Chasing routers in siedge

[placenik]

Well, I'm bringing up stuff which annoys me for years
Enemy unit sally out, I rout it, but my cavalry refuses to chase it and finish it off. They simply ignore running unit. Anyone knows solution?

[gollum]

No other solution than micromanagement.

When the cavalry refuses to continue killing a routing unit, simply click in a place other than the unit (preferably in front of the unit you are chasing so the cavalry keeps on the same track as they); this will reset the cavalry order list. Afterwards simply click attack again and the cavalry will now start killing them again.

This cycle needs repeating a few times, besically everytime the cavalry seems too slow to kill routers.

[placenik]

Well micromanagement is boring, because your units tend to freeze on first contact. Especially annoying with replenishing general bodyguards.

PS: I use HAs if available, because they won't quit shooting, no matter what.

[gollum]

Originally posted by placenik
Well micromanagement is boring...

Well i'm sorry to tell you that you play the wrong game then. RTW is notorius for the micro needed in the battle and campaign maps.

[placenik]

Well i'm sorry to tell you that you play the wrong game then. RTW is notorius for the micro needed in the battle and campaign maps.

You misunderstood me. I tend to overmicro :D But in this case you need to constantly click on unit you are chasing, meaning you need to focus on something that should be routine task instead on the real battle which is going on.

[gollum]

Please read my first reply post again - i say therein that you should click in the ground and then in the unit you are chasing every time the cavalry gets "lazy", and this works the way its described. Clicking on the target you are chasing alone doesnt help much and then indeed you need to keep frantically clicking that attracts attention.

I understand your point but this is part of the micromanaging nightmare this game is.

The problem is that the running speeds are too high in the vanilla game and players cannot often control all units at the height of the battle especially if smaller than huge sizes are used (with larger sizes you get some time due to the relatively longer melee times).

One easy solution is to alter the ground movement speed modifiers from 1.0 to 0.775 on average. This is what most mods do, altough others prefer to give multiple hit points to units that make melees drag longer. The latter however kills the match up element of the game ie an elite unit and a light/weak unit will both hold ages in the melee, so flanking becomes more important than matching units correctly.

[valentinian]

Yeah, this seems to be a unit AI bug (one among many that has been left unfixed). The problem only occurs during a sally by a garrison, and only happens when a garrison unit routs outside the gates. The instant the sallying unit routs, your pursuing unit will stop attacking them. You could try clicking repeatedly, but that only causes a chase. When contact is made, your unit doesn't start killing.

Usually I plan out the attack so that I kite away the other defenders, and order my cavalry to the gate that the routers are heading toward. Then, chase them inside the gate. As soon as even one of the routers step inside a city gate, your cavalry will start massacring them again. Because they're usually all bunched up at the city gate, you could kill them all very quickly.

(This is related to the battle AI's other stupid bug of sallying the entire garrison out the gates. You can exploit this by routing a garrison unit outside the gates, chase into the city when the routers open the gates, and then run around the four gates to capture them all and lock the garrison outside. Kill the remnants at the city plaza and the city is yours. You could take heavily defended towns with a single cavalry unit.)