Actually...There are several methods to that madness.
I agree with everything you say. In fact, you kind of proved my point, in a roundabout way. People do things because they make sense to do them that way. Forming your armies up on opposite sides of a battlefield, then going for it, actually makes a bit of sense, even though on the surface it may sound dumb to actually meet your enemy that way. So to say that it makes no sense to do it, because you would be interested in victory more than honor... Wouldn't the British redcoats be more interested in victory than honor? Of course they want to win, so they use the way that, to them, seems to be the most likely way to victory. And when armies meet armies, they line up on opposite side of the field and shoot it out.
And that's the kind of stuff we model in BattleMaster: the clash of armies on battlefields. Not the small smash-and-grab stuff, because we don't model land to that small of a scale, where you can walk in and steal 100 square miles of your neighbor's region.
