What happens to beaten armies?

Why do armies lose men even if they stage an orderly withdrawal?

I am playing as Armenia, and I positioned two horse archer units on a bridge. The Seleucid Empire sends an army consisting of some pikemen, some light cavalry and 13 elephants against my little stack.

I figure that I can kill everything but the elephants, so I decide to play the battle.

Thanks to a bit of nifty manouvering, I do manage to kill everything but the elephants, with very light losses. So with my army in good shape, I order them to withdraw, planning to bribe the elephants on the next turn.

So the battle summary screen comes up, and it says that I've lost a lot more men than I thought I did, and the next turn, I find that my army has been reduced by half! When I gave the order to withdraw, I still had two nearly full stacks! Now I have less than one.

If an army is ordered to withdraw, why does it lose so many units? I still had full movement points, so it can't be that.

Retreating units only retain their full strength if you secure a victory. If you end up losing overall, the game considers this free rein for the AI to swoop in and kill your retreating troops (to simulate the further chasing down of routing troops). So hit and run doesn't really work unless you keep sallying forth in a siege, which is a bug BTW.

Well to me I do think it's a bit messed up, if you hit esc exit battle, of course you should lose units to be fair to the comp, but if you get a defeat because you marched your whole army across the red line, whatever made it across the redline lives and what did'nt can die.

I used a spy to take Thapsus as the Seleucid. It had stone walls.

The friggin spy opens the gates so I attack on the first turn. I forgot about the bug where the spy opens the gates but leaves the boiling oil operating.

I try and use some SS Pikemen and Lib Mercs to take the gatehouse and just suffer the oil. Well, they route so I decide not to waste the rest of my fullstack with my ten star faction leader and withdraw.

Yep, I was left with about two units afterwards. Pure idiocy. :furious3:

What about when a AI armie orderly retreats? I'm guessing they get the same treatment...

If they do I haven't noticed it yet. Then again the more decisive battles that I do tend to remember tend to take place outside of a city. So when they retreat, they all end up in the city. Out in the open I'd guess they might get the same bizarre attrition treatment.

I'm not sure about it, but I have the impression it depends on how long you stay in battle, or perhaps on losses you take, before withdrawing.
If you withdraw rightaway at the start of battle, you don't have losses at all.

The computer never losses units to this. On the other hand if I begin a battle, I don't enage and simply retreat everyone, I don't seem to loose any men. So, I think it is a question of engaging the enemy. Once you've fought the computer thinks you should get casualties because the enemy pursues and harasses your rearguard. My guess, at least...