Pain in the A$$ from Skirmishers, HA's?

So Every once in a while I run into this very annoying problem. I play battles with no time limit because otherwise I lose seiges that are really drawn out. The problem with this is that sometimes I will kill all the units in an army except for maybe a skirmisher or archer unit and then because they have their skirmish ability on they will never attack me and just run away if I try to attack them. By this point they are usually out of missiles but it's practically impossible to engage them. :wall:
Also so far I haven't had this problem as I haven't played in that region yet but I would guess HA's are even worse as they can run faster than any infantry and most cavalry. Usually the only way for me to end the battle is to run them into the red corner of the map. :rifle:

Is there any way for EB to make the units turn of their skirmishing ability once they are out of ammo. Or the skirmish ability could be turned off completly, Or make them retreat when they are out of ammo and there are no melee units left?

comment on your experiences and any possibilities to my questions.

Thanks

I think time limit is there for something.

In real life many battles were ended when dark came. For sieges it was the same.

That is an old RTW bug. Oh, how it is annoying. I remember I was playing a battle (I don't think it was even EB) where I had an army of infanty against and army of enemy infantry and one archer group. I easily killed all their infantry and then tried to kill their archers (now out of ammo). They just kept running. I tried to pin them down, no good. I tried a pincer attack, they were too fast. So in the end, I had my guys chase them while the time ran out. They made two and a half laps around the outside of the battlemap before the time ran out. I used triple time and it would have been a great image to add Benny Hill music to. In the end, the time ran out and I got a close defeat, my army retreated about two turns worth of movement back to my territory, and I quit for the day.

I had a similar thing happen (athurian TW i think). I was attacked and should have lost but somehow defeated/routed all enemy units-- except about 4-5 remaining skrm cavalry. They were out of ammo but wouldn't attack. all my infantry were exhausted but i tried everything. I hate timelimits so don't play with it on. So i had to retreat and "lose" the battle. I haven't encountered the exact same situation in EB, but there have been instances where i've seen HA run out of ammo and attack in melee. I think it must be random whether they attack or not.

Honestly, I never understood why people turn off the battle timer, it is there as a failsafe against the AI's invincible idiocy; anyone who has been besieged and attacked in a city with the besieging AI army refusing to move (following the "I can wait longer than you can, I don't have to get married" strategy) will think twice before turning it off again :P

Anyway, I have been playing RTW mods for ages now and so far I have seen maybe 1 or at most 2 battles actually end prematurely due to battle timer, so I don't see why so much animus against this feature really.

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Originally Posted by Tiberius Nero

Honestly, I never understood why people turn off the battle timer, it is there as a failsafe against the AI's invincible idiocy; anyone who has been besieged and attacked in a city with the besieging AI army refusing to move (following the "I can wait longer than you can, I don't have to get married" strategy) will think twice before turning it off again :P

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Or the other way around when you are besieging a city and they sally forth. But apon reaching the battle map and seeing your army lined up they decide not to come out. (Then if you wait them out the immediately sally forth again and don't come out, five times.)

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Originally Posted by Tiberius Nero

Honestly, I never understood why people turn off the battle timer, it is there as a failsafe against the AI's invincible idiocy; anyone who has been besieged and attacked in a city with the besieging AI army refusing to move (following the "I can wait longer than you can, I don't have to get married" strategy) will think twice before turning it off again :P

Anyway, I have been playing RTW mods for ages now and so far I have seen maybe 1 or at most 2 battles actually end prematurely due to battle timer, so I don't see why so much animus against this feature really.

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Which is why you turn the timer back on before a battle when you are defending a city :D

HA!!! I actally had this happen to me 2X in RTW and I caught the MFing egyptian archers haha...

There were about 5 left and I had about 20 units left broken up into 3 tiny legions. (yeah, it was a nail bittin battle)

I waited for the troops to get fresh again while I had the archers use up all thier arrows one of my legions in testudo. Then I moved them against the red line, stopped, made sure my other 2 tiny legions got close enough. The archers tried to get away, but one of my legionaries was able to kill one of the archers and then they fleed and the battle ended!

I was still pissed 'cause I wasted a good 20mins of play time on that BS

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Originally Posted by Fondor_Yards

Which is why you turn the timer back on before a battle when you are defending a city :D

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Exactly. Quite simple to just have it when it's convenient, and not when it isn't. Although lately I've just been leaving it on anyway. Haven't had any battle go over 45 minutes so hasn't even mattered. It's just in case, I might forget to turn it ono when I need to.

I'm just not a time-limit friendly kind of guy. I guess it goes back to all those time-limit based games i played on the commodore 64 and amiga as a kid. yeah try the original prince of persia and you'll know where i'm coming from :wink2:.

Hmm, this happens to me all the time. There once was a Rebel Persian Bodyguard vs. Three Units of My Bodyguard Cavalry fight as the Seleucid Empire. As you can probably guess I chased them round the battlefield time after time after time, I think it was about five times before I finally managed to use the terrain to ambush them. I got one unit to hide in the trees next to the edge of the field to get them as they went by and another one to hide in the other set of trees. When they came to that spot those cowardly fools were forced to fight to the death! Ahh, therapy!

You guys never watched sheep-herding on TV then :shrug:
Its not that hard to entrap skirmishers/HAs.
2 units can do it (heavy infantry too albeit slowly).

You just need to tell them to move to both flanks of the offending unit.
The AI knows instantly the location you are heading for & will respond by setting a new destination.
Simply by careful adjustment of the destinations of your units, you can shepherd them into a corner (most common) or up against the map edge where they will be forced to fight or quit the field.

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Originally Posted by MarcusAureliusAntoninus

Or the other way around when you are besieging a city and they sally forth. But apon reaching the battle map and seeing your army lined up they decide not to come out. (Then if you wait them out the immediately sally forth again and don't come out, five times.)

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Hi from my game experience I think this happens when the gates/walls are broken due to earlier battles/spies. :furious3:

I have never had the patience to let the enemy sally as many times as they want, instead just assaulting, but you say they will do it five times, does this mean that after that they will surrender?

when i have to chase skirmisers around i have 1 unit chase them and let the rest recover, then they'll be exhausted from being chasesd by the 1 unit and the rest will catch them.

I don't like playing with a time limit either. Got burned once or twice (playing vanilla RTW) when using a time limit and swore never again. Anyway, never had a problem running down archers/skirmishers with a unit or two of light calvary. Since they are usually the last to die I just up the speed till they are run down or driven off the map. Has worked thus far.

If I am defending a town or something and the AI is being stupid and standing still, I either sally enough units out a side gate and crush them or lure the AI into arrow/slinger range with a weak/fast unit and kill them.

I've noticed that too and I play with time limit off. Sometimes I just stop, surround them, and close or other times I order all my units to attack that last unit who eventually routs(I guess they eventually lose all hope).

The problem is when you don't have cavalry (the Sweboz don't have too much e.g.) and you have to endure a 20 minutes long Benny Hill style chase, before you can actually corner the buggers. Needless to say if it is light horsemen you are chasing and you have no light cavalry of your own you might as well do yourself a favor and gain a few precious minutes of life by pressing "end battle".

I know that feeling but I've never had the heart to quit a battle I've already won. Though I have set it on super speed and gone to do something else. I think there is actually a limit to how long they'll stay on the field before breaking. I've chased skirmishers around the map until they inexplicably flee before.

It might be helpful to keep a unit of archers in reserve then. I haven't played a Sweboz campaign though so I don't know how well that'd work with those archers.

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Originally Posted by Wolfe

Hi from my game experience I think this happens when the gates/walls are broken due to earlier battles/spies. :furious3:

I have never had the patience to let the enemy sally as many times as they want, instead just assaulting, but you say they will do it five times, does this mean that after that they will surrender?

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If it is the last turn of the seige they will surrender after five sallies. But if the seige continues, they will sally five times every turn.