I've been playing Hegemony since January and I absolutely love it. Recently a friend of mine steam gifted me Medieval Total War II. I played it a little bit and I'd like to say I really like the bigger scale of the battles in the game. During Hegemony, I found myself conducting sieges and small skirmishes, but very few if any large scale battles. I understand this is mostly due to the AI, whose strategies are more gorilla in essence. So I'd like to propose and idea (and this is what I love about this being an independent game) that there be an option to have a 'Show Down' with an opposing faction. This being, you challenge them to a large scale battle and a zone is setup on the map. The zone would be like a large circle (or some shape) where you would march your army into to fight the enemy, who'd also march in, in open combat. There would be an general time of when the battle would take place as well. At the time of the battle the area outside the set up 'war zone' would freeze to allow complete focus on the battle at hand. Tactics and everything else would stay relatively the same. The winner would claim their side of the set terms (could be a bordering city, armistice, neutrality, tribute, a lot of things. It could be another part of the diplomacy system). I propose this idea because I love Hegemony's battle system WAY more than that of total war, and would love to use it in larger battles.
Please let me know what you think dedicated fans! Love, hate? Suggestions? We are united by a common cause to make the game better!

***Also, how historically accurate would this be?

whose strategies are more gorilla in essence.
you mean Guerilla, right.
Anyway I think that that is a great idea but it would change a lot of concepts. You would have to zoom in on the map, which is already very detailed, so that the average cavalry soldier is actually shorter than the city walls, and even more map detail would be required.

not sure it would add to the campaigns/sandbox game. i think it would detract from it.

perhaps the answer would be some "skirmish" mode, seperate from the "full game", and accessed from the main menu. this would set up a single battle pretty much as your proposed, and a common feature of many games. perhaps in a much more open area with less terrain restrictions than we normally find.

I do like the OP's idea, but as far as historicity is concerned I think it's a bit of a no-no. In sandbox it may work, but definitely not in the campaigns, which are essentially there to tell the story (in general).

A skirmish mode would be excellent, though. I, too, love the Total War series and the battles there. The idea that you can set up a game, choose a battlefield, choose armies, then actual units, and then pit them out in your own what-if scenario is just great (in fact I look around specifically for games with a skirmish mode). With Hegemony's battle system it would be pretty brilliant.

Having said that, I have had some huge battles in this game before.

Once, I was in the area around Pella with a large force (10+ units) in the field plus units in my cities when the Greeks arrived in one of their many coastal raids. Another faction turned up, too, and were fighting both me and the Greeks. I filmed it, with the intention of putting it on YouTube, and the song I chose for it was 8 minutes long. Even then, the battle had to be played at close to double speed in the video just to fit the music. Unfortunately I didn't put it on YouTube.... :(

And today, I was in sandbox as Sparta, and had been getting harassed by troops from Messene, so I mounted an assault. I sent in 6 units of hoplites, 2 units of spearmen, and one of catapults, but split them into two groups and attacked from two directions. Naturally, the soldiers inside Messene came out to attack the 3 hoplite units that had got there first, and while they were being slaughtered my main force arrived from a different direction and directly besieged Messene. All was looking well. Due to lack of space around the city, I had spare units to run around capturing the outpost and farms. Just as the city's points were getting close to zero, though, a similar sized Messenean force arrived from somewhere else and there was a second battle going on, in addition to the siege. I lost in the end, but it was a really epic battle.

It would be tricky you would also have to edit it to make sure you're army doesn't run out of food. It would be pretty cool if you could choose your unit size for the battle small normal large Etc.

I like this idea as I am also a big fan of the Total War series. Like in TW however I tend to view the units not as a 1-1 ratio but more as a scaled version of what is really there. So I might have four phalanx units in combat, but they actually represent a much larger army.

The TW series is also VERY scaled down. Afterall, the largest army you can hope to amass on your own in Rome TW is about 2500 individuals. Thats not even the size of a historical legion.

The real problem likely becomes representing all of this figures on the screen and then trying to process them all. Very tricky, even for today's hardware.

I finally made it to Asia Minor in my Hegemony Standard game, and the Persians are managing to put up quite the fight. I think I should have waited on posting this idea until I finished the game and tried some different methods to creating larger battles. I also have started playing gold on hard mode(my standard file is regular) and the battles are pretty fierce. So I am happy to say I am very content with the current size of the battles and that I simply jumped the gun. 60 Hours played and counting :)

I would like to stack units which you can do in TW and have the ability to assign an overall Grand Army Commander for stacked units who commands generals sticked to units making center, right and left wing and sometimes units are just too large on map