Route Bug: Diagnosis

[Zen Blade]

Ok,

I know Magyar mentioned he has been working on it.
I would like to lend any help that I can do figuring out the cause (and solution) of this buggy bugger.

This morning I was online playing and after about 15 min into the game, I got hit by it... not just 1 unit, but 4 units. (and yes, I know the difference between route bug and routing)

-here is what I noticed at the time, I was moving the entirety of my army with alt+mouse click when one of my horse archers routed. I then said shit, but moved my whole force again (a slight bit) and my other horse archer routed. I then moved my force again a slight bit and a no-dachi and monk unit routed (the horses were each ~30 and the monk and no-dachi were above 50 each).
They were all in the same general area my "right flank" when they routed and they all auto routed within 30 sec to a min. However, my other unit over there (a yari samurai) did not rout and just stayed its ground.

As this was on Totomi, I should mention that I was lined up in the middle of the defensive player's start zone facing the one hill on the defender's right, while the defender had repositioned himself on that hill. My auto-routed units were on my far right and on/near the uprise near the border, but not on the border.

here's to finding a solution/cause

-Zen Blade

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Zen Blade Asai
Red Devil
Last of the RSG
Clan Tenki Council-Unity

[Magyar Khan]

i noticed that these things are somehow related too

- unit may be tired
- moving away from enemy while 1 or more of enemy are somehow advancing
- the enemy has 1 or more units in your rear
- somethimes i thought it ios caused by buggy spots on the maps, but i think this is not the case

but it happends to me when i am using horsearchers, low honour. who lost already some yinyan symbols for fatigue and doublemarch away from the enemy who is somehow standing between my main army and this horsearcher.

[Zen Blade]

yeah,


I know what you mean Magyar. However, my no-dachi was H3 or 4 and my monk was (I think) H2.

I'm not sure what my opponent's men were doing at the time, but my men were not what I would call *separated*, but they were on my flank.

However, I thought the most interesting thing was the fact that the autoroute occurred in a succession of moves. 1 unit, then 1 more, then 2.

-Zen Blade

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Zen Blade Asai
Red Devil
Last of the RSG
Clan Tenki Council-Unity

[BlackWatch McKenna]

The K in this equation are the Horse Archers.

I noticed that the horse archies will "Freak Out" if they are (a) tired; and (b) asked to move more than once away from the enemy.

I now only give them 3 commands the entire game, and they seem to do fine. First command is their "start" position; Second command is their "fire arrows" command; and Third commands is either "draw sabres and charge the routing enemy" or "my god, run for your horsey lives".

I was the king of self-routing horses before employing that method.

(I love light horse armies, so i have dedicated entirely too much time to learning how to make folks fear them-- muahahahahha)



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// Black
// "Did we win?"

[Puzz3D]

LAN tests that I've run are consistent with moving away from an enemy unit being the trigger of the auto-rout. That is: any move command that increases the distance, however slight, between your unit and an enemy unit. It will happen to low morale units more easily, but no unit is immune and evenually all will run away. Units which are the same and appear to be operating under the same conditions can auto-rout at different times. The effect extends out to at least 150 meters (120 close spaced men), but does have a limited range. Unlike units which rout for other reasons, once a unit auto-routs you cannont rally it, which definitely seems like a bug. In single player, the ai will never auto-rout.

"Just the facts"

MizuYuuki ~~~
Clan Takiyama ~~~

[Dunhill]

I had wonderd about units which routed so quickly in multiplayer games.

The current opinion is that moving a unit away from the enemy creates a rout not directly related to a units current morale (autorout?

How does this relate to movement on the flank, such as repositioning to move in to the rear of an enemy? I've found this difficult at times, depending on the terrain.

[High Voltage]

That would not make any sense if morale lowered when units move away. Even if it was an unintended feature implamented, it lowers realism. I like to do things like have high ground behind me, then as the enemy gets close, run up the high ground, then charge down. If the enemy stops when I run up, then my morale lowers

[Dunhill]

Yes, such a tactic does often go astray for odd reasons, which I always thought was a problem with being too far from my gen, now I'm not so sure.

[lei]

Hmmm, not sure what to make of all that. I played one of the historical battles (the second imagawa one) and quickly deployed all my units to defend against troops advancing on the right. just as i watched them close range, i wondered where the hell all my men were. turning to face them, i watched as the whole army marched slowly in perfevt formation off of the near edge of the map. I quickly ordered all my units to "get the hell back here" but to no avail, they just continued like zombies. I think you lot are right in one assumption though:

It's the horse archers fault.

I noticed at the beginning i had one unit, then they managed to skidaddle faster than everyone else. suspicious.

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TIGER LILY!!!
check it out for yourself at: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/tom.surman/frames.html

[maroberts]

In my experience cavalry don't act as well on their own as they should. Ideally you should be able to get them to independently harass the enemy. It's particularly unfortunate on bridge battles; ideally I'd like to have a couple of horsey units nibbling at the edges of the attacking force on the opposite side of the river as he attacks the bridge.

The reality is that unless you are lucky, the aforementioned horsey units engage, and rout TOWARDS the bridge into the waiting arms of every single damn enemy unit on the map!! The other problem is that I'd like to have my YC atack an arher unit and then run as fast as possible when some YS support arrives to help out; again the reality is that you have great difficulty (read almost impossible) disengaging one your horses are in a fight unless the enemy routs.

One patch that should be implemented would be to change the rout rules, so that routing was AWAY from the nearest enemy unit(s) instead of TOWARDS your side of the map.

Cav units appear to be quite unwieldy too; always seems to have to reform before heading off in a new direction. I'd wan't my cavalry, light especially, to stuff formations and just get to where directed on time.

On the other hand it is possible to do good things with cavalry; if you get them across a bridge fast they can divert a large amount of the forces defending it; the problem lies in getting synchronisation between your cavalry and your other forces right; I've discovered truly having two or more independent forces is damn difficult to manage.

Another Total War mod I'd like to see, is the ability to assign your units to AI control. e.g. I'd like to shove my CA to somewhere at the back/side of the enemy, then assign the AI to manage them, giving the AI an instruction to use them in a skirmish role. That way I could get back to managing my main force, only releasing them from AI control when the situation changes. The situation would be analogous to giving the leader of the unit some orders like 'stay on the right flank, skirmish, do not engage unless you see all the enemy routing.'

[CaPeFeAr]

i am fairly sure the rout bug is due to the number of times you move your unit without engaging the enemy in some fashion. i have never seen more than 1 unit at a time rout ( yes i have seen more than 1 rout one after another but not the same time exactly) leading me to believe there is an internal counter of some sorts and if more than one unit reaches the autorout point at the same time as another it will delay 1 unit from routing untill the next wasted move. this IMHO is why they tend to rout one after another. i have tested for this bug numerus times and can re-create the "bug" at will. a few things i can say do not affect the autorout: distance between the opponent, fatuige, honour level of the unit, distance between general and the unit, and weather or not the unit is moving towards the enemy or away.. u will never experience the autorout when telling a unit to attack....only when telling a unit to move.
Ways to avoid the autorout- DO NOT MAKE UNNECESSARY MOVES!! if you feel that you might be nearing the auto route ( i found that it is roughly 20 or so wasted moves) tell all units to attack then halt and redraw your formation. this will reset the autorout counter MOST of the time but not always and in some situations this might put you over the count and they will start routing. if you do experience the auto rout stop positioning units and get to fighting.

ways to know that the bug has bitten- the unit which has experienced the auto rout will get the option to rally. once you press rally they will stop routing for an instant and rout again. now this does happen in the normal course of the game.ie if you are being chased you might rally only to have them rout again however most autoroted units are by themselves and are not being chased.

i apoligise for the lenghth of my post but i know how much this issue means to the community and wish to share some of my hard earned knowalage for the benifit of all. since i have discovered what i determine as the reason i have been able to avoid the bug during play and have only had it happen on rare occasions. but when it does happen to me i found it is because i have failed to follow my own advice.

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[maroberts]

Does defining a waypoint route count as one command or a command equal to the number of waypoints??

[CaPeFeAr]

thats a great question!! i must do some tests cause im not sure...i have never used waypoints b4 and never thought to test it on this point. maby if the server gets back online i can find out today.

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[NagaoKagetora]

I have seen the "autorout bug" only on multiplayer never against the AI. In my experience i have seen single fresh high honour monk and dachi units turn tail and run while their Ashi comrades stand firm. IMHO it is definately map related, seen it happen most on Totomi and green.

[FearofFucy]

That happend to me before. I figured out that when u move the entire armie (all 16 in one group)to much that they will rout 1 by 1. Dont know why.

[Puzz3D]

CapeFear,

Previously, I reported results of my own tests in this thread: http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000451.html

In those tests, I did see multiple units rout simultaneously, and they were not necessarily next to each other. I agree that there must be a parameter involved that is counting moves, but it acts like a threshold must be reached before a random chance of routing can occur. The chance of routing might gradually increase above this threshold. A random effect would account for identical units not necessarily routing on the same move. That's an intriguing idea that you might able to do something to reset that counter.

The reason I feel 'away' moves are the trigger is because I specifically tested for that. I was able to make 50 forward moves with a group by taking 10 small steps forward and one larger step back, and had none rout. You can't make anything remotely close to 50 'away' moves and have any units left on the field.

Also, in my last test with 16 YS against 1 YS, it was the center 3 units of the 13 unit line which ran taking the 3 units directly behind center with them. The 3 center units were geometrically closest to the enemy unit, and that would suggest that distance is a factor. I didn't try this test a second time, so I don't know if it's repeatable.

I didn't test for the effect of honor on the auto-rout, but I did see a difference between WM and YS, and others have stated that CA are particularly susceptible to it. It could be that each unit type has a fixed vulnerability to auto-rout based on it's H0 morale value, but I'm just guessing here.

MizuYuuki ~~~
Clan Takiyama ~~~

[This message has been edited by Puzz3D (edited 05-11-2001).]

[lei]

Many thx Puzz3D-san,
looks like we've got a decent enough insight to avoid such an annoying bug for a while. let's hope someone has already thought of fixing it in the new release.

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TIGER LILY!!!
check it out for yourself at: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/tom.surman/frames.html

[Magyar Khan]

i remember the games where is was being challenged by shadowkill in a best of three

in our second game i had 40% of my fun army on his the right side of the map when after clicking ready i was facing 70% of shadows army. so i fled back and had to cross a deep valley to get to my other units. when moving down and up i was moving away and i was being shot from above. then suddenly 2 h2 monks routed . it was just a few minutes in the game. so no more clicks then 10 or so....

[darealruler]

My idea about the routbug is that it only occurs when you moved too much with your troops. Although, it often only happens when you moved a number of times in a short while e.g. 5 times in a minute. also moving away from an enemy and tiredness got to do with the bug.

DARE

[Kraellin]

i remember vividly one particular game a while back where we were playing a 2v2 game and my ally had been routed and i'd taken a few losses, but still had half or better of my troops. i regrouped my forces on a small hill and as the enemy advanced one of them began moving to my left flank. as any good general would do, i began moving my units back slowly so my flank wouldnt be badly exposed. i was moving 1 unit at a time and using the alt-left click method to do so, keeping them always facing the right way. the enemy in front of me was moving slowly towards me and so was the one on my left, but he wasnt really flanking me yet. he was still out in front.

as i continued to move backwards slowly, i backed up to another small hill, trying to give myself any advantage i could, and suddenly one of my units took off, then another, both musket units. i went, what the hell? oh well, guns rout easily and continued my manuevering. from then on, almost each move i made backwards i'd lose another unit. none of my units were engaged or even under fire at the time. finally i was down to 2 or 3 units and the enemy simply charged and routed the rest.

when we went back to the foyer i asked my opponents, what the hell was that? i was told that this was a 'feature' of the game; that moving away from an enemy was considered 'cowardly' by your army and so they suffered a morale loss as a result. i'm like, you've got to be kidding! cause if that were the case then even shifting your lines to face an enemy better could result in a rout. they said, yes, it could.

so, apparently, moving backwards, while within a certain range of the enemy (perhaps gun and arrow range?), has something to do with the 'rout bug'. and perhaps those sideways moves were actually slightly backwards also? and that, like others said above, it takes a certain number of moves or a threshhold counter being hit before it occurs. fatigue, current morale, current honor, how many times you've moved back and so on would all add to lowering morale and causing that threshhold to be reached.

i've noticed one other thing about this too....i think....it seems to happen more frequently when you remain facing the enemy but are simply moving back. i recently was in a 3v3 where i was the only army left on my side and had only 4 units remaining. there was no 'positioning' my tiny force against the remaining 3 enemy armies...i was running for cover full blast with the enemy hot on my tail. not one of my units even wavered.

i offer up that the game apparently looks to see each units 'facing' strength in morale. who is psyching who out, in other words, regardless of whether you are engaged or not or under fire or not. but, that it only looks a certain distance, probably gun or arrow range. so, if yer facing an enemy but moving backwards it takes this to mean the enemy is psyching you out a bit. i dunno. i do know it makes for a goofy situation tactically at times and in that i dont agree with it.

perhaps my example above wasnt a true rout bug and you guys are talking about something else. i'd love ot hear more about it though.

K.

[CaPeFeAr]

as many of you know i like to play games with fatuige and without.....i have not seen a difference when it comes to the bug...i have also lost units to the bug while attempting to move units foward in tests and in battles. but one thing is for sure....when i am a victim of the bug i always have had the rally option appear....but when i press it they rally for a microsecond and rout again.. i have also never had the rout bug bite me when i told a unit to attack...

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