Hello, I have been playing strategus a bit more lately and I have a suggestion about our current "retreat" system.
First of all, "retreat" is miss-named. Currently, for all intends and purposes, it is "surrender". You lose all your troops AND gear when you retreat. While functional (it ends pointless battles quicker), I think this functionality could very easily be vastly improved.
First of all, there should be 2 options: surrender, and retreat.
Surrender would require the enemy team to accept the offer of surrender. If this happens, the team that surrenders loses all its troops except the first 100 and all its gear BUT is granted a 2 hour battle immunity. That could be used in a hopeless situation for the one side where surrendering could at least preserve SOME of the troops if the other side is generous enough.
Retreating would be a different beast entirely. Retreating wouldn't be bilateral. You could just retreat. It essentially simulates the "well, shit guys, this is impossible. Time to leg it" situation. The team that retreats keeps all its troops and a very small amount of gear (let's say, 5% of the original?) but has a very very big speed bonus reduction for about 2 hours (for example 70%). That way, attacks on cities don't have to be suicidal afairs in case of the attacker losing.
And yes, I AM referring to the battle I won today. While I had a damn good laugh, I recognize that it probably isn't entirely fair :)
These changes would help give more than 1 potential outcome to a battle. Currently, the ONLY possible outcome is: one side gets destroyed. The potential for tactical deepness with retreats, surrenders and, of course, battles to the end gets vastly improved not to mention it eases up the pain of a mistaken attack a bit.