Strange retreat

[Tribesman]

I was besieging the Egyptians in Poland and they tried to lift the siege led by a 5* general , the Byz. who were supposed to be my allies also attacked led by their King bringing the total of attackers to 5700+ .
My forces were 1800+ led by a 3* general with killer instinct and skilled attacker .
Deploying my highest valour troops in a tight defensive position I expected to be overran in short order with no hills to use to my advantage .
1 Pav arb , 4 gen sailors , 2 royal knights , 2 militia serg ,4 ital inf , 2 chiv maa . and 1 mounted crossbow as advanced skirmishers .
The mounted crossbows stared hitting the leading Byz Kata.. , before they had even got near my main position the whole lot turned and retreated after only taking 14 casualties .
Checking after the "battle" non of the opposing generals had weak vices in fact most had very good ones .
Surely I should have lost this battle . http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif

[ichi]

Take a look at the Dread rating of your General. I've had entire armies walk up to a very high Dread General and then just turn around and flee the field. Its gotta be quite high tho.

ichi

[Math Mathonwy]

I didn't know dread had anything todo with battles, nice. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/cheers.gif

[katank]

it does. I've had El Cid, who was high dread from the start after getting the valencia governorship and becoming the butcher of tunisia scare off huge amounts of armies.

It also helped that my units were fairly high valour veterans. The high valour units also seem to intimidate low valour one and I had plenty of enemies just march up and then run off. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/bigthumb.gif

So farm up a good army and make some very scary generals http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Simovek]

Once while playing as Almohad I had a strange occurance...

Egypt invaded one of my provinces, all i had was a few peasant and a berber camel archer unit. I fought the battle hoping to kill as many as pssobile before being killed. So I send my berber camels to harass the enemy army as it approaches. The enemy army comes close to my peasant units and then stops.

Then it turns around and marches all the way back across the map and withdraws. I was like http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-confused.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-inquisitive.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-dizzy2.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/cool.gif

then the next year they did the same thing. Marched up to my army, my berber harassing the whole time, then they marched away. Same thing three years in a row before they finally fought me.

Now this was a good Egyptian army up against peasants... I didn't think to look at my generals dread. Maybe that could have been the reason for this.

[motorhead]

Long post warning. Re-posting a post from Puzz3D (can't find it thru search, but i tucked it away in a file last year). A dev (longjohn2) says
Quote[/b] ]Dread has no direct effect on the battlefield.

And, i can vouch that my 9-star, 9-dread general hasn't had any runaway enemies this campaign. He's got killer instinct, no mercy and butcher, and has had them quite a while.

edit: maybe the byz (who couldn't have been allied to the egyptians, since they were your allies, at least before the turn) got scared off when they evaluated the strength of both the polish and egyptian armies - since they'd have to defeat both to win.

====== START
Quote (Kristaps @ Nov. 30 2003,12:26)
one thing which i haven't seen mentioned yet: the effect of general stars' valor points on attack and defense bonuses is screwed after the VI patch. you cannot rest assured that +1 valor will result in +1 attack and +1 defense. at times its less...

Kristaps,

That one I know has always been like that. Several of us tried to figure out how it worked back in mtw v1.0, but we never really got it fully clarified.


From and old thread (the linked threads are no longer available):

hrvojej
Patron
Posts: 265
From:
Registered: Sep 2002
posted 10-17-2002 04:09 AM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It would be greatly appreciated, by me and, if I may say so, by the community if we could have the official answers to some old questions that have been asked several times in the past.
1) Does dread have any effect on the battlefield? If so, what is the effect?

2) Some issues have been raised long time ago in these threads:
http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/Forum7/HTML/001666.html
http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/Forum7/HTML/001417.html

and more recently in this thread:
http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/Forum7/HTML/002865.html

The questions are (in short): What is the actual effect of the general's command rating on units' stats? Why are we seeing the inconsistencies (e.g. +/- 1) between rank and stats, valours, etc. in the f1 screen? How does all this work in general?

3) Does the old formula from Shogun for advancing in ranks still apply in MTW? In STW, we had a list of victories/losses, and could figure it out on our own, but here we don't have those. In other words, is this still correct:
Rank . Net Victories
1 . . . 1
2 . . . 2
3 . . . 4
4 . . . 8
5 . . . 16
6 . . . 32
7 . . . 64
8 . . . 128
?

4) If the original general dies, it seems that the "second in command" takes over (judging by the V&Vs of the new commander of the army). Is this true, and if so, what are the criteria for being "second in command"? Does he take over immediately on the battlefield, and does the army then get bonuses from the new general, or are the V&Vs of the old general still in effect?

The input would be much appreciated.
Thank you

longjohn2
Programmer
Posts: 154
From:UK
Registered: Nov 2000
posted 10-17-2002 06:26 PM
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1) Dread has no direct effect on the battlefield. I don't know if it has any effects on VnVs which affect the battle.
2) I think that basically you get 1 extra factor per two ranks ( or maybe 1 per rank ). Exactly how these factors are added depends on the relative rank of the two generals. I forget the exact details of how the factors are added in.
You get the general's rank as a morale bonus if nearby, or half his rank if not.

3) Don't know

4) There is no concept of second in command in battles. If the general dies, you have a rank 0 general for the rest of the battle. Some effects from the dead general that were due to VnVs will persist however.


hrvojej
Patron
Posts: 265
From:
Registered: Sep 2002
posted 10-17-2002 07:07 PM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I feel the need to speculate a bit about this now.
1) Dread might not have a direct effect, but it could still be factored in, possibly in the same way that the command ranks are, as a difference in dread ratings between generals, and added as a morale bonus/penalty.

2) This would explain my recent example, where the SAP unit was shown as a valour 3 unit, although it only had bonuses added as being valour 2 (+2 att/+2 def). The difference in ranks was 4 (my general 6*, enemy general 2*), and it all fits perfectly then (valour is shown as it would be when fighting a 0* general, but the actual bonuses depend on the difference) Also, the +1 to attack only that Arkatreides and Puzz were talking about could be from the the difference being an odd number. The morale bonuses from ranks are variable, i.e. situation dependant, and therefore not shown in the f1 screen, in the same way that other situation dependant morale bonuses are not shown either. But they do exist.

3) Still the most reliable way to think about this would probably be the Shogun formula.

4) The reinforcements will get no bonuses to attack/defense and no morale bonuses stemming from general's rank, but they still might have bonuses that are due to the dead general's V&Vs, for example bonuses to morale, which is why I sometimes see the reinforcement units being more resilient than they should be. I'll have to pay attention whether the units lose the valour flags when the general routs as they do when he dies, to see whether all this holds for both cases.

Edited by Puzz3D on Dec. 01 2003,10:40

--------------
MizuYuuki ~~~
Clan Takiyama ~~~

====== END

[Seven.the.Hun]

hmm, well i've had 9star 9dread generals and less than 9star generals with 9 dread attack provinces with much lesser #s and AI usually runs away like cowards before battle, i do wish they were more aggressive, i read about some sorta cheat that makes AI more aggressive, but i dont remember what it is??? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif does it actually work, and with it will they stay and fight it out more often? or do they still avoid battles against good generals??? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-help.gif

[Nowake]

It happened to me even if I hadn&#39;t high dread generals, and in tough situations, eventhough not hopeless. The egyptians are prone to do this IIRC< can&#39;t explain why, the loose awfully to this tactic.

[Ludens]

Seemingly irrational retreats have been present since Shogun (which did not have loyalty/piety/dread/acumen ratings) so I doubt dread is responsible. I think high valour may be responsible for many strange withdrawals. High valours troops are not only more efficient at fighting, but also cause a morale penalty on inexperienced opponents, so the general sees your army and decides not to bother.
In Shogun, I found that these strange retreats happened most frequent when I used honour 3 or higher warrior monks, which also cause an honour independent morale penalty on enemies.

[Imperial Buffoon]

IIRC position in the battlefield also matters, I&#39;ve had a couple of battles where manoevering into an advantageous position has been enough to make the enemy leave.

Example: start the battle as an attacker with the defender camping up on a hill, split my forces 2/3 and 1/3 with the 1/3 moving on the right side, and the 2/3 doing a longer circle and getting on the hill at a reasonable distance so they&#39;re not attacked. The point of splitting the forces is making the AI keep his formation as it&#39;s not obvious where my attack will come from, then I get my troops together again.
As soon as I&#39;d got all my troops together level with his, the AI decides to leave.

What I find surprising in those cases is that the enemy units are not routing but marching to the edge of the map, so surely it can&#39;t be only morale, as turning their backs would make matters worse and they would flee...

[the_holy_knight]

I think the cheat is .nuttermode.
it is the only worthwhile cheat http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-party2.gif

[Kulgan]

If you pepper very low morale units with arrows they can flee the battle, or retreat a bit, come close to you and retreat a bit again.

[Ironside]

Citera[/b] (Kulgan @ Mar. 05 2004,13:44)]If you pepper very low morale units with arrows they can flee the battle, or retreat a bit, come close to you and retreat a bit again.
It&#39;s not what we&#39;re talking about here, sometimes the computer decides to withdraw (not rout) its forces in very odd positions. The Swiss for example withdrew halfway into combat against my forces and I was losing (a sneak attack on a cav heavy stack, I was Almohad). Suddenly the comp decided that it had enough and all his forces simply walked off the battlefield, mostly ignoring my harrasing cav. And his general was still alive. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-dizzy2.gif

[katank]

kulgan is right, this is especially funny when they decide to run away for a very short distance and then come back, it looks like they are twitching on the screen.

a situation comes to mind in my aragonese game in which I invaded toulouse and had my archers occupy a hill and fire down at the unit of ballista and got them to be not productive at all in thus twitching back and forth. This alllowed me to have my royal knights finish up some archers first and then clean the floor with these ballista dudes. It was very funny, you had to see it.

[Nowake]

Actually, I&#39;m quite stuffed with poor AI http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif