Moving troops around causes rout?

[The_Emperor]

I think for RTW they should remove the timer and the Auto-Rout feature (well maybe not for all units, but certainly for horse archers)

Hit and run tactics were key for factions such as the Parthians, and not being able to use them to the fullest is just wrong.

And at any rate a player shouldn't be able to run all over the map Benny Hill Style because of the effects of fatigue. A reduction in the unit speed is inevitable if you are running from the enemy a lot and getting more tired...

As such a penalty of speed should be introduced at higher fatigue levels, instead of a creeping morale penalty.

Cavalry archers would flee under pursuit from the field if they got chased too far from the main force... So maybe their position should be more relative to morale than how many times they have skirmished away from the enemy during the battle.

And of course the morale penalties for being exhausted should also still apply.

[Black Arrow]

There are certainly a couple of historical battles where an ordered retreat is a preferred tactic. presumably if you leapfrog units back so that a new unit takes the oncoming force then you shouldnt get this penalty?

Evading a charge should also be a legit tactic.

[Puzz3D]

Skirmishers which still have ammo do not have their retreat counter incremented when they move away from enemy units. Tests I did on the auto-rout (Benny Hill) counter in STW showed that about 13 consecutive retreats trigged the unrecoverable rout, and you had to be within a certain range of enemy units for the counter to increment. The morale state of the retreating unit wasn't really much of a factor. You can go from steady to unrecoverable rout in one click. The counter did increment when moving away from hidden enemy units that were within range of the effect. The counter is supposedly rest by attacking an enemy unit or possibly just clicking on an enemy unit, but I don't if that is actually the case.

[fruitfly]

The only time I've seen this autorout myself is when I attacked a rebel army of all spearmen with some horse archers and one unit of royal knights. Things were going fine with the spearmen chasing my royal knights around while my HAs turned them to pincushions, but then my RKs auto-routed due to the dismayed by the constant retreat thing.

Maybe the tactics I was using were pretty cheesy, but it seemed like the best way to win that battle quickly without taking heavy casualties due to the troops I had available.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Most of the time when I get autorout is when my opponent and I are circling eachother...not skirmishing at all, so it seems the autorout feature really doesn't work right.

[Ludens]

The first time I got auto-rout was when I was luring away a unit of yari samurai with my Mongol heavy Cavalry, by walking just in front of them, while they were tiring themselves trying to keep up. This went on for about 5 minutes ( ? ). It was pretty lame of me, so I guess I deserved that rout.

[Puzz3D]

Shinano,

The definition of moving away from an enemy unit is that the distance between your unit and the enemy unit increases. You cannot move a unit in a circular motion in this game. If two units are facing each other on the perimeter of an imaginary circle and you move along the tanget of the circle, the distance between the two units immediately increases, so that would increment the auto-rout counter. I think if you follow the path of an incribed polygon to that circle it won't increment the auto-rout counter because the initial direction is shortening the distance even though the distance between the units will start to increase once you cross the perpendicular line from the enemy unit to your path.

I would say the counter is not working right for hidden units. Your unit can have its auto-rout counter incremented by an enemy unit that it doesn't see.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Yes but if the attacker decides to maneuver his army around behind where the defenders army is then he will always be shortening the distance and when the defender moves they will always be increasing the distance.