Pease provide us with a "no retreat to hostile territory" game option

[Jazumir]

Xenophon's army was certainly the only one in history to do this, not just a famous example.

It's incredibly simple to prevent: Have units in neighbouring provinces. I'm not sure why you feel an army should prefer mass-suicide to retreating into an unguarded enemy province, but it's not something we're going to "fix".

I´d say, it´s incredibly easy to exploit. The unit should be allowed to withdraw once, be forced to fight the enemy presence in the target province and auto-disbanded if it loses this fight (which is likely, even against an numerically inferior enemy, since the army is likely to be retreating due to bad ORG). Give them a fighting chance and force the enemy to have the surrounding stacks a) at appropriate size and b) stick around for a bit longer.

Ownership of province could then be used to reset that ´withdraw once´ boolean: If the unit withdraws into enemy territory, it will be auto-disbanded, once it will be forced to withdraw again, unless it has again been in a friendly controlled province, reseting the ´has withdrawn´-value, in the meantime. So, if you do retreat your army into enemy territory, you better get it out of there, again ASAP. If ´withdrawing==true´, zero ORG or retreating causes immediate destruction, not another retreat, and if you retreat, setting it to ´true´, it wont be set back to ´false´ before the unit reaches a friendly controlled province (or takes control of the province it is in). Mark the ´retreating´ status on the unit like ´attack delay´ in HoI.

A possible retreat´s destination should be markable even before the ´no-retreat´ (as it is in the game, not the one i am talking about above) timer wears out, BTW. Then you can have retreats into neutral territory (with military access, but not at war with your enemy) cause internation (no move or attrition or supply cost for that army for the rest of the war, or until the neutral enters it).

 

[Olaf the Unsure]

My biggest gripe about the current system is not that I can't beat it. Rather, it's that it too often makes the AI beat itself.

Under the current system, a defeated enemy army will retreat deeper into enemy territory, away from safety, if there's even a single enemy unit inside a closer, friendly territory. Which just makes things worse for the AI.

It's like Lee losing at Gettsyburg, looking over his shoulder and seeing one Yankee on a horse near Richmond and so "retreating" to New York. That sort of thing never happened in real life because it would be idiotic. And forcing the AI to do idiotic things here doesn't help the AI in the long run.

The system I propose is very simple: A defeated army can retreat into any province that is not enemy owned (i.e., an enemy province that has neither been captured nor has friendly/allied units in it). Any other province - including friendly provinces occupied by enemy forces (or vice versa) - can be the retreat target.

 

[KonradRichtmark]

Preventing retreats into empty enemy territory makes sense in the general case, which is what should be the guiding principle for a simple system like the V2 war system. Sure, retreat into enemy territory may make sense in a few instances like Xenophon, but more often than not it leads to unrealistic weirdness.

Sure, you can keep reserves behind the front to prevent retreat right through it, but that adds another layer of micromanagement to war, something that causes tedium in singleplayer and more than tedium in multiplayer where you can't pause at will.

 

[tarpoon]

Xenophon's army was certainly the only one in history to do this, not just a famous example.

It's incredibly simple to prevent: Have units in neighbouring provinces. I'm not sure why you feel an army should prefer mass-suicide to retreating into an unguarded enemy province, but it's not something we're going to "fix".

Ok, I get that you don't consider this a problem and I see why.


But could you please consider to make retreating armies and navies interceptable after they have moved one province?
Yesterday I defeated a large british fleet at the falklands (occupied by me) as argentina and couldn't finish them of because they retreated to their next friendly port, which happened to be like 4 or 5 sea provinces away and I could do nothing about it even though my fleet was much faster and arrived at each provinces before they did.

In another game as sweden (in 1.4b) I was at war with austria and blockaded the mediterranean with a fleet at gribaltar (no suez build at that time) while I had a large naval battle in the north sea with an austrian invasion force. After I won the battle they simply retreated past my blockade nulling the effect of it.

 

[Sgt. Grumbles]

Preventing retreats into empty enemy territory makes sense in the general case, which is what should be the guiding principle for a simple system like the V2 war system. Sure, retreat into enemy territory may make sense in a few instances like Xenophon, but more often than not it leads to unrealistic weirdness.

Sure, you can keep reserves behind the front to prevent retreat right through it, but that adds another layer of micromanagement to war, something that causes tedium in singleplayer and more than tedium in multiplayer where you can't pause at will.

This.
The military system, especially late-game or with any country that has large fronts and armies, is incredibly tedious, and does not need to be made moreso by keeping a unit in every province an enemy might be able to stumble into in a disorganized rush. What's more, the AI doesn't keep a unit in every bordering province, so I fail to see why a human player is expected to divide up his forces in such a way.