Poll: morale and routing

[magnate]

My first poll, following on from interesting suggestions in the Dammit thread (thanks to Panther and Sheap). This may take some editing to get right ....

[Esben Mose Hansen]

SC have plenty of advantages already, including low upkeep. No reason to make them even stronger. Now, if we take something and give something else, it's different. Such as greatly increasing the disadvantage of being surrounded. (-1 of each on front, -2 for each on flank, -4 for each on rear.).

[Boron]

Esben Mose Hansen said:
SC have plenty of advantages already, including low upkeep. No reason to make them even stronger. Now, if we take something and give something else, it's different. Such as greatly increasing the disadvantage of being surrounded. (-1 of each on front, -2 for each on flank, -4 for each on rear.).

battlemages would become MUCH stronger too .
they would be the real winners imho :

i would then only BUILD battlemages + scs to guard the battlemages .

this would be boring


the disadvantage of being surrounded is already high enough . 24 vampires can sorround 1 SC . No sc survives this .
with 11 attack for vampires about 5-15 should hit each turn depending on luck .
because of their ap attack they do normally always damage + fatigue which lowers defense again .

same with ghosts .

[magnate]

Surely battlemages would be almost the least affected? If something can rout a battlemage's escort, wouldn't the mage fail a morale check? They tend to have much lower morale than SCs. If they passed, they might get killed anyway.

Esben, I don't see this as making SCs any "stronger" - anything which can kill them will still kill them. It just removes a mechanic which hampers them unjustifiably. If you feel that this mechanic is necessary because they are too powerful, that's something slightly different. If you want to argue that SCs should be toned down, I won't disagree with you. But I still think the routing mechanic should be changed. It just doesn't make any sense that any commander routs without failing its own morale check.

CC

[Arryn]

magnate said:
It just doesn't make any sense that any commander routs without failing its own morale check.

Sure it does. It's *common* sense. How many officers would stick around to face an enemy, alone, after their troops have fled? Answer: none that are sane.

[magnate]

Arryn said:

Sure it does. It's *common* sense. How many officers would stick around to face an enemy, alone, after their troops have fled? Answer: none that are sane.

I'm getting quite frustrated here - you are just not getting the point. For a 10hp, 10 morale human commander yes, I agree with you, he won't hang around when all his men are killed. He will fail a morale check and flee.

For a 200hp, 30 morale uber-beast, it's a different matter. What do they care if the infantry or archers or whoever they are get mown down (probably trampled by their own fleeing mammoths)? Unless they are sorely wounded and fatigued themselves, they wouldn't rout. In a fantasy game, that's "*common* sense".

I'm not saying that anything major needs to change, just a morale check instead of an auto-rout.

CC

[The Panther]

Arryn said:

Sure it does. It's *common* sense. How many officers would stick around to face an enemy, alone, after their troops have fled? Answer: none that are sane.

Actually, this is precisely the point. What sane commander would go ALONE into a battle anyway? The game simply should not reward a lone commander like it does now and heavily penalize the commander with a few troops or PD. It seems so very wrong to me. If anything, the game OUGHT to penalize the lone commander quite severly. Sending in a commander without an army is a somewhat warped and totally non-intuitive strategy that works only because of the current routing algorithm.

So, when the commander's troops are gone, no matter whether he brought any along or not at the start of the battle, he should rout fairly easily. But he should rout on his own, not because one measly point of PD has disapeared. The absence of troops should be nothing more than another strong factor in whether or not he will rout. Have him subtract 5-10 morale points or something like that because he has no army, regardless of whether it was killed in battle or he had none to begin with.

The current routing algortihm seems busted to me, despite the fact that people have figured a way to take advantage of it. Of course people want the status quo so they can continue to use the cheap flying SC strategy and not have to bother with the mundane and expensive thing like having an actual army.

This is just another of the reasons the AI plays poorly. It tries to build a real army, which does not work overly well against the lone SC attack, especially the SC pretender strategy.

[The_Tauren13]

Esben Mose Hansen said:
SC have plenty of advantages already, including low upkeep. No reason to make them even stronger. Now, if we take something and give something else, it's different. Such as greatly increasing the disadvantage of being surrounded. (-1 of each on front, -2 for each on flank, -4 for each on rear.).

OK here's a crazy idea that the devs are free to ignore

use esben's suggestion about being surrounded, making SCs weaker. then, bring back the old dom I attack commanders battle option, to make battlemages weaker. then, poof, typical recruitable troops become more useful, and maybe the AI's massed armies strat might actually work.

[Arryn]

The_Tauren13 said:
use esben's suggestion about being surrounded, making SCs weaker. then, bring back the old dom I attack commanders battle option, to make battlemages weaker. then, poof, typical recruitable troops become more useful, and maybe the AI's massed armies strat might actually work.

Since the devs created Dom 2 primarily as a MP game, I seriously doubt that they'd bring back a command that would dramatically alter MP play just to attempt to fix a SP issue, and one they don't seem to consider much of an issue at that.

You've made an interesting suggestion. It just has about as much of a chance of ever happening as we have of ever seeing a major UI change. Snowballs in Abysia, anyone?

[Huzurdaddi]

Esben Mose Hansen said:
SC have plenty of advantages already, including low upkeep. No reason to make them even stronger. Now, if we take something and give something else, it's different. Such as greatly increasing the disadvantage of being surrounded. (-1 of each on front, -2 for each on flank, -4 for each on rear.).

Well I have to say that you hit it on the head.