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Changing to offensive posture when moving into a region with <5% MC makes sense. However I don't see the logic in making an army who is retreating from a region (because they lost)into a say 100% MC owned region on defence move convert to offence and therefore fight another battle.

It means that you have to be sure that you are going to win before attacking other wise you loose 2 battles.

Is this auto posture change (on retreat) WAD and if so why?

Thanks

If I'm not mistaken, I believe that a stack that withdraws from combat is automatically
placed in a passive stance.

The battle screen shows the retreating army on offence and that's after we put them on defence several times.

If they stayed on defensive posture (and the winning army was on defensive also there shouldn't have been a battle - certainly different from AACW1 (you advanced, lost and next turn moved out of the region on a defensive stance).

If you lost a battle, your stack retreats in passive posture. If they haven't retreated till the turn's end, if you want them to retreat do not touch their passive posture. If you change it, it will automaticlly turn to ofensive if you do not have MC in the region. This was like this in cw1 as well

I remember the AACW retreat process well. The losing unit tries to retreat and shows a line to where it is going (in passive). In your turn you could change it.

This is nothing like the retreat process in CW2 (for me). Did a test:

Early Sept Union army attacked and lost. Didn't retreat or try to retreat. Was in defensive posture.
Late Sept. I didn't issue new orders to army. Processed turn. Army changed from defensive to offensive posture. No sign of a retreat.

In AACW 1 in the new phase (Late Sept) the army would have been a fair way back to its starting region. In CW2 there is no movement.

Suicide Attack test
Did get the 'old' AACW1 retreat to work by attacking 500 strength against 1,500 strength army. The attack was so soundly beaten (down to 250 strength) that automatically turned to withdrawal mode.

So the retreat function is there but for roughly equal size armies have to do manually?
And doesn't that mean that you get killed twice for the same battle? Once when you loose and next turn when you try and get away in passive mode (if caught)?

help.

Interesting test. Obviously the engine decided that you are strong enough to contest the region even after the battle. So, if you put your army in passive mode and set retreat course, it will not initiate battle on its self. The only way for the opponent to catch you would be attack mode from his side as well, but he doesn't know will you be in passive or attack mode. So does he leaves his entrenches and attacks or stays in them and let you go. Interesting set of possible decisions. Is it better than in cw1, I do not know. At least, now we do not have results that previously were after unsuccessful siege assault. Previously, the attacker would leave the region after failed assault, while the obvious choice would be to continue with the siege. Now, the engine simulates this much better.

But if you are on defensive mode AND leaving the province, shouldn't the engine understand that you don't want to contest the province and therefore not switch you to offensive posture ?

I think this happens more often if the battle delay setting are changed to large delay. If the battle settings are set to small, if after one battle the defeated stack wants another battle, it would happen in the same turn, giving multiple battles few days in a row (Gettysburg for example). This happens when Armies are particularly large and terrain frontage is low (again Gettysburg hills as example). So after first battle, there are some units which did not participate (Picket's division for example) and you Army commander still thinks he can win it (Lee at Gettysburg for example), he will not retreat but he will seek another battle on the second day. If the battle delay is too long, the battle may never take place, and hence the army remains in contested region.

Where I think the engine could use an improvement is probability for second battle after the first one. If the attacker is defeated, but wants another battle on the second day, probability that it will happen should be quite high. If he chose to retreat and switch to passive, probabilities for battle should be low (there were very few follow up counterattacks after successful defense in American Civil War).

Agreed, It was an issue in AACW, that mods like Clovis's tried to fix : Make sure that battles cause a big enough loss of cohesion that it becomes very hard to take offensive action on the turn right after, ie exploitation was nigh impossible in this war until 64, they just couldn't do it.