Well, I finally fought my first bridge/river crossing battle last night. I had an army just at a bridge head prior to hitting the turn button, and was attacked as part of the turn move sequence. The battle screen popped up with the battle description of simply "Plains", so I thought I would reload and move my army until I got a bridge crossing fight. No matter where I placed my army, I kept getting a battle field description of "Plains".

After about 8 tries, I thought to hell with it, let's get on with the game. Lo and Behold, even though the description said the battle was on the "plains", it was in fact a river crossing. I now wonder if this had something to do with my previous troubles trying to get a bridge battle. In other words, since the battle screen indicated "plains", I was escaping out and reloading or skipping all together.

Anyway, it was not a very satisfying battle. There was a single bridge and one shallows a short distance away. The problem was that my starting blue box had my army so far away from the crossing, that I had to run my army to just get there just as the enemy poured over the bridge. I had sent to cav units to the shallows, and the attacker counter with one light cav. Of course my two heavy units made short work of them and crossed the river to wait for the right moment to hit the enemy in the rear or flank.

The enemy never took advantage of their missile troops, but simply rushed them along with their mêlée teams over the bridge. I was able to stop them with a wall of spears at the end of the bridge while my archers in the rear took their toll on the mishmash of enemy troops still on the bridge. When I sensed they were about to break, I hit their rear with my cav.

I won a heroic victory, but still took high casualties. However, the problem as I see it is this: I had been setting at the bridge crossing for at least a turn or two, and I was attacked. Logically--given these conditions, when the battle started, I should have had the advantage of being able to set up my troops whereever I wanted on my side the bridge, the embankment, and the shallows---just as any prepared defender would. If I was attacking them, I would expect them to have this same advantage that I would have to contend with.

It all goes back to my post about the random and artificial starting boxes that one must deal with at the start of each each battle. For me--as the single player, they simply seem contrived and make no real sense tactically---unless it's simply an attempt on the developers part to add an artificial difficulty level to the game.

Maybe they could add an option so the single player can either use these boxes or not--so those who want the challenge of running their armies like maniacs to get to the best position before fighting could opt for the boxes, and conversely, those who would like a more realistic tactical beginning--based on their logical actions from the strat map could opt to not use them. I guess I'm just gettin picky in my old age.

Cheers