Withdrawing vs Routing

[Quokka]

When I have Archers in my armies I often withdraw them after they have used their ammo, either to get reinforcements or to get them off the battlefield to make my life easier. Forgeting about them once and watching some Hobilars sneak past my lines to get them hurt.

What effect does withrawing them have on their morale? They do seem to gain Valour much slower than my other troops even when they do a good percentage of the killing.
I have also had a look at the battle logs and they show the Archers as withdrawn and anyone left on the field as Victorious. Do Victorious troops recieve Valour bonuses over those that withdraw or never see combat, or does every unit in the army share in the victory?

As for regular troops, is there an advantage to using the withdraw command over the rout command? If at all possible I break off battered units and withdraw them rather than rout them. What about the number of units withdrawing, do the other units view these as routers? I often will withdraw all my Archers at once in between waves so that I can get the new Archers in place en masse and not have to deal with individual groups arriving haphazardly. If I pull 4 units of Archers out of the line at once do my other troops suffer a Morale penalty?

[rolin]

In my opinion the archers get not experience/valour for killing enemy troops, they only get an additional point if they can manage to decide the enemy to run away.

Withdrawing a unit is always mucht better than routing a unit off the field. Because a routed unit is in danger to get the good runner vice. Using the routing flags, somtimes is the only way to save cavalry in melee with speermen, but it is not a regular tactic option.

I don't think that you get a malus to the other troops morale if you withdraw your four archers, but they would suffer if you would let flee them.

For getting valour, it is IMHO crucical to make Prisoners, not to make kills.

[motorhead]

Valour: It does seem that missile units need more kills than most units to get an increase in valour. Also, the quality of those kills counts for alot. Killing 60 Gothic Foot Knights is, and should be, worth more than pincushioning 60 peasants. If you check the logfiles, you'll see that if your missiles got some kills, at least a few of your men have probably gained a point of valour, just not enough for the unit average to go up a point. Lastly, archers, as opposed to arbalesters or xbows, don't do as well against armoured foes, so they most of their kills against soft targets that are generally not as valuable per kill. Arbs/xbows work well against hard targets like knights and CMAA, which are worth more per kill.

Withdraw vs. rout: manually routing a unit will usually have a negative affect on other nearby units. Elite troops receive only 1/2 the morale penalty when non-elite troops rout. Disciplined troops, i believe, aren't affected at all, or to a much lesser degreee no matter who routs near them. If you manually rout, then rally that unit, you will suffer a -2/-4 (can't recall which) morale penalty to that unit.

[Praetorian]

Its cause archers usually shoot their own troops aswell.

[Dimonstre]

Withdrawing the archers after depleting their ammo is worthy only if you have a reinforcements to bring in. In some cases they are battle winners in long and crippling battles. When all the combat units - either yours and the enemy's are depleted to few men, it is great to have 2 or 4 units of 60 men, even of they are archers. Dont hesitate to use depleted archers to charge enemies if you have nothing else left on the field. This is especially usefull for trebizond archers or bulgarian brigands.

And no - withdrawing is form of organized retreat which do not reduce the morale on the units which are withdrawing nor the morale of other units. Also you can stop the withdrawal at any time by just clicking at ROUT button which is not allways possible if the unit is routing. No matter how many units are withdrawing.

Btw do anyone knows how the bonus for outnumbering 1:2 and 1:3 is calculated? Do they calculate the initial ratio or at every moment of the battle depending of how many troops are on the battlefield or + these in reserve???

And about gaining valor I belive they are gaining it if they deserved it by killing a lot of enemies, no matter do they withdraw or not from the battlefield.

[Dimonstre]

Sorry, I meant RALLY instead of ROUT button.

[Oaty]

As far as archers not seeming to gain valour they do but in medieval times it was considered more honorable to kill an opponent in melee than by a missle. Plus think how deadly archers would become if they gained the same valor as if it were in melee after about 10 years of continuous war they would be some deadly foes as they have made many kills and have not recieved any. They get the same valor as other units if they kill them by hand but its reduced by a certain amount if they kill by arrow.

As far as routing and withdrawing the best time that I think to rout your men is when there is more danger for them in the postion they are in. I have routed shock troops that were about to get nailed by cavalry and I try to make it that they route behind the spearmen and usually by the time they make it behind your spearmen they are able to rally,and usually on there own, just in enough time to stop those spearmen from wavering plus since the general is cavalry I have him wait there by the spearmen ready to flank there cavalry. The worst route I had was when I had some cavalrychasing routers and were about to do a head on dive into spearmen so I quickly routed em. Unfortuaneley there morale was so high they routed for only 2 seconds and still had spearmen on there butt and and to roue em 3 times till they got a safe distance from the spearmen. Occasionally I do a nice little trick because you can route off the field anywhere but can only withdraw from your starting position so if the opportunity is right I will march them off to the side and watch the cavalry gallop in for the easy kill I then route them so they go off the side of the map instead of all the way back.

Quote[/b] ]Withdrawing a unit is always mucht better than routing a unit off the field. Because a routed unit is in danger to get the good runner vice. Using the routing flags, somtimes is the only way to save cavalry in melee with speermen, but it is not a regular tactic option.

As far as that goes they have to be a spare general that is not in command.

Quote[/b] ]For getting valour, it is IMHO crucical to make Prisoners, not to make kills.

One of my favorite parts about missle fire. They do'nt take prisoners they only prevent potential prisoners and is something I love to with mounted units

Quote[/b] ] Also, the quality of those kills counts for alot. Killing 60 Gothic Foot Knights is, and should be, worth more than pincushioning 60 peasants.

True but sometimes I still single out those poor armored units mainly do to the fact its sometimes to pick on the lowest morale unit to start chain reaction plus an archer can possibly kill 20 peasants in the same amount of time it would take to kill 1 or 2 gothic foot knights.

Quote[/b] ]Its cause archers usually shoot their own troops aswell.

For the most part archers usually have good enough aim to do much more damge to the enemy than yourself.

Quote[/b] ]Btw do anyone knows how the bonus for outnumbering 1:2 and 1:3 is calculated? Do they calculate the initial ratio or at every moment of the battle depending of how many troops are on the battlefield or + these in reserve???

That has very little effect until the end of the battle and I believe once 90 percent of your army has left the field there is a major morale penalty where when you highlight your unit it says dismayed by decimation of army. So if you have 1 of those rare 10000 man battles the last 1000 men will not likely even put up a fight with the enemy and route before the enemy closes in on you. If its a 2000 man battle then it will take effect when your down to your last 200 men. this is where peasants come in very handy in big battles even thought I do'nt have a plan to use them they will help my own troops feel secure when they are the last ones on the field even though as soon as peasants come on I have them hanging on the edge of the battle field till all hope is gone

[Puzz3D]

In tests on manual routing that I did in STW on a LAN, there was no morale penalty projected onto friendly units by a unit commanded to rout. I'm certain of this as I did very careful tests designed to measure that effect. I did see a morale penalty projected on any friendly unit within 1.8 tiles (about 75 meters) when the unit was routed by an enemy unit. Any friendly that came within 1.8 tiles of a routing unit (routed by enemy) as it ran to the rear would receive the penalty. I've never seen anything in MTW to suggest that it works differently than STW in this regard, although, I haven't conducted the same careful tests. I clearly recall an online 2v2 battle where my ally, who was in front of me, routed his entire army and it passed through my army on the way to the rear, but my units maintained their morale status. If there had been an effect, it would have been massive with all those units routing right through mine. What you will loose instantly is any morale support the manually routed unit was providing to friendlies or any morale penalty the unit was projecting on the enemy.

With regard to being outnumbered, as I recall from a post by longjohn2, it's calculated periodically thoughout the battle for each unit. The number of enemy units and friendly units within 1.8 tiles is counted and the ratio taken. Unit facing is not a factor. The check is done often enough that for all practical purposes it's a continuous morale check. The strategy guide gives the penalties as, up to -4 for outnumbered 2 to 1 and up to -12 for outnumbered 10 to 1. Outclassed in quality and speed modifies the outnumbered penalty.

[Mount Suribachi]

Regarding valour, you are much more likely to gain a valour point or two if you've killed a unit commander. I've had troops kill 100+ enemy and gained no morale, then the freshly arrived reinforcements finish off a few generals and gain 2 valour for half a dozen kills.

[Quokka]

Thanks for all the replies.

What are these tiles you are talking about?

Quote[/b] ] I did see a morale penalty projected on any friendly unit within 1.8 tiles (about 75 meters) when the unit was routed by an enemy unit.

Is there a way to get them to show on a battle map so that I can learn to gage distances better?

[Puzz3D]

I have a checkerboard map I made with the map editor that I use for range tests. When you make a map you place textured tiles to color it. Those tiles are all the same size. One tile = 35 order foot men side by side. Also from the Strategy Guide, speed 6 = 3.72 miles/hour (1.68 meters/second). Most infantry marches at speed 6. So, you can calculate that 1 tile = 40 meters. Another way to guage distance is by the open fire range of a unit such as archers. On flat ground that is 2.5 tiles (range = 5000).

[Dimonstre]

About killing enemies and gaining a valor i can say what happened to one of my units that surprised me. Last night I was fighting against the Spaniards as the Byzantines. In one battle a unit of Pronoioi Alagion lost half of its mens, unable to kill any single enemy soldier and in the end of the battle they was gained +1 valor.
The only possible exlanation about this for me is if the non-valored soldiers in this unit died, and only the valored from battles in the past survived thus making the overal valor of the unit +1 ???
Something like that happened to someone else?
I am starting to think that receiving a valor is more or less random thing...

[A.Saturnus]

I don`t think it`s random; you can check the log file to see what really happened.

[TheViking]

Quote[/b] (Dimonstre @ Sep. 03 2003,14:08)]About killing enemies and gaining a valor i can say what happened to one of my units that surprised me. Last night I was fighting against the Spaniards as the Byzantines. In one battle a unit of Pronoioi Alagion lost half of its mens, unable to kill any single enemy soldier and in the end of the battle they was gained +1 valor.
The only possible exlanation about this for me is if the non-valored soldiers in this unit died, and only the valored from battles in the past survived thus making the overal valor of the unit +1 ???
Something like that happened to someone else?
I am starting to think that receiving a valor is more or less random thing...

if 20 of your pronois have V0 and the other have V1, and all of the V0 dies, your unit end up with V1

[Lunael]

Check the battle logs (if you have the option of logging the battles on). It was kind of illuminating to actually realize that valour is tracked on soldier level, not just as a value inherent to the unit. So on valour 1 unit you might have a lot of valour 0 soldiers, some with 1, some with 2, and perhaps several with higher numbers. Just guessing here - the one number shown in the game is average of these,

It´s also interesting to see the kills divided to lone soldiers. Always fun to see that your king racked some 3/4 of units kills.

-Juha