bitter pill to swallow
 

My VQ supercombatant rushed home to wipe out an army that threatened my home city. She entered combat, killing off about 50 of the enemy, with full hit points and zero fatigue. No way she could be beat, right? Wrong: almost all were retreating, except one, who hit her (slightly), and she RETREATS. Well, all the surrounding lands were owned by enemies, so she died retreating. And, since the sieging army was not fully wiped out, her immortality was short-circuited! Bottom line, she was about to win the war, when she retreated. I must confess that I like this possibility -- it's like cutting the ring off Sauron's finger in LOTR. But, shouldn't retreating rules be revised, so that this sort of absurd thing does not happen? A similar issue is that your SC can't go into an area with 1 defense, because the sole other commander will be killed off, and the SC will retreat. It strikes me as a kind of odd brittleness in the rules that should be fixed in the next patch or ver, no?
Merry

Re: bitter pill to swallow
 

I thought immortal commanders were supposed to never retreat in positive dominion? Unless the game took into account the fact that it was your home territory and she was no longer immortal if she lost.

Re: bitter pill to swallow
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Where'd you get that silly idea? The only thing special about immortals in friendly dom is that if they die they pop back up the next turn in your capital, saving you many turns of having to pray for your god to resurrect (which is what happens if your immortal dies outside of friendly dom).

Re: bitter pill to swallow
 

no. immortals are not supposed to retreat when in friendly dominion; but it does seem likely that the occupation of her capital vitiated this somehow.

Re: bitter pill to swallow
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Where'd you get that silly idea? The only thing special about immortals in friendly dom is that if they die they pop back up the next turn in your capital, saving you many turns of having to pray for your god to resurrect (which is what happens if your immortal dies outside of friendly dom). </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I believe i got it from the board actually, since i can't remember any other hard source of that information. I have seen it in action more than once, where an immortal commander would stick around even after all troops had retreated because he was in positive dominion.

Re: bitter pill to swallow
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I've seen immortals retreat in friendly dom. If this is a bug, it's been around a while. Given that Merry's capital was occupied, as well as surrounding lands, there's a good chance that there wasn't positive dominion in the capital at the time of the rout check.

Re: bitter pill to swallow
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Where'd you get that silly idea? The only thing special about immortals in friendly dom is that if they die they pop back up the next turn in your capital, saving you many turns of having to pray for your god to resurrect (which is what happens if your immortal dies outside of friendly dom). </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I believe i got it from the board actually, since i can't remember any other hard source of that information. I have seen it in action more than once, where an immortal commander would stick around even after all troops had retreated because he was in positive dominion. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I think this is also a tip that is displayed while awaiting turn generation.
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: bitter pill to swallow
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Immortal units will retreat while in friendly dominion. Immortal commanders are not supposed to. An easy way to test this is to take your starting wraith centurion with Soul Gate, and have all your troops killed off by independents. The centurion will not rout, and will fight to the death.

Re: bitter pill to swallow
 

aha! I knew i saw it somewhere. Thanks for relieving that little itch at the back of my mind.

[ July 22, 2004, 18:27: Message edited by: Cheezeninja ]

Re: bitter pill to swallow
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">According to the compendium of tips at Sunray's site, you're correct (and I'm wrong). Be that as it may, I've seen it happen, so there's a bug somewhere that can crop up.

Re: bitter pill to swallow
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Heh. "Not supposed to" and "never do" are not quite the same thing. Remind me to save a game file the next time it happens to me, so I can send it to IW for them to bugfix ... eventually.

Re: bitter pill to swallow
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It's not a bug. Unlike other commanders, immortals won't retreat when all their troops are killed, or once a leader is killed and they're part of a 'leaders only' army. They may still retreat when the battle Lasts long enough to reach the 'autorout' phase - a feature that's been implemented to prevent unending battles.

Re: bitter pill to swallow
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">More likely she was about to win this battle when she retreated. If your capital is completely surrounded by enemy controlled provinces... it's unlikely you are about to win a war. (possible but unlikely)

Re: bitter pill to swallow
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You've assumed that the leader(s) I've seen retreat did so due to the 50/75 turn limit, and that I'm calling that a bug. Not so. I know about that rule (not that I agree with it, but that's been hashed out in many other threads as you know). I've never had any of my battles, in any game, Last more than 35 turns. I assumed that what I was seeing (the retreat) was either normal behavior (having forgotten about the tip text), or something else was going on that I wasn't aware of. This was 5-6 months ago when I was much less experienced, and trying out various nations and pretenders, and also when I wasn't in the habit of saving ALL my turns as I do now.

I think it has something to do with when the game computes dominion increase/decrease in the province, relative to when the battle takes place in the turn sequence. I've reported other problems in the past regarding when in the turn certain calculations are made.

I've seen a related thing happen when trying to exterminate an AI via dominion push. I see no enemy candles anywhere, I hold the enemy capital, and still the enemy god isn't permanently poofed.

Re: bitter pill to swallow
 

The manual also specifies that immortal commanders do not retreat from battle when in friendly dominion. Even taking Arryn's comments into account, it seems like the most likely explanation for what happened to Merry Jolkar is that the turn limit hit. It sounds like the VQ was the attacker here. And 50 units killed sounds about right for 50 turns.

I've also run afoul of the problems inherent in trying to use a SC to defend a province with low PD. I would love to see that changed somehow, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Re: bitter pill to swallow
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">No. The manual specifies that immortal commanders won't retreat "just because everyone else has been slain" (chapter 6.6) if they're in friendly dominion. I'd read that so that immortal commanders may fail their morale checks when hit enough and therefore rout, at least I'd think that would've happened to me in a couple of occasions.

Re: bitter pill to swallow
 

Once I had a non immortal SC retreating when the enemy was already routed.

Simply that winged virtuous girl flied in the front of an enemy soldier, who to make his way out to safety, swung his braod sword and hit my virtuous winged girl, making her fleeing much faster than him.

So there was that Last guy on the battlefield, even if he was routed many rounds before my SC, and they won!

Re: bitter pill to swallow
 

I was definately in positive dominion (otherwise I would not have hurried back to defend!) It is still +6. I suppose I hit the 50 turn limit. It's unfortunate, because this was definately *NOT* and endless battle. I had just about wiped out the entire enemy army, and was super-buffed. I really think the rules for routing should take into account how well you are doing. I understand the need to end an endless battle, but if over the course of the battle one is winning, why end it??

Re: bitter pill to swallow
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Where'd you get that silly idea? The only thing special about immortals in friendly dom is that if they die they pop back up the next turn in your capital, saving you many turns of having to pray for your god to resurrect (which is what happens if your immortal dies outside of friendly dom). </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Hmmm. I had the same silly notion. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/blush.gif

It certainly *used* to be true that immortals in positive dominion never retreat... has this been changed recently?

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif

Rabe the Ringed

Re: bitter pill to swallow
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Where'd you get that silly idea? The only thing special about immortals in friendly dom is that if they die they pop back up the next turn in your capital, saving you many turns of having to pray for your god to resurrect (which is what happens if your immortal dies outside of friendly dom). </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Hmmm. I had the same silly notion. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/blush.gif

It certainly *used* to be true that immortals in positive dominion never retreat... has this been changed recently?
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Immortal troops retreat like crazy - vampires spawned by VQs run like crazy. I didn't think immortal commanders did - at least, they definately didn't seem to, based on a couple of soul gate Ermor games I had.

And the pre-turn tip certainly says that immortal pretenders, at least, never retreat in friendly dominion, "Immortal gods never retreat when fighting in a friendly dominion."

Re: bitter pill to swallow
 

In my case, the retreat was due to the turn limit. This turn limit is a major flaw. It means that a pretender super combatant is guaranteed to retreat whenever facing an army with more units than it can kill. For my SC VQ, that number is equal to the number of turns in the limit (which I think is 50).

I also think it strange that a flying commander cannot simply fly back to behind its castle walls! I imagine my VQ's flight instructor was pulling he r hair out when she saw her instead try to flee past the castle into the next province only to melt!

How does one suggest fixes for the next patch?

Merry

[ July 24, 2004, 13:47: Message edited by: Merry Jolkar ]

Re: bitter pill to swallow
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">yeah 50 turns is a bit low . i played around a bit Last days with vq's .
one not so funny thing was when i fought against ermor the ai was quite "clever" and had 10-12 dusk elders/spectators in the army + 5xx undead .
in my first attack i killed ~450 undeads before autoretreat after turn 50. the vq was NOT equipped well.
when i attacked next turn the 12 dusk elders constantly spammed sceletons and that was enough to keep my vq busy for 50 turns ^^.
the problem is that i need 3 turns for buffs and in this 3 turns the ermor dusk elder spawn 100+ undeads . then they can keep a constant spawning of new ones. it was just enough to reach turn 50 always when ~5-10 undead where left some dusk elders got beyond fatigue 100 again and spawned new skelletons .
the main problem for that is the bad ai.
at turn 3 when my buffs are finished most likely the first enemies reach my vq . also i scripted her attack rearmost or attack biggest enemy she just stayed in melee with the skelletons most time . even if she luckily attacks one dusk elder the other will most likely never be attacked because before she attacks the next one she is in melee with some garbage summons like skelettons .

i think if not equipped with really high end equipment ( some uniques ) a vq has almost no chance to ever kill 10-15 death / air mages constantly spamming skelletons or phantasmal warriors/false horrors .
50 combat turns are to short .
it should be increased to 200-250 turns .

you often lose a battle where you get luckily e.g. paralyzed for 30 turns . you would easily beat the enemy army but in the left ~15 turns you can kill only 3/4 or so of the army .
while you can't get damaged because you have e.g. soul vortex + invulnerability up .

Re: bitter pill to swallow
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">What I like about your post Boron, is that your examples works as well or better as an argument to keep a short turn limit.

Re: bitter pill to swallow
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">i am not against the turn limit and i think it is necessary http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif . the only point is that it perhaps should be extended to 75 or 100 turns instead of 50 .

i don't know if intended or not but the 50 turns work as a small limitation for sc's. that's a good thing .
if there would be no turn limit or a limit at 200+ turns sc's especially immortal ones would be even more dominant cause they could do even more damage .
it would most likely imbalance the game towards air+death magic . 10 dusk elders summoning skeletons could keep a vq most likely busy for 100 turns too with only slightly worse odds than doing that for 50 turns.

but you would need a proportionally bigger conventional army to reach the turnlimit without beeing completely wiped out . while with the current 50 turns e.g. 500 maenards may be enough to keep an sc busy until turn 50 you would need 2000 until turn 200 .

so the turnlimit indirectly weakens sc's a bit and that's good because they are already perhaps a bit too strong .
a curious question : when you decided the 50 turns battle limit did you have in mind to weaken sc's a bit or what was the main reason for 50 turns ?
i have no clue about programming but i think an alternative model of infinite combat turns would have been even easier to program .
and i see no example where an infinite combat would really Last infinite long because if you are fatigued you slowly recover and then combat goes on . so sometime there would always be a real winner .
do you btw plan unlimited or limited combat turns for dominions 3 ?

Re: bitter pill to swallow
 

I guess JK just picked a number. I doubt anyone have any recollection why 50/75 was picked in the first place.

If you have two immobiles without offensive spells, one teleporting in, troops on both sides routing, you would end up with an infinite amount of turns. Battles where both sides have several summoners could also potentionally Last very long. The size of the .trn files would increase as well if battles Lasted longer, if battles Lasted several hundred turns and you had a few of those your trn files would get pretty big, big enough to be a bit of a bother for players playing pbem and utilising dial up modems.

Re: bitter pill to swallow
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Might I suggest that the auto-rout turn limit be a user-configurable option at game setup, as are many other options? The default could be left as is, but allow players the ability to set it to whatever number they feel comfortable with, including a value of "zero", which the program would interpret as "no limit". This should be easy to code, and would end, once and for all, this great debate between those that disagree with the current limit and those that think everything is just fine.

-- Arryn (who's not a big fan of one-size-fits-all)

EDIT - while on the subject of user-configurability, it would also be very very nice to have all the game startup options saved/read from a .cfg/.ini file. This would make it faster/easier to set up multiple games with the same settings, or pass along settings to other players. Just be sure that good value-checking is done when the file is read. Hmm, while I'm wishing for things, an import/export for pretenders would be sweet, too.

[ July 24, 2004, 23:54: Message edited by: Arryn ]

Re: bitter pill to swallow
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Are you sure this would actually happen? From what you've said in the past, the debug dumps, as well as past bugs, battle replays seem to consist entirely of a starting seed value, the data of the combatants, and their scripted orders: Everything else is generated clientside using the random number seed given, yes? Otherwise battles would always be rather huge, particularly if there are a fairly decent number of large battles....

Re: bitter pill to swallow
 

For the issue of the auto-rout limit, the size of the turn files is of minor consequence. The majority of players of computer games, even this one, play SP. IW surely realizes this, despite the fact they designed the game primarily for MP, else the game wouldn't have an AI, nor would IW keep tweaking it as players find flaws in it. That said, if you play SP you won't be concerned with transmission of turn files. Hence, the file size issue is fairly moot.

If JK (or whomever) adds the auto-rout limit as a game setup parameter, like IW did for commander renaming, along with a warning and/or guidelines for the filesize impact, then Users who do play MP can decide for themselves (rather than have IW arbitrarily do it for them) how big the files can get and how many turns battles can go for.

It'd be a win-win for both players and IW. Players will no longer argue about why the limit is set as it is, and IW won't have to read all the Posts griping about it. Considering this is probably the single biggest remaining complaint about the game that IW can do something about, it seems to me that it'd be sensible and prudent for IW to address it. Of course, it would require a minor UI change, and we all know how IW feels about UI changes ... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: bitter pill to swallow
 

It's just a rule, and I for one do not think it is so important. I for one would rather have more themes, sites, spellcasting AI/scripting and so on than this. It also provides a convenient counter for the SuperCombantant problem. And more importantly, prevents the ever-Lasting-battle-syndrome.

You my 2?

Re: bitter pill to swallow
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Perhaps if you predominantly played SP on huge maps (where you might frequently see large armies and/or very powerful lone SCs) you might see the issue a bit differently. I, personally, have not experienced the shortcomings of auto-rout, but that is because I have taken great pains to ensure that my battles won't Last that long. Even so, I expect it's only a matter of time (pardon the pun) before this questionable game design decision bites me in a tender spot.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">As do I, but such things are harder to implement than changing one in-game constant to a variable and exposing it to players via the UI.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'm not advocating doing away with auto-rout. I'm advocating allowing players to decide at what point it should happen. And for the minority that doesn't want auto-rout at all, to disable it. I'm a firm believer in the "give the user as much choice as possible". IW has shown that it doesn't disagree with the concept of choice in principle, since they implemented the much-asked-for option to allow commander renaming. Which had to have been much harder to implement in the code than the change I'm proposing.

Re: bitter pill to swallow
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You are right. It shouldn't affect it. I had a recollection of battle replay's affecting trn size but I must have got it mixed up with somethibng else.

Re: bitter pill to swallow
 

yeah a configurable battle turn limit as arryn suggested it would be great http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

then especially for sp everyone could configure it to their likings http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif .

the people who don't like sc's can set it to e.g. 30 turns while others can set it infinite .

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">that could of course be a problem but at least in sp it doesn't happen almost 100% sure .

Re: bitter pill to swallow
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Setting it shorter than 40-50 turns is a very bad idea as many battles against strongly-held forts will Last 25+ turns, unless you bring awesome magical power to bear, or many flying troops. Otherwise, the bottleneck at the castle entrance will assure that the battle takes a while. IMO, a shorter auto-rout limit is not a viable solution for those that have SC-phobia. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">i personally would set it always infinite ( or 1000 turns to avoid the rare problem of e.g. 2 monoliths fighting each other ^^ ) .

it was just as example that it could work both ways

Re: bitter pill to swallow
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Setting it shorter than 40-50 turns is a very bad idea as many battles against strongly-held forts will Last 25+ turns, unless you bring awesome magical power to bear, or many flying troops. Otherwise, the bottleneck at the castle entrance will assure that the battle takes a while. IMO, a shorter auto-rout limit is not a viable solution for those that have SC-phobia.