Fire and Flee

[tinkthank]

Anyone use this command? No sorry stupid question: How do you make the best use of this command, in what situations?

I have had pretty much zero success with Caelum, which is a shame; I just cant keep those flying infantries from impaling themselves on enemy pikes too quickly. "Hold and Attack" is too short for me, I'd like a "Hold Longer and Attack" too.

But I thought "Fire and Flee" might be nice, because Illwinter explicity writes in the only description of Caleum (in the Choose Nation screen) that they are fond of "hit and run" tactics. Now what could these be? I figured I could use some "fire and flee". But had also zero success with those. My great archers leave the field, and then my remaining troops teleport/fly to the enemy and get wiped out by all but wimps.

So your general feedback is much appreciated, as always. Thanks in advance.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by tinkthank:
Anyone use this command? No sorry stupid question: How do you make the best use of this command, in what situations?

Fire and Flee is useful when you want to perform, say, a drive-by priesting in conjunction with your archers: Set archers on fire and flee, set priests on Banish, Banish, Banish, Flee, and you can perform a handy drive-by priesting. It's not really strictly necessary to use Fire and Flee, though, since you can't control the duration of the firing, and if all your commanders flee, your troops will also.

I have had pretty much zero success with Caelum, which is a shame; I just cant keep those flying infantries from impaling themselves on enemy pikes too quickly. "Hold and Attack" is too short for me, I'd like a "Hold Longer and Attack" too.

Once again, commanders are the key: If you want tighter control of your flying infantry, bind them to a commander: Attach them to a Storm General or other melee commander, then order the commander to Hold (up to 5x), and attack. When the commander attacks, the troops set to guard him will follow him into the fray. This puts him at somewhat of a risk: Be sure to have other commanders, so he's not the only commander, in case he bites it.

But I thought "Fire and Flee" might be nice, because Illwinter explicity writes in the only description of Caleum (in the Choose Nation screen) that they are fond of "hit and run" tactics. Now what could these be? I figured I could use some "fire and flee". But had also zero success with those. My great archers leave the field, and then my remaining troops teleport/fly to the enemy and get wiped out by all but wimps.

The problem with fleeing is that instead of withdrawing in good order, the troops still scatter hither and yon across any neighboring friendly provinces: If ordered retreats caused all retreating units ordered specifically to withdraw to return to either: A. The province they started from, or B. Any, but the same, friendly province for all such units, it would be less of a mess. As such, it does kind of reduce the effectiveness of the order, since your archers will wind up everywhere unless there was only one province to choose from. The hit-and-run stuff is largely flavor text.

And remaining troops? If you're performing a fly-by shooting, you don't NEED other troops: The entire point of a fly-by shooting is to minimize your potential risk while inflicting attritional losses on enemy troops.

[ March 05, 2004, 18:08: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

[fahdiz]

Hey tinkthank,

If you're having trouble with Caelum, you might take a look at this thread...as I was having similar problems. The first few pages are great for base Caelum strategy discussions:

http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin...4;t=001749;p=5

Hope that's helpful.

[PvK]

Ya planned retreat works better in Dominions I, where all retreaters go to the same province.

I think each unit should only go to a random province if it is routing. That would help.

I think this was said or implied already, but I think up to five turns of archer fire and then flee can be achieved by having all commanders flee after five turns, and the archers set to simply Fire. That means you can't have troops sticking around to win the battle, though.

Caelum "hit and run" I think refers to strategic-level movements, not necessarily tactical-level movements. That is, you fly to a province with low defense, take it over, pillage/whatever, and fly away before any army comes to fight your army.

PvK

[fahdiz]

Originally posted by tinkthank:
But I thought "Fire and Flee" might be nice, because Illwinter explicity writes in the only description of Caleum (in the Choose Nation screen) that they are fond of "hit and run" tactics. Now what could these be?

Actually I think Illwinter means that Caelum's flying troops are great for raiding, harassment, and cutting off supply lines.

Example: a big opposing army is making a beeline for your capitol. By attacking the provinces *behind* the big army with your fliers, while meeting the big army with your ground forces (Wingless + Mammoths + archers) you can force the big army to separate or starve, cut off their lines of retreat, and cause them all kinds of havoc.

[Chazar]

Fire and flee is useless in my opinion. I also extend what has already been said here:

With caelum, tie fighters set to guard commander to a storm general, who is ordered to hold,hold,hold,attack rear; while my archers are set in similar manner to another general. With the patch, the archers will fire as soon something comes into range (hence I usually put them forward a bit)...

In this way you can fire 1-5 rounds before engaging in meele...
EDIT: Oops, I was wrong here, as guarding units dont use missile weapons even if the enemy is approaching pretty close. They just engange in meele. Can we consider this as a bug?

- depending on the speed of the enemy's cannon fodder (yes, you need to scout ahead) marching towards you and leaving its commanders/archers undefended on their rear.

...the only nasty thing is that my troops in the rear prevent the enemy from routing - since they stand in their way, which usually gives me the most losses of the whole fight!

---

Yeah, lets continue solving Caelum-related questions here, as the original thread got taken over by hobbits...

[ March 06, 2004, 11:00: Message edited by: Chazar ]

[SurvivalistMerc]

Chazar,

I understand where you are coming from. It is kind of sad to watch your expensive iceclads die to routing troops toward the end of a battle. This is especially true when you're attacking an independent province. Later on, though, you might want to attack specific routing commanders. It would just about be useful to Caelum to have a query as to whether the fliers should surround routing enemies.

Everyone attacks routing enemies, but the problem with a race of fliers is, as you noted, the routing enemy will be surrounded with no way to truly rout, and the troops standing in the way will be attacked and usually suffer casualties. Making matters worse, archers still fire and kill your troops at this time, too.

I like this idea for fire and flee with regard to orderly retreats. I think I like the current rules better for morale failure routs.

[fahdiz]

Originally posted by Chazar:
Yeah, lets continue solving Caelum-related questions here, as the original thread got taken over by hobbits...

Heh. Looks like it's back on track over there now...they're back to the RotR weakness/strength discussion.

[Gandalf Parker]

Fire and Flee can be used with a few cheap archers put way out front to draw the enemy into a gauntlet. Gets the enemy to concentrte fire and cavalry on a few fleeing units instead of the wall of Hvy Infantry doing hold&attack/closest with crossbowmen on each side of them

[ March 07, 2004, 03:31: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[Wauthan]

Fire and Flee got its uses. I use it when I massed a lot of archers in a high supply province and want to attack a into a wasteland or a bottleneck.

Also good for harrasing the enemy strongpoints if you got matching strengths in armies and noone wants to take the first blow. It's sort of a rare cirkumstances order but I'm glad it's there.