Herself

It's been a while. Seems to be a lot of old faces back.

Well, I don't play MP so all my experience comes from battles against the AI. I also have not got as much experience as I'd like; there are some units I am still getting a feel for, and lots of things I want to see repeated dozens of times before I feel the conclusions are anything like solid. That said, I don't feel like there is a problem with flanking penalties at the moment. I do get results, and have seen the AI get results against my own units. Especially when cavalry or a superior unit hit, and definitely when the target has already been damaged to a reasonable degree.

I have seen a few units fight to the death. Very elite units, such as a high honour general plus bodyguard. I think a couple of my samurai did in a particularly nasty battle but I cannot be sure as I was busy elsewhere. Either they stood to the last man, or routed at a handful left. It's rare and due to wider gameplay implications that is how I like it; it should be a special event belonging to an outstanding group of warriors.

My main battle problem is arghohmygodthatsfast! I ended up playing most battles on the slow mo setting, and have recently found a mod which purportedly slows movements speeds down without affecting anything else. I intend to give it a try.

The second thing - which is definitely more a consideration in need of more experience before a positive or negative conclusion is formed - is that it sometimes feels like the rout happens too quickly, too easily. That's in face to face combat. Charge with fresh and barely damaged units, lines met, oh, over already and I didn't even manage to run my flank attacks into place. That's with fairly equal unit classes.

Between the two it feels like I don't have time to do anything remotely elegant unless I stick to slow mo. Until I found slow mo it was hard to even get a flank attack even, and cavalry was entirely useless.