This post is not about the realism of flags. This could be fixed fairly easily, by changing the flag to something else (i.e. a command post).

1. It doesn't make sense for the attacker to be forced back because they didn't capture something, even if they decimated most of the enemy army
2. The flag is arbitrarily placed by the game, meaning it can end up in an indefensible position
3. The intent of flags appears to be to put the attacker on the offensive, however this is largely unnecessary since the would-be attacker can simply choose not to initiate battle

I suggest that all battles can be multi-turn (not to be confused with multi-round, which it already is), and can be ended by either side retreating. The exact implementation of retreating can be discussed, but one implementation could be the attacker is given the option to retreat when the combat is finished, and the defender the option on their turn start.

1. This allows for strategic reinforcements from armies that are not already nearby
2. Strategy in whether or not to wait for reinforcements, or risk the enemy being able to reinforce, mirroring real world battles

Other things, like the rounds in each turn of combat can be adjusted accordingly.

A few more things:

1. This is more compatible with small numbers of rounds per turn (since otherwise fewer rounds is a heavy detriment to the attacker), which maybe be desirable for multiplayer
2. There is tactical gameplay in trying to position better than the other side, and allows for skirmishing

I personally see no particular issue with the battle system as stands, other than your comment about the flag spawning in otherwise undefensible positions. Were we given a few options of where to place the flag prior to the battles beginning, that would be a well enough fix for me.

I think being able to choose where you deploy your flag is a good fix. 

@200mm Have you seen any of the of the OpenDevs? Or are these suggestions to what the flags should be changed to?

I don't know, but I presume they were intended to force the attacker to go on the aggressive. However, quoting my earlier post, a "would-be attacker can simply choose not to initiate battle."

FlamingKetchup wrote:

2. The flag is arbitrarily placed by the game, meaning it can end up in an indefensible position

The flag is placed either behind the defender's lines or if it is a siege on the city center tile. You either place your troops on the flag if it is on highground, or your put them in front of the flag so that the attacker has to go through them to reach it. If the attacker is strong enough to break the defender and/or get to the flag, then the attacker wins, if the attacker was not able to do that in the allotted time (and you get a lot of rounds on battles), then they lose, which just so happens to cause a retreat of the losing army.

FlamingKetchup wrote:

3. The intent of flags appears to be to put the attacker on the offensive, however this is largely unnecessary since the would-be attacker can simply choose not to initiate battle

And so why would the "would-be defender" initiate the battle going off this exact logic? The attacker has to be on the offensive, that is the logic of attacking, not playing hide and seek.

FlamingKetchup wrote:
The intent of flags appears to be to put the attacker on the offensive, however this is largely unnecessary since the would-be attacker can simply choose not to initiate battle

I'm afraid to disappoint you, but this assumption is not entirely correct. While we do want to encourage the attacker to be pro-active rather than initiating a battle and "winning by default" for some reason, the flag exists primarily to push the defender into standing and fighting, not the attacker. Anybody who played Endless Legend can tell you about the frustrations of a fast unit running around the battlefield and avoiding an actual engagement with your forces for 6 battle rounds, only for the game to then inform you it is a draw, nothing has changed, and that chokepoint is still blocked or the city is still considered defended even though you have overwhelming forces. And in Humankind, forests conceal units in battle, so the potential for a defender to hide from combat would be even greater.

As for 200mm's question, as far as I know it is a combination of 2 and 3. It's the commander's post, but also the camp of the entire army where they would keep their supplies. As mentioned in the OpenDev Feedback blog, we're working to improve the presentation of this to make that clearer.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:

FlamingKetchup wrote:
The intent of flags appears to be to put the attacker on the offensive, however this is largely unnecessary since the would-be attacker can simply choose not to initiate battle

I'm afraid to disappoint you, but this assumption is not entirely correct. While we do want to encourage the attacker to be pro-active rather than initiating a battle and "winning by default" for some reason, the flag exists primarily to push the defender into standing and fighting, not the attacker. Anybody who played Endless Legend can tell you about the frustrations of a fast unit running around the battlefield and avoiding an actual engagement with your forces for 6 battle rounds, only for the game to then inform you it is a draw, nothing has changed, and that chokepoint is still blocked or the city is still considered defended even though you have overwhelming forces. And in Humankind, forests conceal units in battle, so the potential for a defender to hide from combat would be even greater.

As for 200mm's question, as far as I know it is a combination of 2 and 3. It's the commander's post, but also the camp of the entire army where they would keep their supplies. As mentioned in the OpenDev Feedback blog, we're working to improve the presentation of this to make that clearer.

Worth mentioning that for Humankind we also added fog of war to battle, which we didn't have in Endless Legend and which isn't present in a lot of tactical games for reasons we discovered during testing: we did a lot of multiplayer matches using the HTML 5 prototype, and even a studio-wide tournament with prizes, and it was quickly apparent that fog of war leads to the weaker side hiding their units in forests to avoid confrontation when the onus is on the attacker to find and kill all of the opposing side's units in a fixed number of rounds. This is frustrating for the attacker, and seems cheesy. Our solution was to add a fixed object that the defender can't move or hide.

We're looking though at moving this location closer to the defending army, maybe even all the way to their army's location (which makes it a little more predictable for the defender) and perhaps allowing you to redeploy it, though this latter solution might be a bit tricky to implement for reason I won't get into. We'll see.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:

FlamingKetchup wrote:
The intent of flags appears to be to put the attacker on the offensive, however this is largely unnecessary since the would-be attacker can simply choose not to initiate battle

the flag exists primarily to push the defender into standing and fighting, not the attacker

Good to know, this actually makes a lot more sense than why I thought it was in.