[Saxon]

I have faced a lot of crossbows and find that my commanders are never targeted until everything else has run away. The fire rearmost command rarely goes to the rearmost, so even when I use it, I rarely get to target the commanders. I do not doubt that you got skewered in that battle, but based on my experience, I think you have had some bad luck. I had a horrible run with the Summoning of creatures with Ryelh and was despairing of the game. Then I tried out some of the new suggestions and kept playing some more and discovered that I really just had bad luck at first. Check out the “Stop the Insanity” thread. As for my suggestion, get a pendant of luck to reduce hits by 50% and see if you can get the commander ethereal, which will help even more. Throw in a cheap shield and armor and life expectancy goes way up.

As for fleeing units being chased, units would keep going after them. One, they are easy targets. Two, they have loot. Three, you are not risking your life to run the fleeing enemy down, but turn to the left and attack that Ulmish Heavy Infantry and you are! As another person has posted, it was a historical reality. On the plus side, if they chase them off the map, the nearest unit to attack afterwards is the enemy commanders, which loops back to the previous topic. If the rest of the battle has been won, these unit get a second chance to kill some of the fleeing troops. I use fear a lot, so sometimes I chase troops away and have to fight them several times. Having them killed while fleeing is great. Sometimes the long chase works in your favor.

Placement in multiplayer is a problem in almost all games of this type, custom designed maps seem to be the best solution. Everyone has exactly the same thing in a geometric design, so there are no surprises or advantages. I have not seen any yet for Dom II, but I am sure the hard core MP people will produce one soon.