In game terms battles by 1905 ALREADY last 4 months due to constant reinforcements of stacks.
And Port Arthur was continually reinforced? Let me guess - historically the Russians also just retreated behind Japanese lines after they got beaten as well, right? Did the Japanese then chase the beaten Russians all the way to Vladivostok, or did they just allow the Russians to yo-yo between two of their armies until they had been entirely destroyed?
For every pre-1900 example you mentioned I could cite 5 examples which lasted days by being set-piece battles.
Move=attack simulates this quite adequately - I attack, I beat the enemy, the enemy retreats if they can, but if they can't they surrender. Actually, it does a better job of this than the current Vicky system where surrounded armies can still escape
through enemy lines.
Never mind that two out of the three biggest battles of the second half of the 19th Century (Sedan and Koniggratz - the other big battle is Gettysburg) involved the surrender of a surrounded army that had already been pocketed - the kind of battle that move=attack excels at simulating but the current system fails miserably at.
Attack-move right from 1836 is a VERY bad idea.
Why? Under move=attack, I attack, the enemy retreats into friendly territory if they can, and surrenders if they can't. This seems fair enough given that battles had already become long, drawn-out affairs by the time the 1870's had rolled around.
The game needs one model for early game AND another for late game. Just as the current model is good for early game and bad late game, attack-move would be the exact opposite because before machine guns battles weren´t fought on continuous and very wide fronts, which is exactly what HOI simulates. Period.
Machine guns were already in use by 1870, and breech-loading rifles had already gone a long way to making battles as described (Gravelotte/St. Privat is a good example of this). Move=attack is perfectly adequate to simulate combat by the mid-game period, much more so than the current system.
My point here, anyway, is not that Move=attack is awesome for every circumstance, but that since it works best for all of the biggest wars that occured during this era between 'civilised' nations (ACW, Prussian wars of unification, Boer War, Russo-Japanese War, and of course WW1 - a conflict which everyone seems to think 'doesn't count' for some reason) then it is the system that should be preferred.
If you have to chose between two systems - one of which is frustrating and annoying, and anyway does not properly simulate the middle of the game or the biggest conflicts in the game period, the other of which is much more fun to play with, why not chose the best one?
Fixing how military goods are handled (the current model is awful) and making a less simplistic battle screen, OR a battle screen/system that evolved over time would be more than enough for a game of the scope of Victoria. Also, improving how airplanes are simulated. In that particular case, it should indeed follow HOI system of airbases and missions.
Without move=attack, you would still be left with a combat system that consists of doom-stacking the opposition, already-defeated armies yo-yoing between victorious ones, whack-a-mole chasing of units that you had surrounded and defeated - a system that is deeply annoying and frustrating. Cosmetic changes are therefore not enough.
It's a waste of time anyway. Let's assume that if we are at war, an army which is not moving prepares to defend itself. The game, for practical purposes, does that already.
Agreed.
