I'm not talking normal retreats -like when you lose a battle, I mean when you do the retreat yourself and click on a far away province instead of a near one, you can retreat as far as you could move -sure you suffer attrition -so what...
You get to move an army across a continent, or a navy across an ocean, to where you have friendly forces ready to intercept the chasers. Neither the army nor the navy can be intercepted along the way.
Regular retreats for armies are still only one space and navies are to the nearest friendly port. No problem with that.
When I tried it I was in a battle where some 75k jumped my 25k. It was against an ally in the war, not a front where I cared. I didn't want the 25k to be destroyed so I just retreated it 15 provinces away to my much larger army and carted it back when peace was signed.
The naval point I illustrated means controlling key locations such as the straits of Gibralter, or the entrance to the black sea are meaningless if someone can just retreat their fleet of cogs from Scotland to land their army in Sinope. (assuming Sinope is a friendly port)
I didn't know you could do that with armies.
Still, the fact that it's out of your control, & subject to attrition, for a long time, is tolerable to me, but I take your point.
At sea, I still disagree. Again, you've got the point just made above, plus the fact that controlling such places just did not ensure contact. There are many cases of fleets evading interception, & very few of post-battle follow-up actions. Even the Armada was pretty much subject to attrition, not English forces, when they retreated. Strachan's action was vs a fleet which had reached port & sortied. There are very many such.
Yes, a much more complicated method might be created, but if realistically constructed, it'd result in an interception about once every 50 years, if not less often. And it would probably result in even more problems that it would be intended to fix. And it would probably overrate the value of blocking a strait. Is that worth it?
Further, this change has the very desirable result that, for the victorious force, it usually makes sense to return to base to repair, & reset your time at sea, as you cannot usefully pursue. In other words, act as winning fleets normally did, historically.
I do think prizes are too often in undamaged condition. They probably should automatically be at a max of, say, 75% effectiveness, regardless of condition at the end of a battle. It takes time to man, supply, often refit & re-equip prizes. But this is a quibble, compared to the real point: I just love this change. It makes naval war seem more realistic than anything the EU series has given before.
