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[Wdll]

Oh my.
I will try to not take personally the "Hollywood" remark.
Preserving of your own force is the core of the issue here, the flags are not. The flags would be a solution. Flags are irrelevant which makes the battles of a large PBEM campaign nothing but a WW1 battlefield.

This is not about playing "capture the flag".
I understand the coding issues, but the rest I don't agree with (as a gamer).
For the plan you say to work then you have to edit the map settings for each map of a PBEM campaign before it begins so that it fits you and is against the enemy. Increasing the length of the battles etc.
Even then, if you play a large PBEM campaign (modern 30K core, largest map settings) you cannot win like that. You will have to just send scouts and slowly move ahead, but you can't win with scouts only. The camper has a huge advantage, you will lose units, far more units if you want to advance. Else, if you play it very carefully as you say, and as you have to, all the battles will end at the final turn with each side losing a few scouts and 90%+ of each's sides units, way in the back, safe from each other, without firing a single shot.
After a couple of battles you both end with buying infantry only, snipers atgms for just in case, and artillery. So basically you end up with a WW1 campaign. And even then, you don't end up using the infantry apart from scouts because you will end up losing more etc.
If you want I would gladly play a PBEM with you and you will be able to see how playing as I say, makes the game boring as hell. Of course you are probably too busy or just don't want to, play with me, that's ok, I actually don't have time for it either, but I can give you nothing but my word that the game slows dowwwwn a looooot. Not the slow down of careful playing, but the trenches warfare issue.

It's a pity that it can't be changed due to coding issues.