Why do my berserk commanders disappear after winning fights

[chrispedersen]

An auto rout on turn 75 doesn't work, because

a). the units didn't auto route on turn 50 like they were supposed too.

b). Mindless / berserk units shouldn't route anyway.

c). I sure as heck wouldn't want to increase the strength of SC's. I know a lot of people like them - but they are already way too powerful. Armies have way too little utility in late game, as do communions.

[thejeff]

An auto-retreat could be different than an auto-route. It could be just the battle ends and any surviving attacking troops are moved to other provinces as if they had retreated.
It would require a significant code change though. Not likely to happen.

[Belac]

I had the inaccurate-replay bug happen to me in a game recently(definitely mod version discrepancies, as my opponent saw what I saw but other players with scouts in the province saw different stuff entirely). It's mildly annoying unless you were really hoping to see how a complicated strategy worked out, or what went wrong with it.

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by thejeff

An auto-retreat could be different than an auto-route. It could be just the battle ends and any surviving attacking troops are moved to other provinces as if they had retreated.
It would require a significant code change though. Not likely to happen.

If a unit is, say, encased in ice, it shouldn't get to retreat. Allowing them to escape the field is silly. (This is one of the few good ways to actually kill a well-kitted QoW underwater).

Auto-killed on turn 75 is mostly a way of saying 'you haven't managed to retreat yet, so we're going to assume the defenders get to you eventually'.

The one change that should be made is that the turn 75 auto-kill should instead apply to the army which has already routed rather than the attacker. (In situations which it is meant for, the auto-kill will still effect the attacker because they auto-routed at turn 50. But they can't auto-route if the defender already routed (bug), since the game won't let both sides rout. Ie, if one side routes, the other side can't. So if the defender routs before turn 50, they should be auto-killed at turn 75 since its the attacker who will get to kill them at his leisure).

[chrispedersen]

Mostly I agree with you Squirrel, but it still has some defects.

Most commonly I see this due to SCs or berserking units.

If both sides have units that berserk, I don't see the logic about which sides routes as mattering.

Now, it might be interesting if each side (attacker first) got hit with a 1000 pt AN attack. One for each side, starting say at turn 65.

[NTJedi]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

Auto-killed on turn 75 is mostly a way of saying 'you haven't managed to retreat yet, so we're going to assume the defenders get to you eventually'.

'Defenders get to you eventually' assumes every race of people, no matter how primative, is able to eventually kill any type of creature/being from mythology despite any magic buffs and/or items which is not reasonable. If the "best" military units defending a province are unable to kill a supercombatant after 75 rounds it's clear the regular population or other military from the same province wouldn't make any difference. The supercombatant should then be auto-retreated thus instantly forced into a neighboring province to return another day. Auto-Killed is not only historically inaccurate, logically inaccurate, but it's a crude solution when better and more realistic solutions can easily exist within the game.

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by NTJedi

'Defenders get to you eventually' assumes every race of people, no matter how primative, is able to eventually kill any type of creature/being from mythology despite any magic buffs and/or items which is not reasonable. If the "best" military units defending a province are unable to kill a supercombatant after 75 rounds it's clear the regular population or other military from the same province wouldn't make any difference. The supercombatant should then be auto-retreated thus instantly forced into a neighboring province to return another day. Auto-Killed is not only historically inaccurate, logically inaccurate, but it's a crude solution when better and more realistic solutions can easily exist within the game.

That's not true at all.

Historical example:
There's documented cases of knights, travelling alone or relatively alone, being dehorsed by bandits whose weapons were otherwise unable to injure him through his armor. Of course, keeping the knight pinned down was pretty trivial since he was without recourse to other aid, so a bandit could run off to the nearest farmhouse, borrow or steal an axe, and use that to punch through the knight's armor. Ie, once you have an opponent helpless, finding a way to penetrate his defenses *somewhere* becomes a lot easier, and you can resort to unusual measures.

Would you care to specify a unit that, once incapacitated, would be impossible to kill for some nation?

Incapacitated foes can be stripped of gear, subject to attacks that simply wouldn't work on a battlefield, or otherwise put to death. No unit is invincible, and having them at your mercy dramatically increases your options for dealing with them. Even the most primitive race in dom3 can make a bonfire, find a way to deprive you of oxygen, or drag you to a place where they can drop exceedingly large rocks on you. And most creatures are far less threatening when stripped of gear, something trivial to accomplish if a creature is unable to act.

Basically, its no longer a question of military capability. Its a question of creativity. And you don't have to be all that creative.

Edit: Also, magic buffs eventually expire.

[thejeff]

Obviously, it can work either way.

An invincible attacker who just hasn't managed to kill off all the defenders before the time limit. Or a trapped and helpless attacker who's tough enough not to actually die before the time limit. Or 2 berserk SCs hacking at each other but unable to do any lasting damage.
Extending the time limit would help resolve some situations, but not all.
Any solution fails in some circumstances: Auto-kill kills those who clearly were in no danger. Auto-retreat can save those who had no way to escape.
Auto-retreat seems a marginally better solution to me, but it also requires code changes and isn't likely to happen. The current auto-kill solution isn't much worse.

As an aside, I have certainly seen both sides rout. I'd always thought it went attacker routs, defender routes, then auto-kill if that doesn't work.

[Bananadine]

Haha this is the problem with forums that use linear thread structures! The topic changes importantly in mid-conversation, but how is anybody supposed to know that without reading every post.

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

Would you care to specify a unit that, once incapacitated, would be impossible to kill for some nation?

They wouldn't all become incapacitated. A mundane knight traveling in a foreign land would be in big trouble; where would he get his food? And even a giant Jotun mage with the Monolith Armor etc. would eventually have to sleep. But what about a well-equipped wraith lord or a Vastness or a high-level angel of some kind? Those things get tired when they cast spells, if they cast spells, but they wouldn't lose their ability to walk or fly right out of danger just because they had to rout from one battle. And what if only a few hundred peasants happened to be in the province the unit routed to, and the unit was amphibious, invincible to fire and ice, non-sleeping, non-eating, regenerating, and always ethereal, fire-shielded, and blood vengeance...ful? A naturally ethereal undead commander could achieve that much and more, with the right equipment. What would peasants do to a monster like that, even if it did knock itself out by casting spells at them? They'd leave it alone, or they'd all (or almost all) die, that's what!

I guess if you wanted to be "realistic", you'd have routing units end up starting new fights in whatever places they routed to. Your flying, regenerating titan might jump all over the map, fighting battle after battle, until it either won one or legitimately died. So a commander that teleported into enemy territory with no friendly land around could leave a trail of destruction, and would be even harder to kill than it would be now. Not so good for the game! But relatively realistic.

I think there's surely a way to design a more subtle solution to the problems of routing and of overlong battles than the really harsh rules that the game currently uses. Like, if somebody were writing Dominions 4, I think they could do better than what we have. Maybe a unit routing into enemy territory would start one new battle after another, each time it routed, until it won or died--but all its stats would be halved anew with each battle, to roughly represent the "incapacitation" incurred by its hostile, foreign environment. That still wouldn't make a lot of sense for, like, ghosts and non-sleeping demigods and such, but it'd be less absurd than instant death.

That might still be overpowered though. The defender would still have to defend his land against both primary attackers, and enemies routing in from other provinces. So maybe the defendant could be compensated for that increased burden, with an increased chance of reward due to attack by routing enemies. Maybe, for instance, a commander routing into enemy land could have, say, a 50% chance of starting a new battle there, a 25% chance of instantly dying, and a 25% (with a boost for low morale?) chance of defecting to the enemy side, maybe with any commander status removed. And if it did fight after routing, but then died, maybe minor local shamans or whatever would convert its corpse and equipment into gems that the defender would get to keep.

There are a million ways for it to work! I think the system we have now is good enough, silly as it can seem at times, but there are better ways. If not what I suggested, then something else. But only in the imaginary Dominions 4.

[NTJedi]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

Would you care to specify a unit that, once incapacitated, would be impossible to kill for some nation?

First the attacking unit is NOT incapacitated... not sure where you pulled this idea. Turn_75 does not equal incapacitated. The attacking unit is still actively healthy and moving on the battlefield during turn_75 due to berserk or some other natural trait. And when an angel with a tower shield, regeneration, and it's natural awe cannot be harmed by the "best" military the natural population of peasants have no reason or intention of risking their lives. Heck if a town discovered a hundred navy seals were killed by some beast which resisted point blank C4 explosions then OBVIOUSLY the citizens of the town will let the beast control that piece of the beach.
Sure something can eventually be done to initiate another attack, but that would require a separate (game_turn)strike from the military not the general population! You are mistaking the effectiveness of general population as compared with an actual military and mage strike force.

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