Interception denies Reinforcements

So let's say I have some campaign force consisting of two armies A and B marching to a certain enemy location, guarded by equally strong enemy armies X and Y.

Now, the instant my Army A steps on the enemy's zone, it gets intercepted by Army X.
The thing is, whereas X gets reinforced by Y, the intercepted A is denied the reinforcement of B, no matter how close they might be.

And so I end up deadlocked. If I choose to proceed, I'll have to battle under unfavourable odds by using less than half of my available troops. The results usually range from Pyrrhean victories to humiliating defeats.


Is there any way to fix this ?
I hate seeing my carefully created armies come to ruin due to such an annoying little detail.

Yeah it can be incredibly annoying, I doubt there is a fix, its just a poorly thought out system, comes down to whether the AI is smart enough to intercept.

Slightly off topic but I swear every now and then I have enemy stacks just sail through my zone of control. And why when your fighting with an ally do you never start the battle with both of you on the field. When my stack is right next to a protectorates for a couple of turns and they both have earthworks I don't understand why my or the allies army has to march on to the damn field.

Wouldn't it be nice to set up a defensive line alongside your allied troops? Not to mention EVERY time an AI stack reinforces they seem to sprint as fast as they can into a giant blob of melee? Im still sorting out control groups and my protectorates army is routing from the field .

Again it just sucks when I KNOW in MW1 you could start a battle with more then two armies on the field, and it was fun , and now its gone... and that just sucks.

Originally Posted by Drydoryssus

I'll have to battle under unfavourable odds by using less than half of my available troops. The results usually range from Pyrrhean victories to humiliating defeats.

Is there any way to fix this ?
I hate seeing my carefully created armies come to ruin due to such an annoying little detail.

Create them less carefully then? j/k
Well if you manage even only a pyrrhic victory over the two armies with your one, you still have one left, don't you? There shouldn't be much left of the enemy to stop that one.

Originally Posted by mctarmac

Slightly off topic but I swear every now and then I have enemy stacks just sail through my zone of control.

I'm pretty sure that the ZOC is ignored when marching through it is the result of an attack order.
I guess the rationale was that if you wanted to lay siege to a city, you may not be able to if the defender gets the opportunity to intercept.
I don't know why he shouldn't though.

Can't this be modded?

The thing with reinforcements is that they dribble in one unit at a time, so no matter how many armies the AI has reinforcing them they are no real threat since you can pick them off one-by-one once you defeated the main force.

Originally Posted by I-the-gamer

The thing with reinforcements is that they dribble in one unit at a time, so no matter how many armies the AI has reinforcing them they are no real threat since you can pick them off one-by-one once you defeated the main force.

Yes, which is ridiculous. They really need to address this. People, including myself, have been complaining about this since STW.

Originally Posted by M2TWRocks

Yes, which is ridiculous. They really need to address this. People, including myself, have been complaining about this since STW.

Um they did address it in MTW2

Originally Posted by midget_roxx

Um they did address it in MTW2

But it returns the same in ETW and NTW.

I am never afraid of reinforcements. No matter how much armies the AI have, there is three steps to defeat them.
1. Use artillery to force AI into suicide charging its cav. After you routed its cav force the reinforcements will run in, and they will ALWAYS attack you one by one, with the suicide general first and the other cavalry followed. Destroy all of them. The enemy reinforcement artillery is simply too slow to get you.
2. Destroy their main army (which is quite easy consider they had lost half of their cav)
3. March your army to meet the reinforcements, defeat their units and surround the site where the reinforcements pop out. Annihilate them 1 by 1.
As long you have a full stack annihilating two AI full stacks is simply easy. But facing the reinforcements from different sides are really annoying and you need to be wary of any backstabbing from the rear.

The reinforcement system in this game is absolutely horrid.

We've been talking about this and these kind of similar issues on this thread for months now. In fact, people even created petitions and had them sent to CA requesting that the campaign reinforcement system have the reinforcement system in custom battle!!! I mean, fighting with your allies on custom battles exists but not in campaigns...CA totally failed in that regard.

Bah! A most ridiculous bug! Is it possible to fix this? Or are we stuck with this this horrible muck of a system?