Unrecoverable rout after too many retreats is a designed feature intended to prevent a player from winning a battle by constantly retreating while the timer runs out. You have to be within a certain distance of an enemy unit for the rout counter to increment, and that counter is supposed to reset if the unit attacks and enemy unit. I don't know if the reset actually works.
Unrecoverable rout was changed in WE (MI). The rout counter is not incremented for ranged units as long as they have ammo. As I recall, this feature works because cav archers can retreat many times without routing.
Bookmarks