Killing retreating commanders

SurvivalistMerc · #1 November 24th, 2003, 06:23 AM

Has anyone else watched a battle...noticed that a retreating commander was killed...and then found out that he/she really wasn't?

It happened to me with an opposing pretender. I would certainly like this pretender to really be dead, too. A divine serpent with very high magic skills.

The pretender disappeared with a nice, satisfying "pop" sound during my movement phase. I have actuallyhad this happen with other commanders, today, too.

Has anyone else experienced this? And is this a change from Dom1?

PvK · #2 November 24th, 2003, 07:32 AM

Only when there was an explanation, such as they were immortal, or had one of the spells cast on them that returns them to another province when they get hurt, etc.

PvK

HJ · #3 November 24th, 2003, 07:48 AM

Maybe it was just poisoned, or had some other effect, but that effect wasn't enough to kill it? What did the battle result say, was it dead or not? Immortals are never listed as dead if they only returned to the home province.

SurvivalistMerc · #4 November 24th, 2003, 04:14 PM

I still have the savegame somewhere on the computer.

Battle result said it wasn't dead. There didn't appear to be a spell on it as it reappeared in an adjacent province as if it had retreated.

You can clearly see the fall bears killing the serpent. This has also happened with a dwarf smith before...poor guy used destruction one too many times on my mechanical men. Turns out...he was unable to move a few turns and got whacked...but didn't really.

Maybe AI troops get to retreat faster. I don't know. I'd be happy to email someone the file if they'd like to have a look at it and judge for themselves if I am imagining this. Just tell me where the saves are in the file structure for dominions.

#5 November 24th, 2003, 04:30 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by SurvivalistMerc:
Has anyone else watched a battle...noticed that a retreating commander was killed...and then found out that he/she really wasn't?

Yes it happened to me in dom1 sometimes, but only in pbem. Something to do with the different roots used by the different computers' random systems I believe. On _your_ computer this commander very nearly missed a defense check that he passed on the host computer (life is so fragile on a battlefield). Or something like that. The replay is not 100% correct. Seen that 2 or 3 times over 7/8 games...

Saber Cherry · #6 November 24th, 2003, 08:40 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Sunray_be:
Something to do with the different roots used by the different computers' random systems I believe. On _your_ computer this commander very nearly missed a defense check that he passed on the host computer (life is so fragile on a battlefield).

Sometimes randoms can be different on different processors or operating systems. However, if this was a SP game, that'd be irrelevant.

This is quite different - the opposite, I guess. Several times I scripted my commander to hold-hold-hold-hold-retreat, when doing an archer raid on melee-only indies. And that's what he'd do... except 3 times, the commander retreated to the edge of the battlefield, then ran up or down the edge of the battlefield, or else just stopped for a turn, allowing the indies to catch up and kill him. My timing was close, so standing still for one turn rather than running was enough to get him whacked.

But yes, this happened 3 times, with a normal commander, Abysian commander, and hoburg champion. No spells, no fatigue, nothing, just a tendancy toward stupidity.

Then my rainbow mage somehow attained 192 fatigue summoning worthless zombies, and couldn't flee with the rest of his army, and was killed along with his fellow-site-searcher Adamanth Dragon (140 fatigue). Unfairly losing 5 leaders in 2 turns (and two of them were extremely valuable) made me delete that game=)

Well, sorry to go a little off topic=) What you are describing has never happened to me, AFAIK, but it would have been nice=)

SurvivalistMerc · #7 November 24th, 2003, 08:50 PM

Saber,

It was the enemy commanders who escaped, not mine. So it wasn't nice.

It's a single player game, so unless the result engine is different from the battle replay engine...this shouldn't be happening.

It's already happened twice in one game. Both times with important commanders. I'd say that an enemy pretender with 8's to 10's in 3 different paths would be an important creature to axe. And I really wanted sweet vengeance on that smaith who cast destruction so many times, destroying my clockworks and my ulmish plate. At least the plate gets repaired for free. But those poor clockworks don't.