Matrix Games Forums

First of all, let me congratulate all responsible for putting together this great game. I have been waiting for years for a realistic strategic Civil War game.
While I think it is realistic for a unit to avoid battle while in the same province with an enemy unit that wants to engage for a turn or two; I think it's unrealistic for it to happen indefinitely. Particularly, if the unit that wants to engage has a superiority in cavalry. Eventually, the unit that wants to "avoid battle" should have to retreat or engage. On that same note, I think it is entirely unrealistic for a unit which is besieging a fort/city to avoid battle if an enemy unit wants to engage it. I mean, how are you going to outmanuever an enemy unit if you have to stay in one place in order to besiege a "fixed" position. Doesn't it make sense that the besieger is also "fixed".
Again, thanks for a job very well done.

GIJim

Ive never seen avoid battle work very effectively. Not sure how it works, what the odds are or anything.

The avoid battle option gives a military group a 50% to avoid a battle per movement phase.  There are 6 movement phases in a turn, so the chances of avoiding battle for an entire turn are .5^6 = .015 -- that is to say, there's less than a 2% chance of being able to avoid battle for an entire movement phase.  The odds of avoiding battle for two movement phases is only .02%.  The two main uses for avoid battle are to try to gain a little delay while attempting to rendezvous with a unit that's en route to help you fight in the province, or else to try to slip past enemy units into one of your provinces (since you can't move past enemy units to move into enemy territory).

We could add an option to disallow avoiding battles for military groups that are besieging, but as avoid battle isn't really an effective way to, uhm, avoid battle, I tend to think that this would just add complexity to the interface that probably isn't necessary.