanted to preserve certain units that I wanted back on the road immediately from damage, and allow the local garrison to absorb what damage had to happen. This is very hard to do with vanilla or most mods. The pace is just too fast in battle, even on normal speed.

But in this case I could charge my HA I wanted unharmed around the flank to the rear to put their arrows to use, and allow my foot archers to accept the charge of the light spears that were mostly what the enemy had. Meanwhile, a couple bodyguard units pinned and surrounded the one young noble cav unit that was the threat to my HA units since they too have bows and speed.

No way I would count on a foot archer unit (of the first tier, basic sort) to hold against light spears for long enough to make this work. The one unit charged took about 20 losses. Then the rest of my cav killed their general and routed the other two spears (total 4 spears and 1 light nobles) and still had time to charge the rear of the spears pinned by the archers, routing them instantly too.


But the cav on cav (mostly) battle I fought last night was long and bloody and gripping. Cav does not melee well, so to do much damage you have to pull it out and recharge it over and over while pinning the target with something (in this case, more cav, I had them take turns). If you try to just let the cav forces hack at each other until conclusion, you may as well go out to dinner... or autoresolve. But if you exercise tactical command, you stay busy and interested. And you have more time to do so with EB because units are more durable.

Tactics actually work, and you have time to employ them. But the AI does too, so keep an eye on it. Once it a while it manages to pull off a nice flanking move if you just sit.