The All-Or-Nothing Nature of Battles

[CIaagent11]

It seems that in Rome 2, battles are very "all or nothing". By that I mean that in Rome 1, if you could not defeat an enemy, it would have some benefit to throw a few town guards the enemies way. It would cost them a few men, slowly wearing them down. But in Rome 2, with replenishment, if you lose a battle, all you're really doing is training the opponent. You tried so hard to kill as many opponents as possible, but a few turns later, they have the exact same amour of men again. They couldn't care less. So there's really no point to ever fighting a battle that you are going to lose. I find it somewhat disheartening, because it turn the game mechanics towards having to make sure that you overpower your opponent, and takes away that "just move around and see what happens" feel of classical RTW. You could lose and it would still have some positive effect of reducing the enemy army a bit. But now losing is just a waste.
This has caused me to overreact and fight entire campaigns where I always had the enemy outnumbered at least 3:1. If I didn't have enough men, I'd bring in reinforcements rather than to battle with what I got, because losing a battle now is just pointless clicking effort.
Or am I doing something wrong or missing something here?

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

I fight even battles, which i will lose.

Why?

I have the chance to weaken him by destroying single enemy units, you must concentrate on killing single units of his army, this weaken him much in long term.

[CIaagent11]

Trying to make sure to kill entire units is kind of stressful and unrealistic. Also, if the enemy loses an entire unit, it save the upkeep cost and isn't weakened much.

[musketer]

I played in Rome 2 long ago, but from what you write the problem is that unit do not loses experience with the loss of soldiers? So that after replenishment this unit has the same level of experience as before the loss of soldiers? Maybe I do not know if I know what I'm writing about

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

Well its realistic, in every battle some single units had the most losses of the army and were wiped out. For example in American Civil War some villages lost all its young men, because their regiment were wiped out.

And it weaken the enemy. I knew it, because i have played 3000 hours Rome II.

But if you don´t want tips, well fine.

PS: The only town recruitment of Rome I is absolute unrealistic. The Romans filled their legions with soldiers from the roman municipii in whole Italy, not with the poor proletarii from Roma.

@musketer: The AI units can not gain experience as big replenishment rates nullified the experience again ( new recruits!).

[sasquatch32794]

Mods are the answer. If you want a quick bandaid then use lower replenishment mods. If you want a full fix of this problem then try out DEI. DEI fixes it by 1) reducing replenishment rates but more importantly has a population mechanic that makes it hard for you to replenish in newly conquered territory.

[balparmak]

I agree that it sucks. In addition to what sasquatch said above, another thing to look into/mod is the minimum unit strength value, which manages the threshold below which the unit disbands. Don't really remember what it was for r2, but it was sth like 5% in shogun2 - you'd have to kill 229 of 240 to force that unit to disband, ridicilous. I guess it would be similarly low in r2.

[douglas]

I don't think it's that big a deal. They have to be in their own territory to recruit. Kind of keeps things interesting.