General Running

[Krakra]

Hey guys,

I saw something very strange. It is the first year of the Turk campaign on Expert/Early, MedMod 1.85. I see Byzantium attacking Lesser Armenia In the first turn So, I reload the game and as I don't have enough troops to attack and take the province, I send a small rubbish army of 2 spearmen and a peasant unit.

So, 3 armies face on different hills, mine being by far the weakest. I see Byzantines advancing against the Rebels, so I stay put. Unfortunately the Rebels send a unit of Trebizond archers and a unit of Horse Achers, who start harrassing me. I decide to run away for now, and start marching full speed in loose formation towards the rear of the Byzantine army, still ways away. The Rebels are marching behind, occasionally shooting, but no real casulties -- maybe 15 men dead in total. Suddenly, I see my first unit, the general's unit, routing Those bastards start running away, and the remaining two units, understandably, start running away as well. Total disgrace, not a single enemy defeated.

The funnies thing, of course, was that the Byzantine army did not take the province http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-confused.gif

Can somebody shed light on what happened?

[son of spam]

It's quite easy. Your men get a substantial morale penalty for constant retreat and as you were in effect retreating (ie running away) from the HA, your gen decided to just run faster http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif. I've had it happen most to uncontrolled units. In fact, once I've had two 40 men units of CK rout from the field because I ordered them to retreat from some pikemen and they became disheartened that they couldn't commit suicide.

The rebels must have defeated the byz in battle after you lost. The comp autocalcing does weird things.

[ichi]

Plus loose formation also lowers morale, plus enemy to the rear, plus taking missile fire, plus loss of men.

ichi

[Krakra]

I guess too many 'pluses' for my general to take :-)

What is strange, is that the Byz lost the battle The turn I did not attack (i.e. should have been the same since my units never killed anyone), they prevailed ... Like you said, the autocalc is weird.

Thanks for the explanation guys

[Krakra]

Yeah, the autocalc plainly sucks. I am currently playing for a few years as the Kievans. A crusade wanted to pass through me and for the fun of it, I refused. Just to see what will happen, I ran the autocalc and showed me losing almost my entire army of 900, with the crusaders losing only 600.

When I ran the battle, it was a bridge province. I positioned 4 units of spearmen, left some space on the side for boyars to flank the enemy, and had my horse archers and the other boyars (I had about 3 princes and the king) sniping from behind the spearmen. It was a slaughter. The crusader knights will cross the bridge taking heavy casulties, will attack the spears, will get flanked and routed by the boyars and will run away while others are still crossing the bridge.

At the end, I lost about 200 men (mostly pikes), the crusader army of almost 2000 was reduced to nothing, and I captured over 600 on the battlefield (man, the steppe cavalry is one hell of a crusader chaser). So much for accuracy of autocalc ...

[squippy]

The autocalc may well have a random funciton; maybe you just got the 1% probability of a disatsrous defeat, dunno. Do it again and again and see if the numbers change.

The retreat thing is valid; I have managed to trigger a chain rout by trying to withdraw a unit over-zealously.

[bighairyman]

Also your general is a peasant or a spearmen, both have low moral http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-gossip.gif

[katank]

yep, those low morale starting units run at the sight of their own shadows.

the morale penalties from loose formation etc. makes their rout inevitable IMHO.

note to self: never use spear/peasant general. early rushing, use good starting units, preferably king to fight battles.

[Xecthilor]

Yesterday I had a crusader army, led by a 5 star Hospitaller general, fend off two massive egyptian armies, both battles outnumbered by at least a thousand men both times. Bloodiest battles I've ever had, but my troops prevailed. Today, I had over one thousand troops in Yugoslavia(mostly slav warriors) led by an urban militia unit. And 387 Byzantine Treb archers, light cav, and kataphraktoi led by a Byzantine prince beat me like a drum. And then I had to pay to get the worthless general back. The moral of the story is, have quality units leading your armies. Urban militia: you get what you pay for. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-wall.gif

[Krakra]

Yeah, I did learn the hard way.

Now I am playing an awesome campaign for the Kievans (I wrote about the crusade earlier) -- with my player-handicapping rules. For the first time I see an aggressive AI. Make that a SUPER aggressive AI. It is 1208 and Byzantium pretty much owns the map. Mediterranean sea is an inside lake for Byzantium, and the country owns provinces as far north as Britian. Reminds me of a true Roman 'renaissance.'

I was aggressively building armies, thinking the Mongols attack in 1208 (silly me). The AI, thinking I am ready for an attack, has HUGE armies (I am talking about 4-5 thousand troops per province) on my borders. Since I have the troops, I am pondering on attacking the AI, but can't decide between the Danes or the Byzantium. The downside of attacking Byzantium is that I will lose the little trade I do now; but then again, I will lose a lot of my army, which will lower the expenses. Should be awesome huge battles. Can't wait until I come from work tomorrow and whip my army accross. Ahhh, the sight of 2,000 galloping boyars ....

[Puzz3D]

Routing due to constant retreat is triggered by a set number of moves away fron an enemy unit. The enemy unit does not have to be visible, and away means any move which increases the distance between your unit and any enemy unit that is within a certain range. I forget exactly what that range is, but it's something like the range of an archer or slightly farther as I recall. It's not just another additive morale penalty. It's a counter that trips a non-recoverable rout, but the counter can be reset before it trips by attacking an enemy unit. Ranged units that still have ammo are immune or pretty much immune from the effect. The devs call this the Benny Hill code, and it's purpose is to stop a player from trying to win by constantly retreating until the battle timer expires.

[Krakra]

Puzz3D, thanks for the very informative reply