Why can't cavalry chase routers?

[Omisan]

Seriously, what the hell.

Here's what happens...

They run after routers and stop as soon as they reach them.

They run at the same speed as the routers and never catch them.

Or they run in front, behind and on the flanks of the routers without moving for the kill.

If there's a single router left it's even worse. You knights will run in all directions, regroup, scatter, run toward the router without attacking... Watching this go on at 3x speed for 5 minutes is quite ridiculous.

The only option is to "trick" your cavalry into killing routers by making them move among the routing unit first and then giving an attack order. This is obviously a pain to do when you have other things to worry about on the battlefield.

Why can't the game do it? What is so complicated? Is there an evil programmer at CA who secretly implented a script to make cavalry avoid routers at all cost? Because that's exactly how it looks in game.

[dunno]

To me this is by far the most annoying bug. But the issue is improved in the 1.2 patch. Supposedly it was fine in RTW (never played it) so I don't know why it's so screwed up in MTW2.

[King Jeron]

This isn't a bug, when you attack your selected unit(s) tries to get in charging formation, but because the enemy is running away your selected unit(s) has to reposition themselfs all the time.

If you want to kill routing enemies, just make your cavalry run at the direction the enemy is running. Your cavalry will run right through and kill most of them. The enemy won't even change direction or anything.

[Mr Frost]

This isn't a bug, when you attack your selected unit(s) tries to get in charging formation, but because the enemy is running away your selected unit(s) has to reposition themselfs all the time...

It is a bug .
Once the charge is spent and the cavalry unit is in Persuit mode , it still indulges in the creation of geometeric patterns around the routing unit instead of simply riding the unit down .

The choice to spread out over a very wide area before regrouping making sure not to harm the fleeing enemy does nothing that could be useful in setting up a charge , especially when the persuing unit isn't processing any order to charge , having already spent one on the unit it is now locked onto .

[Whacker]

This isn't a bug, when you attack your selected unit(s) tries to get in charging formation, but because the enemy is running away your selected unit(s) has to reposition themselfs all the time.

What Frost said. It's a well known extremely annoying bug. I'm almost convinced that the CA devs decided to work on having the chasers do interpretive dance on fractals instead of killing stuff. For the record RTW and BI did not have this problem. In fact as of right now they are still far better at it than the 1.2beta patch.

If you want to kill routing enemies, just make your cavalry run at the direction the enemy is running. Your cavalry will run right through and kill most of them. The enemy won't even change direction or anything.

Pointless micromanagement, besides RTW handled this fine. It needs to be fixed, if the 1.2beta patch is any indication it's getting better, but still needs a good deal of work.

[HoreTore]

Unless my memory is completely off, RTW did have this problem in v1.0.

Oh, and it also had the annoying chariots-just-knock-people-over syndrome... killing routers as the brits = mission impossible.

[Whacker]

If the problem was in RTW as well, I don't remember it... You could be right though HoreTore.

Also, elephants chasing routers is a royal pain, more often they just fling guys around instead of stomping/killing them.

[Barkhorn1x]

This issue is one of the most annoying bugs in M2TW. It IS needless micro-management that pointlessly extends battle times.

...and now it is listed as a bug in the 1.2 bug thread.

Great job CA.

[TinCow]

This is reportedly fixed in the 1.2 patch.

[Whacker]

Partially fixed, if 1.2(unofficial) is any indication. Still needs a lot of work, but it's tolerable. If you pay attention, they still want to do that "spread out into a star" thing occasionally, but they stop fairly quickly and will semi-regroup.

[Lusted]

There were some problems in RTW as well, mainly down to the fact it seems routing units have a messed up 'center' for the chasing unit to aim at, resulting in the charge, swarm round behind the unit, reofrm, charge etc.

[redriver]

There were some problems in RTW as well, mainly down to the fact it seems routing units have a messed up 'center' for the chasing unit to aim at, resulting in the charge, swarm round behind the unit, reofrm, charge etc.

that's right.. it only happens in RTW when the routin' unit is out of cohesion.. spread out thin' and then the chaisers will be stuck in the "empty" middle of the routin' unit.. very rare and usually fixed by itself when the routers will eventually "regroup" and catch up with the rest of the unit....

[Generals_Bodyguard]

maybe CA should come up with a Whip remote in the future. You use it to manually control your cavalry...Damn i've had cavalry forget their orders!!!Hope 1.2 solves that

[Skott]

CA got lazy on their coding and their Q&A with M2TW. Cavalry also get hung up on rocks and things in this game when charging. I dont remember it being so bad in past games. These sort of things should have been dealt with before the game launch but someone decided to get the game out first and fix it later. Hopefully Patch 1.2 fixes it.

[Budwise]

This isn't a bug, when you attack your selected unit(s) tries to get in charging formation, but because the enemy is running away your selected unit(s) has to reposition themselfs all the time.

If you want to kill routing enemies, just make your cavalry run at the direction the enemy is running. Your cavalry will run right through and kill most of them. The enemy won't even change direction or anything.

I agree with him. Also, its not a bug, its deliberate to make the battles more fair, I heard that when it was asked in MTW.

[Bob the Insane]

In the start with RTW the pursing cavalry would keep pausing every time it got near the retreating unit. This was resolved and afterward the cavalry would ride over routers as a block formation... Note though that in RTW the battle animations where abstracted and to fighting individuals did not have to the sync'ed with each other.

There are two issues here I think, and one of them existed in RTW too. The first one is when the routing unit gets very seperated. The persuing unit would (and still does) attack the center of the fleeing unit. Of course with the fleeing unit highly separated then there are actually no individuals is cut down in the center of the unit. This issue is in both versions and always requires some micromanagement to handle. In RTW you could simply pull your pursuers behind the last of the trailing routers and it would work it's way forward taking them out first and sorting out the issue.

The second issue is when there are very few individuals left in the fleeing unit and this issue only occurs for MTW2. I believe the it is due to the requirement that individuals in a unit seek out individual enemies to sync up their animations to fight, plus individual soldiers require significant "personal space" the unit. When there is a single router left you see this pretty clearly. The persuing unit will catch up in good order and at the last moment (at the charge) every individual will change direction to charge directly at the last router. But they all get in each others way and the "personal space" function comes into play forcing the individual cavalry men to move away from each other (still at charge speed) which results is an extreme spreading out of the persuing cavalry unit. Once this happens I believe the router is still within this spread so effectively the units are engaged so the cavalrymen hunt around for targets rather than chasing after the routing unit as a whole.