Another Dodgy Optional Rule?

[Eckerslyke]

(Prompted by witnessing an unlikely, unrealistic outcome of a melee caused by possible misuse of one (or a combination) of optional rules.)

I sometimes wonder how well I would fare in these battles if my opponent were Bonaparte himself.

My vocabulary of French expletives would be greatly enriched by hearing his reaction if I tried that trick of stacking so many troops or counters in hexes just behind the front line so that retreat by my defeated troops in the face of his brilliantly-conceived and overwhelming advance was not possible. He would be surprised and dismayed to find his advance thwarted in this manner.

(I might even pick up some Corsican insults too for use on holiday later this year.)

If I defeated him by resorting to a feature of our software of which he would not be aware in spite of his extensive battlefield experience, then I would have to conclude that the particular feature of the software which permitted this was not realistic. The deliberate use of such an unrealistic tactic would have no place in the repertoire of any self-respecting virtual battler.

In my own case, my advance northward into and through a vacant hex was prevented by the presence of two small infantry columns, one either side of the vacant hex, pointing SE and SW respectively and threatening to cause any unit entering the vacant hex to have to stop there until next turn. Fair enough, that seemed to be legitimate use of ZOC rules.

So I attacked the unit on the left, with an overwhelming superiority of force, and defeated it. But it could not retreat, due to the surrounding hexes already being full. Crucially, the defeated unit did not even change facing, so the ZOC covering the vacant hex remained in force.

'Sacre Bleu' doesn't even begin to express my frustration.

I'm not sure which optional rule (or combination of rules) opens up that particular avenue of unrealistic, gamey play. Something about no partial retreats, and no melee eliminations, I suspect. I would welcome clarification of precisely how it is achieved so that I can avoid that rule (or combination of rules) in future.

However, there is probably a good reason for having these rules, individually. It's just that, in the heat of battle, if a rule (or combination of rules) is amenable to abuse, it is hard to resist the temptation to do so. And sometimes the apparent abuse of a rule can be unintentional.

If I could identify, with the assistance of other members, which rule or combination of rules is being abused here, I might be able to figure out the original, separate reasons why those rules were included. Then perhaps I could work out some way to address the original problems they were intended to address, without resorting to use of those optional rules.

Any thoughts?