Initial position of the divisions in the detailed combat

[Montmirail]

I think the deployment of the opposite divisions in the detailed combat is often too close.
It would be more realistic to give importance to the recce (particularly with light cavalry), planning and coordination of the movements as in the historical battles by favouring armies led by chiefs with high tactical skill and initiative mod.

[ericbabe]

Detailed battle layout is mostly a game-playing issue. We experimented with many different parameters for map size and distance between teams. What we found is that even small increases in starting distance / map-size greatly increased the playing time of detailed battles. Bigger maps and wider starting distances do put more emphasis on reconaissance (and do make reinforcements more valuable), but we were getting an average playing time of 4-5 hours for a single detailed battle, and that was just too long.

To give a hint about what we're working on for the sequel: we're experimenting with adding group-movement commands and other mechanisms to make moving many units easier. Hopefully this will allow us to have battles on bigger maps with more units that don't take too long to resolve.

[Tanaka]

ORIGINAL: ericbabe

Detailed battle layout is mostly a game-playing issue. We experimented with many different parameters for map size and distance between teams. What we found is that even small increases in starting distance / map-size greatly increased the playing time of detailed battles. Bigger maps and wider starting distances do put more emphasis on reconaissance (and do make reinforcements more valuable), but we were getting an average playing time of 4-5 hours for a single detailed battle, and that was just too long.

To give a hint about what we're working on for the sequel: we're experimenting with adding group-movement commands and other mechanisms to make moving many units easier. Hopefully this will allow us to have battles on bigger maps with more units that don't take too long to resolve.

Would it be possible in the future to make detailed battle distances (shorter or longer) optional for those of us that like more realistic long drawn out battles??? So people that like short quick battles could choose close up teams and others could pick teams that are separated at a farther distance...

[Doobious]

Splended idea! [:D]

[ericbabe]

That might be a possible user-configurable parameter... have to look into the best way to implement, etc.