Help me about Dominions 2
 

Yeah, i have the demo for Dominions 2. So I figured out w\how to play. So I built a decent army of 50 heavy calvary and 30 or some crossbowmen. I attack with this army an indepentdant nation with about 20 light infantry. My archers went in for the 1st wave of attack. That killed 3 or 4 light infantry. My heavy calvary charged and killed a good 10 more light infantry. Then all of my heavy calvary ran away from the battle. The few remaining light infantry scared my archers away. I lost the battle. How is this possible? 80 good against 30 crap lose? WTF?

Help!

Re: Help me about Dominions 2
 

You're right that that is a very unexpected outcome. Several things could have happened - like for example if you had only a single commander leading the army, and something happened to him, like a spell, flying attack, arrow through the head, or something. Or, something terrified your men. It's possible it was an extremely unfortunate morale check, but more likely magic of some sort.

PvK

Re: Help me about Dominions 2
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I noticed that Heavy Cavalry tend to rout very easily. I don't know whether this is for poor morale, or because some obscure mechanism makes them lose morale quickly, but I think they don't work as your only shock troops; they don't cause enough demoralization to make the opposition rout.

Maybe try to have other heavy troops (Heavy Infantry) charge right behind the Cav, to share the burden of breaking the opposition? Still, if your Cav rout, you'll have to pick the remnants up in various provinces...

Re: Help me about Dominions 2
 

Well, first, sending the archers as 1st wave isn't a very good idea http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif They should sit on a flank (NOT directly behind the shock troops !! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif ) and be ordered to fire.

As for the hvy cav/knights, it depends : what nation did you play ? Ulm knights are quite trustworthy, Arco "hvy cav" isn't ...
And how many Groups did you had ? 1 only group can rout if its sole leader get killed ! Spread the troops into several, such as :
R Wing : 15 archers, fire closest
R Centre : 25 cav, attack closest
L Centre : 25 cav, hold and attack
L Wing : 15 archers, fire archers

Normally you should have won with the archers alone... the 1st cav wave then would have mopped up the routers. If ever it didn't work there was the 2nd wave.

But maybe a strike of bad luck struck you !

Re: Help me about Dominions 2
 

As a general rule, don't back up heavy cavalry with crossbowmen - you risk heavy losses from friendly fire...

As for what happened, what would make the most sense is that your leader(s) died (or routed), and all your army routed.
It is, I suppose, barely possible that some extremely unlucky dice rolls caused your cavalry to rout. What cavalry exactly are we speaking of ? Did they use spear, or did they use swords ? In the latter case, the light infantry, on an incredibly lucky day, might use their longer spears to successfully repel the cavalry, causing moral loss and eventually rout...

Re: Help me about Dominions 2
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">OK, this isn't the first time I've read that archers should not be placed directly behind the shock troops, but I still don't see why.

Is it because stray shots tend to be either too short or too long, not to deviate to the sides? So that it's better to have your own troops not between the archers and their targets, but more to the side? (I haven't noticed such a trend...)

Re: Help me about Dominions 2
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">OK, this isn't the first time I've read that archers should not be placed directly behind the shock troops, but I still don't see why.

Is it because stray shots tend to be either too short or too long, not to deviate to the sides? So that it's better to have your own troops not between the archers and their targets, but more to the side? (I haven't noticed such a trend...) </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Pretty much yes. Especially with something fast that tends to run into the area that the arrows are going to come down. It seems best to either have the shooters (slngers, crossbow, bow, javelin) in the middle and fast troops on the sides, or the other way around.

[ January 26, 2004, 17:07: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

Re: Help me about Dominions 2
 

To help u guys out. I was elm, against the ??? They had no commander leading their army, just some light infantry in garrsison. I had 2 commanders and 1 priest. My priest onlt skill was in fire, level 3. I will make a simple map of what happened.

a=my archers: h=heavy calvary: c=commander
p=priest l=lgt. infantry. I start on right side. The ??? start on the left side.

(note, not to scale)

-Beginning of the battle (archers fire)
caa hhhhhh lll
paa hhhhhh lll
caa hhhhhh lll
-roughly 3 moves later (archers still fire)
caa hhhhhhl
paa hhhhl
caa hhhhhhl
-What makes no sense (everyone runs)
caa hhhhhh l
paa hhhh l
caa hhhhhh l
Then, it said my armies were routed. Strange. Its kinda funny when 80 against 13 lose, then retreat. Almost like US pulling out of Iraq from a small force of 500 people with bebe guns. (I may have exagerated that just a small bit) (cough, cough)

Re: Help me about Dominions 2
 

Spelling errors from below statement.
Elm was supose to be Ulm.
??? is supose to be Arcoscephale

I am a higher schooler with the gramemr of a 2 year old. Sorry.

Re: Help me about Dominions 2
 

Arco must've had a leader somewhere. How many of your cavalry were killed? Sounds like you wiped out 2/3 of them, but your men just had a rather unlikely moment of panic and retreated before the victory. Probably due to your own men shooting them in the back.

So the 30 light didn't defeat your army of 80 - your army of 80 was wiping them out when they got disorganized and retreated, probably due to friendly fire or some other unlikely setback during the charge. I imagine your own losses were quite light, while the enemy lost 2/3 killed - a setback rather than a real defeat.

PvK

Re: Help me about Dominions 2
 

If I had to guess I'd say that your archers were hitting your heavy cavalry and though they didn't get hit often enough to kill them, it demoralized them enough to make them rout. I also agree with Phil that heavy cavalry tends to rout fairly easily. In general, I find that any units with less than 12 morale are almost useless after the first few rounds of a battle. But I'm still a newb myself.... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Help me about Dominions 2
 

Undoublty the Ulmish crossbowmen shot their own cav in the back (they love to do that, they just killed their Raterik hero this way in my current pbem http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif !), but Ulm Knights have a pretty good morale, never saw them routing against what seems to be a Cardaces defense militia !! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif
Indeed your troop organization was correct in terms of commanders/Groups, I can't find how such the army routed in this situation... Maybe a very unlikely failed "morale check" by the cav that propagated to the crossbowmen ... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif

Re: Help me about Dominions 2
 

Strange. Ulm's crossbowmen are tough enough to take on light infantry in melee if need be, and their knights shouldn't rout that easily...

What is sure, however, is that Ulm's crossbows (arbalests, actually) are very, very powerful, and can easily kill their own knights with friendly fire. Which can cause the knights to rout.

I think you got a very unlucky stretch of failed moral rolls, that's the only explanation I can think of...

Re: Help me about Dominions 2
 

The more times I read your example the more confused I get. If you had about 50 Heavy Cav and they were divided into three Groups (say 17/group) and all the losses were in the center group (roughly 1/3 of that force, say 6) and your prophet wasn't casting Sermon of Courage (I presume the priest was the prophet based on the "three fire" comment), then two things are true. First is that all those losses were almost certainly friendly fire. Second is that a rout at that point wouldn't be unusual in my Ulmish experience.

The "fix" for the problem is twofold. First is to have Ulm's prophet cast Sermon of Courage like it was going out of style, Ulm needs it. Second is to offset Ulmish X-Bows such that there are no Ulmish troops twixt them and the enemy. I often build "neutral" archers/longbows to accompany my armies as Ulm because they don't do much damage to my heavily armored troops.

~Aldin