Played the second mini scenario, king of the hill. Took me 2 times to get a win, and even then it was a flag win.
I find I really don't understand well how unit placement BEFORE starting the attack, on the big map, plus how the deployment phase on the battle map, really work and affect unit placement. I tried many different things in the 1st and 2nd mini battle, and it seems to me that no matter what I do, the AI will place their units directly depending on what I did in deployment; I have no acces to what THEY'RE going to do in deployment, but it seems they do ? I'm sure more playthrough will help me better understand this, but everytime I found myself in the position I wanted after deployment, the AI simply refused to move in and defended the flag. So I had to go in, and the river and hills placement then made sure that all my units would be on low ground and get attacked to incredible damage. Anyways
Is it me, or does elevation have way too big an effect ? I had many instances of situations where about even strength units (hoplites and immortals) would get 60dmg to 5dmg on an attack only because of being on higher ground ? seems to me ALL the strategy of the battle revolves around that. Yes, flanking and supporting is important, but nothing compared to this.
Still. It's really fun to have battle play and important strategic importance. The animations are really too slow, but you can speed them up by X3 in the Game Settings. Not sure how a whole game of battles like this will feel; It takes long to resolve a battle when many units of different uses. But for the moment, I just love it.
Will play this one many other times, because the map is really made up in order to make many stranglehold positions in the hills where it's VERY difficult to get around even a single strong unit, many positions on rivers that bogs you down. I feel I have a lot to learn and better understand from playing this map.