A curious idea, but can you ignore your own defense order when it comes to declaring combat strength?

Not something you would do everyday, but I can imagine a couple of situations where you could use it to your advantage. A couple of examples as to where this could be used:

1) Your opponent only has 2 combat cards left, the stronger has a sword icon which you can't counter with a fort icon and can't beat in combat strength. If you ignore the defense order he could play the weaker card and you can save your unit from destruction.

2) Late in the turn you realise that another player can grab 2 cities with his first move and win if he goes first next turn. The only hope is a retreat and the only way this can happen is if you can lose a battle where you have a defense order.

Cheers

1 is metagaming so no. Or at least not once you've already played the order. That's tantamount to declaring take-backs, which I personally despise when it doesn't stem from misinterpreting the rules or a new player screwing up.

2 same as 1, but thematically you have a hard time sending orders out from the capital in the first place. If it was easy Robb would have kept his idiot uncle (forgot his name) from screwing up his plans. Besides, maybe your general prefers your first plan over the second.

It all comes down to how willing people will are to let you use your own personal time machine