Attack rearmost - how does it really work?

[BesucherXia]

It must be a popular idea to use your cavalries outflanking your opponent, kill his commanders and drive the troops to rout. But unfortunately the outflankers will often refuse to overcome the front line and attack them instead, which makes this tactic meaningless.

I remember someone said there should be a morale check for passing each hostile squard, but can anyone here explain me how does it actually work in algorithm level? Has the own morale of the outflankers influence on it? And if the enemy squard is mixed from different types of units?

Any comments will be greatly appreciated.

[Gandalf Parker]

It will never work fantasticaly.

Try breaking your flankers into as many small groups as you can. Place tiny groups of them on the outside of a large group. Your chances improve of getting one of the small groups to slide well past the large group before choosing their target.

I also remember something about using a single commander with the units on guard-commander but I dont remember the results.

Snag the BattleSim map and try various formations and scripting.

[BesucherXia]

Forgive me since I am more intending to ask the algorithm and the tread name is not so accurate.

If the guard-commander trick works, I will assume it does depend on the flankers' morale.

Thanks for the quick answer, could you please tell me how to find the BattleSim map? I have just checked pinned treads in the map forum but found nothing.

[Gandalf Parker]

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=41727

[analytic_kernel]

I don't know how the algorithm works, but pg. 74 of the manual makes it sound like ZOC could be a consideration. The edge of one formation passing by another one may get tangled in its zone of control, and perhaps that almost entirely tangles the formations. I've seen battlefield behavior that could be explained this way.

It could also be attack rearmost troops of nearest enemy formation rather than rearmost formation. I've seen behavior which looks like that as well....

Just speculation - not an algorithm or any sort of methodical knowledge - but might be stuff to look for during experimentation.

[Sombre]

You'd think it would make sense to just tell them to go around the back, fighting anything along the way, then attack the closest thing.

That way if you put them on the flank they'd go forward in a straight line until reaching the end of the field, then turn around and attack the nearest stuff (aka the rear of the enemy).

[thejeff]

I don't think its Zones of Control. I've seen small groups move down the side, then make a sharp turn and close almost to the center to reach a target.

I've also seen larger groups have one flank get involved in a fight when they come in contact with the enemy, while the rest of the group continues towards the rear.

Does the debug log shed any light on this? I've never checked.

[analytic_kernel]

Originally Posted by thejeff

I don't think its Zones of Control. I've seen small groups move down the side, then make a sharp turn and close almost to the center to reach a target.

I've also seen larger groups have one flank get involved in a fight when they come in contact with the enemy, while the rest of the group continues towards the rear.

Does the debug log shed any light on this? I've never checked.

Yeah, I've also seen both of those behaviors as well.
Running with "-dd", the debug output doesn't show too much about how targets are chosen. It does mention that the squads are following the "Attack rear" orders, so at least we can be fairly confident that those are not being changed for some reason or other.

Anyway, I used Gandalf Parker's BattleSim map to run some experiments. There are still more to do, but here is the setup and preliminary results.

Setup
(1) To (hopefully) remove morale as a factor, only Morale 50 troops were used.
(2) To make battlefield movement instantaneous (and thus reduce number of checks and distractions due to battlefield dynamics), only flying troops were used.
(3) Only troops that could not damage each other were used.
IOW, squads of Air Elementals were a logical choice.
(4) All troops were commanded by Adepts of the Silver Order (mldr: 70) set to (hold)*5, "Cast" orders.
(5) All squads were set to "Hold and Attack Rear", except for one squad in only one of the armies, which was set to "Attack Rear".
(6) Squad placements and sizes were varied across experiments.

Results
(1) Squads ignore commanders when determining rearmost targets. If Silver Adept is behind all squads, he will not be targeted but a squad in front of him will be.
(2) Squads actually do target rearmost squads, given the conditions of the experiment.
(3) Squad size does not seem to affect targeting, given the conditions of the experiment.

More experiments need to be done with non-flying units, large squads jostling flankers, etc....

[reverend]

As I understand it, 'attack rearmost' checks for each enemy formation they pass. If the check fails (?) they attack that formation.

Try this command with fliers, they will consistently attack enemy rear formations. (although 'attack archers' works even better, most of the time)

[Sombre]

It would do if most fliers weren't utter dodos.