Pursuing Routed Besieged Units - Bug?

[george585]

Hi!
I am wondering whether this is an EB or Rome Totak War bug (likely the second one). Or may be it's not a bug at all?
I am almost driven crazy by the following situation:
1. I besiege an enemy city
2. On their turn they attack me from WITHIN the city (not a reinforcement army)
(Just a side note) - I also dislike that the battle begins in this istuation as soon as it loads... no deployement... strange...
3. I fight them, and I am winning their units begin to rout... and thios is a problem... Once they start rout I cannot puruse them with ANY mele units... that is I order them to attack and kill thos routed units they will chrage them but as soon as one is hit, they stop, so I have to do it over and over agian, and at most only half are killed... untill I cannot pursue them further because they come too close to city walls (by which I dont want to be attcked). So I turn around... then they seat in the city for a while and become brave enough and attack me again... with units that would... had not for this bug... been otherwise already killed! The interesting part is that missile units (both in fire at will, or ordered fire modes) work just fine, they will continue shooting, but mele - both cavalry and infantry stop. It's unbelievabvle! And leads to quite a few more casualties on my side!
Anyone has any ideas why this is happening and how to stop it?

[mcantu]

That happens to me too! Drives me crazy...

[bovi]

RTW, sorry.

[george585]

Too bad. I wish there was a patch for this...

[bovi]

Oh, there is. I think it's called M2TW.

[george585]

lol :)
Though it does not quite belong to this forum, but...
For ME RTW+EB 0.81 is MORE STABLE and controllable than MTW2 (even with its Kingdoms expansion).... I am tired of unexpected errors it throughs... and poor responsivenes there...
So, if it is a patch... then I suggest they provide a patch for this patch :)

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

The thing about starting the battle without a pause pisses me off. My computer takes a long time to load battles, so I often leave the room and do other things. Many times, I've come back, forgetting that it doesn't pause, and find my leaderless army being destroyed, while still holding on to the battering rams.

About the bug...
I think that bug was introduced in v1.5. So a patch actually made that bug. To get around it, when the enemies are running into their city, tell your pursuing units to move inside of the enemy city. If the gate is open, they will run through the enemy and enter the city. Then tell them to kill the guys inside the city and they won't have anymore pathfinding problems.

[george585]

MarcusAureliusAntoninus, precisely! Cannot agree more with you on that!
I didn't think the bug had to do with pathfiniding problems... In any case... thanks for the suggestion and that is what I sometimes do.
There are a few problems with that though:
1. The enemy might have left one or more full units in the city to defend the central square.
2. It's not always easy to get units into the city especially given that they will be shot at by the city towers. And once you are in and the gates are captured, there are other towers remianing, so you have to be really careful about pursuing units in the city so you avoid getting fired at by the towers...

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

Well, if they have stone wall or more, I will not ever enter the city unless absolutely necessary, even if I could easily take the gate. Chasing them in with wooden walls is usually safe.

When sieging cities, I always have battletimer on and a decent amount of missile units (4-6). Then I just line up my infantry out of the reach of the towers, with the missiles behind them. When the enemies break and run from the town, I just have my missiles kill them, rather than chasing them. They will usually go back to the town square and immediately turn around and come back out the gates. At which time, I have my missile shoot them again. If they don't want to come out of the city, I just make sure they are definately done moving, put the game in triple speed, and wait for the time to run out.

[george585]

Interesting tactics. However I find that chasing them with cavalry nearly always guarantee they all will be killed, that is not true for missiles. Moreoever you may frequently want to hold on to your missile units to use them agains yet to be broken enemy units, or more powerful units to take them from afar.
Second thing is that if they attack you from within the city when they are out of time (0 turns left till surrender), then waiting is fine. But if they attackl you when say they have 5 or 6 more turns to go, it will be a draw unless you kill them all off.

[bovi]

And this is a problem why? You were willing to wait it out anyway, so you wait a couple more turns.

[george585]

Yes, sure... I guess it's not a big problem.... Just would have been nicer if I could defeat them the first turn they attack me.

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

If I ever have one of those fights, where it leave a depleted unit or two in the town, with many turns til surrender, I'll let the battle end, but attack the next turn. I'll move my sieging army away, leaving the general sieging alone, then recruit 2-4 mercs and just autocalc an attack on the town. (Quicksave first.) If there is no enemy general, then my small group of mercs should defeat their even smaller group of depleted units. Then I'll disband the mercs and move my true army in to occupy the city.

This way, I don't have to wait for the city to run out of time, the stupid town battle system, or autocalc's excessive friendly casualties to a necessary army.

[pezhetairoi]

On a related note, during a standard field battle, there are occasions when, after routing an army or a part of it, one or more of my cavalry units will refuse to budge. There will be no more enemies on the field, but their card still tells me they are attacking. When you hover the pointer over them they are 'celebrating'. But when you order them to move, the card informs you they are running yet when you look at them, they are standing still there. Most often this happens at the end of a battle, when you use cavalry to break an enemy's last stand. But it happened yesterday in a reinforcement battle, and two of my four brihentin stood still after destroying the first small army, leaving me to face the much larger one with only two brihentin allowing many of them to escape at the end.

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

On a related note, during a standard field battle, there are occasions when, after routing an army or a part of it, one or more of my cavalry units will refuse to budge. There will be no more enemies on the field, but their card still tells me they are attacking. When you hover the pointer over them they are 'celebrating'. But when you order them to move, the card informs you they are running yet when you look at them, they are standing still there. Most often this happens at the end of a battle, when you use cavalry to break an enemy's last stand. But it happened yesterday in a reinforcement battle, and two of my four brihentin stood still after destroying the first small army, leaving me to face the much larger one with only two brihentin allowing many of them to escape at the end.

Ah, the 'shadow boxing' bug. That one is another one that was introduced in the v1.5 patch. It sometimes happens to single men and it sometimes happens to whole units. When it is single men, you can tell the unit to move a million times and the guy will work his way off the corpse he's fighting. If it is a whole unit, the only way I've found to get them 'unstuck' is when an enemy unit attacks them.

Cavalry tends to get stuck on phalanxes that are fighting to the death. I always let a broken phalanx think they have a place to flee to, in order to prevent my cavalry from getting stuck.

[GodEmperorLeto]

Oh, there is. I think it's called M2TW.

LULZ.

I think that bug was introduced in v1.5. So a patch actually made that bug. To get around it, when the enemies are running into their city, tell your pursuing units to move inside of the enemy city. If the gate is open, they will run through the enemy and enter the city. Then tell them to kill the guys inside the city and they won't have anymore pathfinding problems.

Bingo. Exactly what I do. Actually, since I usually send in my cav to deal with routers, I get them to the town square ahead of time and just meatgrind any retreating units heading there.

Ah, the 'shadow boxing' bug. That one is another one that was introduced in the v1.5 patch. It sometimes happens to single men and it sometimes happens to whole units. When it is single men, you can tell the unit to move a million times and the guy will work his way off the corpse he's fighting. If it is a whole unit, the only way I've found to get them 'unstuck' is when an enemy unit attacks them.

Cavalry tends to get stuck on phalanxes that are fighting to the death. I always let a broken phalanx think they have a place to flee to, in order to prevent my cavalry from getting stuck.

This is definitely good to know. I was wondering about this bug, too, but it doesn't happen to me often.

[george585]

On a related note, during a standard field battle, there are occasions when, after routing an army or a part of it, one or more of my cavalry units will refuse to budge. There will be no more enemies on the field, but their card still tells me they are attacking. When you hover the pointer over them they are 'celebrating'. But when you order them to move, the card informs you they are running yet when you look at them, they are standing still there. Most often this happens at the end of a battle, when you use cavalry to break an enemy's last stand. But it happened yesterday in a reinforcement battle, and two of my four brihentin stood still after destroying the first small army, leaving me to face the much larger one with only two brihentin allowing many of them to escape at the end.

This happened to me too! Very annoying. You are left with a few individual soldiers from several units clashed together in a "fight" and the only way to get them to join their main respective units is ordering each to move or run into different directions. The problem acn be is that if one of such "fighting" soldiers happens to be your general which is stuck, and say an enmy phalanx is approaching this can be quite bad.....I almost lost my general that way, fortunately he managed to get out of this fake fight right beore the spear was about to hit him....

Also on a related note...It drives me crazy how units (especially missile cavalry) behave when running from the enemy when in skirmish mode when near edges of the battle map or near impassible areas.... It was very dissapointing to see that an ordered to retreat unit of HAs was in skirmish mode near to enemy general on the dge of the map (on the retreating edge actually) and was stuck.... I lost half of all my soldiers in that unit as a result... The only way to really make them retreat was to disable skirmish mode....

[george585]

Ah, the 'shadow boxing' bug. That one is another one that was introduced in the v1.5 patch. It sometimes happens to single men and it sometimes happens to whole units. When it is single men, you can tell the unit to move a million times and the guy will work his way off the corpse he's fighting. If it is a whole unit, the only way I've found to get them 'unstuck' is when an enemy unit attacks them.

Cavalry tends to get stuck on phalanxes that are fighting to the death. I always let a broken phalanx think they have a place to flee to, in order to prevent my cavalry from getting stuck.

I noticed that too. the problem is you cannot always use this tactic, as I would frequently use all my cavalry to break the remaining phalnxes by charging at them from all sides.... so some units may get stuck...

[george585]

Bingo. Exactly what I do. Actually, since I usually send in my cav to deal with routers, I get them to the town square ahead of time and just meatgrind any retreating units heading there.

The problem is that quite often there would be spearmen left on the square (either those who were already routed, but became normal again or reserves) and in this case it may be dangerous to pursue routen units right up till the city square...

[pezhetairoi]

usually during sallies, the enemy sends out his entire garrison to fight you, if you would only give him a chance. Try to do as much casualties as you can before they actually rout (charging them in the rear, for example) and ensure that as few as possible get back to the town square. After that, all you need to do is quite simply swarm them with the cavalry that entered the city. Infantry need not apply. Normally only about 5% of the enemy are left in the city when I send my cavalry in because they like to rally at the square and come right out again to get routed. So it's really a matter of taking their charges until they've been whittled down.

That's the way I found to ensure the sally pursuit bug didn't affect my gameplay too much.