Only one army per battle each side limits things a bit

[Dunadd]

The way that only one army all coming from one province can take part in any battle limits things quite a bit. Would be nice if you could send troops from several provinces to take part in an attack, coming from different directions, and adjacent provinces held by the defender had the option or chance of sending troops to join it too.

Would also be nice if nearby allies might take part in an attack/ defence.

I do realise this might be hard to change from a programming point of view though.

[Breca]

Well, you can do that in waves, attacking from 3 provinces in separate battles in the same turn. I realize this isn't combining forces for a massive battle, but one army getting attacked 3 times in the same turn can be very tough even on a seasoned army.

Offensively, if you have pans to overwhelm a qualitatively superior army in this way, concentrate only on inflicting damage on the defender with your first two armies. It's ok to retreat before sustaining too much damage yourself. The objective is only to weaken his ability to defend against the final blow.

Good Hunting!

Breca

[Breca]

I should add that this is especially useful for realms such as Iron Barony, which can raise hordes of weaker units. Eventually, defenders just get worn down. Meanwhile, Iron Barony has many units with the Expendable ability. Destroy one, and regain the gold to raise another. This, combined with rapid raise units can make the Iron Barony a powerful realm in the hands of a ruler who doesn't mind throwing his troops into the meat grinder.

[Dunadd]

I can see how that might work in theory, if a human player was controlling them ,and if that human player didnt mind having to autocalc most battles and never get any veteran units with medals.

But in practice an AI controlled Iron Barony in 1.9 never succeeds in taking anything more than sometimes one province from Ladvia and one or two from Dunmar, until Dunmar gets hill giants, at which point the Iron Barony can't compete because it has only one good unit (Captain Urkoth or whatever his name is) plus 4 decent Khazoth allied units. All the rest are dross that cant even wear an enemy down much in autocalc - including the zero defence ogres/trolls. Even their siege engines are hopelessly inferior.

So at that point they just defend for the rest of the game - happened when i played as Aevinwode (without ever going to war with Iron Barony till very late in the game, when i took Kal Hain off them), and same again when i played as Sonneneve (when i never went to war on the Iron Barony at all). Playing as Dragonhold i beat the Iron Barony ridiculously easily - it was like the game had been switched to having a "You Win" button whenever i was fighting the Iron Barony.

[Breca]

Agreed on the current state of AI vs Human. Iron Barony can really swamp enemies in the hands of a human, but it has a hard time dealing on the same level as AI. Vessoi is in a similar predicament.

We'll look hard into changes that make sense for these realms through EA.