Shattered Army mechanic is unbelievably frustrating.

[nijis]

Shattered armies, essentially being rewarded with invincibility and speed for losing... is nonsense.

Quite the opposite. As others have pointed out, it was difficult for an army of this time could force another one to do battle. These are huge provinces, and, compared to later periods in which actual fronts did exist, tiny armies.

Armies do rebuilt their morale and manpower rather quickly from a shattering defeat. But IMHO there should be lots of battles, particularly when one side is overmatched, that end very quickly with minimal morale and manpower losses on both sides. 10k armies in this period did not really go around wiping out 3k armies, because the 3k armies would never stick around to be mopped up.

I'd love to see a system in which battles between equally matched forces are decisive, but battles between poorly matched forces tend to result in the smaller force brushed out of the way, but able to fight another day. This would create a more realistic feel to campaigns -- small armies were simply more nimble and could preserve themselves, at the cost of being much less able to slow down the conquest of their territory.

 

[FrontLine1111]

I'm not going to read through the 9 pages of posts, so probably this has already been said, but fighting Russia or some other infinite manpower country with this retreat mechanic is like getting a root canal. They *never* run out of manpower and the war drags on for an eternity. They attack my sieging army, I reinforce, win the battle, they retreat and come back shortly with a full stack again. It's maddening. Chasing them is a very bad idea, so all you can do is cause them a few casualties and make them retreat, ad nauseum. I understand the reasoning behind this mechanic in that it helps countries defend themselves better, but I think some tuning might be needed for some countries like Russia.

 

[Felicity]

Quite the opposite. As others have pointed out, it was difficult for an army of this time could force another one to do battle. These are huge provinces, and, compared to later periods in which actual fronts did exist, tiny armies.

Armies do rebuilt their morale and manpower rather quickly from a shattering defeat. But IMHO there should be lots of battles, particularly when one side is overmatched, that end very quickly with minimal morale and manpower losses on both sides. 10k armies in this period did not really go around wiping out 3k armies, because the 3k armies would never stick around to be mopped up.

I'd love to see a system in which battles between equally matched forces are decisive, but battles between poorly matched forces tend to result in the smaller force brushed out of the way, but able to fight another day. This would create a more realistic feel to campaigns -- small armies were simply more nimble and could preserve themselves, at the cost of being much less able to slow down the conquest of their territory.

The problem I have is that if armies are matched up, a major shattering loss leads the army to be more survivable than a minor loss. If it's only a minor loss, it'll only retreat a province away, then you can finish it off. A major loss which would reasonably be cause to destroy the army leads it to racing 15+ provinces away. It's silly and backwards.

 

[Lakedaimon]

Indeed, you shouldn't be able to finish off any army at all, even if it is only a minor loss, they should retreat further.

 

[Westernesse]

The only change to the system I would make is to reduce the distance a shattered army moves.

This, they can move crazy far sometimes. Ottomans going from Ottoman egypt to Constantinople (by route of all the way around the black sea because the straits are blocked) and then when they lose its a 6 month trip back to egypt.

 

[Carewolf2]

So. It seems instead of trying to outnumber the opponent in battle, I should instead take advantage of numerical superiority by only engaging the enemy with an equal number and using the excess troops to swoop in and auto-annihilate the enemy once the first army has either won or lost, losing doesn't matter, the enemy is auto-annihilated in any case if the first battle was a fair fight. If you outnumber the enemy straight in the first battle the enemy will simply fly off.

Though one other trick sometimes work. If you have more than double the opponent, have the extra army stand next to the battle. Order it to march towards the battle for a single day, and the enemy will often run off. Then stop marching towards the battle and instead march towards where the enemy is fleeing and smite him.