Any way to retreat/withdraw before the battle?

[Crimguy]

I'm finding it hard to accept that the attacker can always engage in a battle. It seems the defender should have the opportunity (% chance if attempted?) to at least attempt a withdraw before being engaged. Is this possible?

[PyleDriver]

I talked to Joel about this along time ago. We left it as if the defender has a larger force then they can. They ajusted the loses to reflect a retreat for smaller forces...It play's well...

[8D]
Jon

[elmo3]

That seems counterintuitive to me. A smaller force would be more likely to slip away while a defender with a force advantage is more likely to accept the fight. Spotting should play a big part. If I know a larger force is coming I'm going to bug out. If they surprise me then I have to stand and fight.

[Joel Billings]

We decided a long time ago that we didn't want to allow retreat before combat. The mechanism that allows you to pull units out of an area under attack only allows you to pull out forces that are in excess of what's attacking, so a defending force can't be pinned by a smaller attacking force (although since you have to move a leader out with all his units together, often a smaller force can pin down more units than in the pinning force.

Instead of allowing retreat before combat (which would have opened up a number of different issues and strategies), we decided to make a smaller force very dependent on it's leader to determine how likely it will be to get away without suffering large losses. A good leader will keep the commitments down to a small number so as to reduce losses. A poor leader will not be as good at keeping the losses down.