ADVICE: solve autorout bug

[Tac]

cavalry, specially light cavalry have always been hit and run, harrasment forces. Heavy cavalry (like the brit Heavy Horse) were used to charge into ranks of footmen and break their formations so their own footmen running behind the heavy horse attack could cut them down during the confusion.

In STW, hitting archers with yari cav. is logical, expected even. But while your cav. is killing the archers the yari sams come to their rescue, which is when the yari cav. should pull out. Thing is, they dont. They form up again and get out.. and while they do that even MORE of their numbers get into combat with the archers and get tied down there.. allowing the yari sams to catch and butcher them. This is a great issue.

And jhon, just as I replied on the other thread, take a unit of AI yari sams and face it vs 1 of yari cav. Have the cav run/ march away from them. The yari sams will run most of the way without tiring (marching only to pivot or change direction) while your cavalry gets completely exhausted and cant run.. and then the RUNNING yari sams catch up to them.

Simple test. Do it.

[Puzz3D]

Tac,

I performed your test twice on a flat map except I took an H2 heavy cav (the slowest cav), and gave the ai an H9 yari ashigaru (the fastest yari inf). It was raining both times. The YA could not catch me either time, and the YA became exhaused and couldn't run while my cav was only quite tired. In one case my HC was bitten by the "Benny Hill" code, and ran away. In the second case I eventually attacked the YA, but lost badly.


longjohn2,

I tested the "Benny Hill" a bit on LAN, and I did get 10 away moves as the rout point for YA of various honor. However, YC and WM had more resistance to the "Benny Hill". It was more like 20 away moves for the YC, and 40 away moves for the WM. The "Benny Hill" seems to be unit dependent.

I also tried alternating forward and away moves with the YA, and it routed at the 20th away move in two separate tests. Right now I think that forward or attack moves reduce the "Benny Hill" count, but do not fully reset it to zero.

MizuYuuki ~~~

[longjohn2]

Interesting results Puzz. Perhaps someone changed something for MI, although I haven't noticed any changes in the code.

[Puzz3D]

longjohn2,

I tried this LAN test of Benny Hill again, but made a setup closer to the one I used for the original STW. I have 7 H2 YS in a line formation with each unit 10 wide x 6 deep on a flat map which shows the tile spacing clearly. I leave the taisho unit far back so it is not an influence. I have H2 YA in the other army set up the same way facing the YS line 3 tiles away. I bring a single H2 YA forward to within 1 tile of the center of the line of YS. It wavers as it gets close to 1 tile distance, and I stop it about 1/2 tile from the YS. I then give small, consecutive, "away", move commands to the YA and count them. I couldn't get the unit to rout at all in multiple repeats of the test. After 20 or 30 moves, the YA is probably too far away and out of range of the Benny Hill. I made runs with the YA maintaining facing toward the YS line with ALT + move, and I made runs with the YA facing away from the YS. The final run was with the YA within 1/4 tile of the YS line with its back turned. I gave 20 away commands by the time this unt reached 1 tile distance where it was still wavering, but it didn't rout. That unit had 40 away commands by the time it reached 2 tiles distance, but still didn't rout. One thing of note is that you can easily induce the rout by using the SHIFT + move command to move away. It only takes 3 or 4 of those to trigger the Benny Hill, and that is very repeatable. This seems like a bug, and makes SHIFT + move too dangerous to use.

This result is not consistent with my previous LAN test of WE/MI where I got YA to rout with 10 away moves, but the setup was different. It's a bit confusing. Subjectively, I've always felt that the Benny Hill effect, althought still present, is somehow reduced in WE/MI compared to STW.

[MagyarKhans Cham]

My Khan watches the interaction between u2 with great interests... keep going guys!

[Kraellin]

yuuki,

yup. i've felt the same way. it was very easy in stw to encounter the rout bug, but more difficult in we/mi. and what i'm wondering is if in our tweaking, with patch 1.02 and CA's altering of the code a bit there, if we didnt somehow affect the rout bug a bit. i mean, i know that CA fixed some of the bugs, like with fatigue, and if that didnt somehow also alter the rout bug. it also makes me wonder if the rout bug is subject to Honor upgrades or degrades or honor won or lost in battle. and, if you also recall, we/mi when it came out had a very high overall morale upgrade. it was very hard to rout anything. does that have anything to do with it. dunno. just shootin in the dark here.

K.


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The only absolute is that there are no absolutes.