Originally Posted by maxpublic
Absolutely right. Retreating into the province the enemy came from is ridiculous, both from a practical military standpoint (it almost never happened, regardless of the time period) and from the "it's-a-game-and-it-should-be-fun" standpoint. Hopefully this bit of silliness will be fixed with the release.
Max
The thing is, people see a province as a single unit, which is true in game. But what you are sieging is merely the province's capital.
The countryside is continuos and not bound by the limits of provinces, so moving across the countryside into a province where its city is occupied is perfectly viable.
cheers
And btw., for example the golden horde didn't care for minor cities during a war, at least not in its beginning. They were going strait for the capital (which was pretty much confusing for the western countries during their wars with the GH). They had fast and strong armies, knew the terrain because of spies and traitors, and were able to force pretty much ALL of the enemies armies to gather in one place (they had to defend their vital city - the capital, instead of defending the boarder in smaller groups) and to crush the enemy totally. What's more, different cultures used different types of warfare. Again, the Golden Horde as one example, with their light cavalry, crushed the enemy totally by not letting any of the enemies soldiers escape. The western countries, on the other side, didn't run for the escaping army. This would be a disgrace to their honor, and so they let go of their advantages and the enemy army could gather again (even though in the real Medieval that hardly ever happened, since if the enemy army was crushed, it was obvious that it would lose another battle as well, so the country surrendered). Anyway, a real example for what I just wrote are the wars between Poland and the Teutonic Order. In 1410 Poland adapted some of the eastern tactics (from the Golden Horde) and went straight for Malbork (their capital). The Teutonic Order had no choice but to stop the Poles and thus they gathered their armies and faced them on their own territory, but the Poles chose the battleground. The only mistake the polish side made, was not to follow (like the GH) the enemy after the battle. This would have given a crushing victory and the next wars with the Teutonic Order wouldn't ever happen.
Anyway, my point is, that like some else said before, there were no battle lines, and because of that, armies could roam free even on the enemies territory. Even if they were disorganized. My only problem is, that it was common to have something like patroling units in castles near the boarder. They could consist even of 100 knights, maybe even less. But EU3 doesn't give you the option to create such small units. And spreading your army into x times 1000 soldiers would be rather stupid. BUT if you could just spread one these 1000's into 10 x 100 and let them cover the boarder, I think it would be enough. Those units may not even appear on the map, they might be visible only in the province window, that would be fine with me, but it would be nice to have such an option. With that, you would have at least SOME defence against the fleeing armies, which have as good as no morale and are rather small. Another option would be to have such small armies in every province (which would be kind of natural, since the nobility had to live SOMEWHERE, didn't it? And wouldn't it defend it's own territory? Of course the strength in those provinces could, for example, depend on the overall manpower strength of a country, so that the number of those units would decrease, as you recruit more armies).
Delpen
