Mopping up.

**levi758336** · 05-28-2010, 02:56

I have a question, when you win a battle do you generally, always, never continue the battle and clear out the rest of the routing enemy?

I wonder because my battles are generally decisive (partially because I don't enter into battle with a drastic numerical disadvantage unless I absolutely have to) and the enemy army generally routs.

Also, I'm circa 200 bce and have conquered as the Romani most of Western/Central Europe except the Iberian peninsula and have only fought 140 battles or so.

I guess I'm kind of a turtler, but I was wondering if my mopping up after every battle is part of why I've fought a relatively few number (in my uneducated opinion) of battles? Ie no armies retreat so I don't fight them a few turns later. Thanks for the input.

**Macilrille** · 05-28-2010, 07:51

Your number of battles is strangely low yes, what difficulty do you play on?

on VH/M the AI gets scripted money, lots and lots of them, so mopping up makes little difference; I always do it, even micromanaging the pursuit of every enemy unit, and I believe most others do as well from the screens I have seen. Next turn the AI will have hired a new stack of Mercs and produced lots of either Leets or cheap levy (no balanced armies for the Artificial Idiot). So it has little to do with that. I suspect you have either overrun your enemies fast and that they thus had little time to fight you.
I play slow-ish and I believe I usually would have fought about 300+ battles at 200 BC.

And welcome to the Forum.

**Zim** · 05-28-2010, 09:41

I always try to mop up enemy forces. Not doing so will likely mean more battles (especially if you play on alex.exe, where they retrain), but I usually find I have more than enough battles to fight anyway thanks to scripted cash for the AI (not just from higher difficulty levels. The AI also gets a lot of cash if they run low on money, which is fairly frequent for all but the wealthier factions since they waste it.

**athanaric** · 05-28-2010, 18:07

I do so with gusto. Especially if the enemy is the Carthaginians, Ptolies, or Seleukids. Or some units I really don't like (to fight against), like phalanx units. Apeleutheroi also make for good sport. I recently attacked, routed, and hunted down one unit of them with a unit of Rycalawre. Yes, they're that slow.

Of course, any enemy FMs have to die first. Especially if they're annoying cavalry generals, who like to run away even before the rest of their men routs.

**Nobo** · 05-28-2010, 18:39

Yea, I try to kill every last man. Mostly because it's just a nuisance to have lots of army remnants roaming the map. Since the AI is too stupid to consolidate them into a halfway decent force, they just come back to attack again. It's just a huge pain to constantly fight phalanx units with 15 men left...