Flying unit retreat
 

A quick questions for you all. I thought I had killed an enemy pretender, a flying blue dragon. Two turns later, he appears outside the gates of his former capital, which I had captured the turn before.

Would the AI have recalled him so fast? Would he appear outside the gates like that? Did he possibly just retreat and then come home to annoy me?

Finally, and most important, if I attack him while I have all the surrounding provinces, can a winged unit retreat to a friendly province father away? I would like to kill him off sooner rather than later, as a dragon pretender can do a fair amount of damage all by himself.

Re: Flying unit retreat
 

A flying unit cannot retreat into enemy territory. As for how he got there, both your answers sound plausible (maybe the AI has 40 priests hiding somewhere...)

Re: Flying unit retreat
 

When recalled, the pretender will appear outside the capital province if the capital has been captured (pretender _always_ recalls to the home province). As far as it only taking two turns, that isn't at all unlikely, especially for nations with sacred mages such as Vanheim, Niefelheim, Last of the Tuatha, etc.

Re: Flying unit retreat
 

The easy way to check which is it is attacking him and checking out his magical paths, if he lost 1 in each path than he was recalled, otherwise he was routed. (Unless he was Empowered, but I doubt that)

Re: Flying unit retreat
 

Also, if he is a melee unit, like a dragon, he is likely in the hall of fame. There you can check if an additional cross (indicating death) was added to him.

Re: Flying unit retreat
 

Hmm, I think he must have routed. It is C'tis and they do not seem that sacred. The hall of fame is dominated by my Ermor killing priests and I do not remember his magic paths, so I may never know.

Let me re-phrase my main quesion. Can a retreating flying unit with a lot of movement retreat over the encircling provinces? I would prefer to kill it outright, but if he does rout, would he still be eliminated? I ended up baby sitting last night, so I did not get to find out the hard way.

Re: Flying unit retreat
 

Then he was called back by his nations priests.

As stated in first reply to your original post, flying units follow exactly the same retreating rules as every other unit. If there are no neighouring provinces owned by the retreating unit, then it is killed.

Re: Flying unit retreat
 

Graeme, thanks for clearly expressing the retreat rules, it clarifies the sitution. While I knew that the unit could not retreat to an enemy province, I did not know if they could retreat over enemy provinces to a friendly one.

In the event, the enemy dragon did not get a chance to retreat and was swarmed by hoplites and spiders. I am pleased because there is still a large rump of C'tis remaining and having that dragon loose would have made things more difficult.

Re: Flying unit retreat
 

Just for the entertainment of the crowd, he has been killed three times now and recalled a fourth time! As C’tis fell apart, Tein Chin filled up some of the space. They now separate me from the last of the C’tis provinces, so I have not been able to finish them off… I took out a couple of provinces with call of the wild, but the remaining ones have too much PD and priests who keep recalling the god.

All of this happened as I faced huge battles on the other side of the map with the real giants of the game and I had to focus all my resources on them. Great fun, but the damn dragon keeps annoying me!