Choosing not to reinforce?

[Fridgebadger]

Is there an option, when you have a reinforcing army, to order them not to take part in the battle (a la M2TW?).

If not then it's either a very big annoyance or actually a stupid bug; a few times I've had one scouting unit that's run out of movement points attacked by a full stack, and I've got another, say half stack or healing army within reinforcing range. So the one unit gets attacked, and the reinforcing army dribbling on to the field one unit at a time (arty and generals always first! Brilliant!) about 20 yards behind the enemy's main line.

Am I missing something obvious?

[Daevyll]

I've been looking for that too, since it was present in M2TW as you said.
Havent found it, so I'm afraid it's not in at the moment. I expect it to be patched in though, as I recall it was a late addition to M2TW too, as well as the option of having AI control for the reinforcing army or not.

[JeromeBaker]

I really hope they fix this in a patch soon. I have lost a few troop garrisons in my cities becuase they are in range of a field army that gets attacked and get pulled into battle. Just like the previous poster, my garrison troops come out 1 at a time right next to the enemy and get crushed one militia unit at a time while my true field army rushes to save them. I end up losing more field army troops because I am running them haphazordly across half the map to try and save whats left of my garrison troops. It would be real nice to keep reinforcements from entering battle when you dont want them there, expecially when the reienforcment zone is much bigger in Empire than past TW series games.

[Ciaran]

Actually, in M2TW you can´t choose not to reinforce (nor in RTW, for that matter), the only choice you have is who controls the reinforcemtents.
If you want to control them yourself, you´ll get a maximum of 20 units, with, as it sometimes happens, half of them directly behind the enemy. You can control that, however, by positioning your troops on the worldmap.
If you give the AI control you can get, well, I suppose up to eight stacks onto the field. With all the pitfalls AI control implies.

[NimitsTexan]

I've been looking for that too, since it was present in M2TW as you said.
Havent found it, so I'm afraid it's not in at the moment. I expect it to be patched in though, as I recall it was a late addition to M2TW too, as well as the option of having AI control for the reinforcing army or not.

I really, really hope giving AI control of a stack (and allowing one or more stacks to enter the battle alongside the primary army) will be patched in. I loved those huge battles in Rome and M2, the lack of them is definately one of my big peeves with the game right now.

In M2TW, if you had a general with an army, you could hand it over to AI control, which mean it would enter the field together . . . but of course you would have limited (Kingdoms) or no (M2) control over it. Still, it was fighting for your side and hurting the enemy, and that system made concentrating forces much more effective, and big battles that much more epic.