Dammit

[Sheap]

There is no one-size-fits-all solution that does the "right thing" for both combat mages and SCs. No matter what spin you put on it, either your mages won't rout soon enough or your SCs will rout too soon.

The current system is bad only for a group of mini-SCs, who could tolerate the loss of a couple of their members, and for regular SCs with mage backup. Even in that case, it's only a problem if the mage dies. If the SC dies, you still want the mage(s) to rout.

I'm relatively satisfied with the way it is. SCs and mages are strong enough already. Sure there are cases where it is a nuisance, but balance-wise, it works out best. But if you start dinking around with it, everything you try will be in the end worse.

The only solution would be to allow the player to specify, for each commander, whether for him to rout on army loss or not. Or, to specify this as part of the unit definition. (This would certainly fix the Moloch, who is the only unit who really needs this sort of adjustment).

[The Panther]

Well Sheap, your solution would solve the knotty issue of being penalized for taking troops into battle. So it is really not all that bad, actually. You could put you mages on rout-yes and your fighters on rout-no. But it still seems contrived. Maybe this could be auto built into the troop.

Somehow, though, the problem where you are penalized for having troops with your commander truly needs to be fixed. Especially in the case of an SC pretender sitting in a owned province with 1 PD.

I recently killed a power VQ owned by Arch in a game by cutting off the retreat province and attacking the pretender with just enough random troops to kill the 1 PD. It was such a cheesy strat that it left a bad taste in my mouth even though it worked out like I intended.

[archaeolept]

oh thanks for bringing up my being rooked like a noob

I was just being greedy and didn't expect a flying mammoth.



and i had bought that stupid PD just w/out thinking. I would say that the "oh no, my one useless follower is dead, I must flee" is the worst example of the unthematic nature of the current rout system. or why all rout if one cheesy commander in an all commander army dies.

Now, if the pretender were to die on the battlefield, I sure could see a general rout...

[Thufir]

archaeolept said:
... didn't expect a flying mammoth.

hmmmm, that does sound like a noob mistake!

[Morkilus]

Even if you don't EXPECT the flying mammoth, you should FEAR the flying mammoth. I sure do. Right now. In RL.

On topic, can there be a mod for the routing commanders issue? Or is this so hard-coded to be impossible? It seems attractive to set the routing to be %80 or so if a commander dies on field with no troops, adjustable by relative total army strengths... isn't that how troops decide to immediately flee or not, anyway?

[Sheap]

Exempting PD from the rout calculations would probably help, but my guess is it would be difficult to implement.

I have to confess, I normally play nations where PD is either strong enough, that having it die isn't a real problem, or else so bad, that you would never recruit any for any reason So while I understand this argument, it doesn't have much visceral impact.

Maybe including rout behavior into the unit definition would be best. Unfortunately, there are 1000-some units, and they'd all need to be modified, since theoretically any unit can become a commander.

No es bueno.

[Morkilus]

I wasn't sold on the whole "SuperCommander" (or whatever it is thing) until I decided to send 10 Avalon knights, 50 archers, and 30 or so infantry against Bogus and his friends... and totally got my armored *** handed to me. Funny how he decided afterwards to hang out at Marignon's castle and keep them from doing ANYTHING at all...

Bogus is Baroken.

[Arryn]

The Panther said:
Sounds to me like you didn't really play Warcraft 3 if you never went to MP. War 3 MP is extremely good, even though SP ain't all that great. Sounds like it was a GOOD ASSumption after all.

You, too, are making bad assumptions. It is perfectly valid to judge a game based on its SP value, alone. The majority of computer game players play only in SP. You may not like to admit it, but MP players are a minority, albeit a large and disproportionately vocal one. There are plenty of games that are good in SP and great in MP (such as Diablo 2, Call of Duty, Dom 2, just to name three) that I needn't waste time with those that suck in SP and *might* be better than sucky in MP.

The Panther said:
Someone earlier in this thread said that concrete suggestions should be proposed for consideration by the devs instead of whining.

I said it.

[Arryn]

The_Tauren13 said:
ive noticed that fans of underated strategy games that havent recieved the popularity they deserve, such as dominions II

Dom 2 is not "underated". It received glowing reviews from both CG and CGW magazines (which was what prompted me to check out the demo). The only thing "underated" about Dom 2 is the lack of appreciation the devs get for a game they basically did/do in their spare time. As for popularity, TBS strategy games in general do not appeal to the "me now" generation of console twitch gamers, which is fine by me as I really don't care much for the opinions of kids who hadn't even been born yet when U.S. soldiers were coming home in body bags from a "police action" called Vietnam.

The_Tauren13 said:
have a tendency to diss on the popular games, refusing to admit that they, too, are good

There are hordes of games that are popular and are still crap. Deus Ex:IW is a perfect example. Scratch beneath the pretty graphics of Doom 3 and what do you find? A crappy game. Popularity has nothing to do with quality. Though quality sometimes helps spur popularity.

The_Tauren13 said:
dont mind me...

Is that an invitation to ignore you?

[magnate]

Sheap said:
There is no one-size-fits-all solution that does the "right thing" for both combat mages and SCs. No matter what spin you put on it, either your mages won't rout soon enough or your SCs will rout too soon.

Not if your mages have morale 10 and your SCs have morale 30, which is what I tend to find is the case ....

I'm not saying that troopless commanders shouldn't have to make a morale check when another commander (or army) routs, just that it shouldn't be an automatic fail. That defeats the point of having high morale on your SCs!

Also, the PD thing is very important - having that single point of PD is really useful for getting a look at the exact composition of an invading army, so you want to be able to build PD without fear of them screwing up your SCs.

I like Panther's suggestions. When any friendly army routs or dies, all friendly commanders have to make a morale check. If they fail, they rout too. If not, they keep on fighting. Then again when the 2nd army routs etc. That seems both realistic and intuitive. Your mages will flee after a couple of armies rout (they're tired and scared, even if undamaged), but the SCs won't unless badly damaged. It also doesn't require the sort of recoding that the rout-yes and rout-no option would.

Can anybody find anything wrong with it?

CC
P.S. I loved the flying mammoth story - did anyone else think "NOBODY expects the flying mammoth ..."?