Battle Afflicted Troops?

[Ironpaw]

Hello All,

Been playing the demo a bit, really love this game so far, great to be playing a true turn based strat game again.

Anyhow to my question, I was wondering what people did with there troops that are battle afflicted prior to casting that healing winds spell or what not, most of them suffer a big morale drop, so I pulled them off the line, but then what, should I continue to pay upkeep while I await the spell research? Are they good for patrolling maybe, though I rarely use that? Maybe make a bluffing force with them and hope no one calls my hand? Or perhaps send them on suicides against Independents to free me of the upkeep cost, and get some good force scouting, before I bring up the Main?

Thanks all for any help.

[Bummer_Duck]

Ironpaw said:
I was wondering what people did with there troops that are battle afflicted

I use them as suicide squads. Set them off to one side with orders to attack rear. From what I have seen, they will either:

A. Take a Heavy calvery charge, and die. Which is fine by me, especially if they absorb the nasty single lance attack per battle.
B. Attack the side or rear of some main force at the same time as the main front line troops, not doing much damage, but surviving longer than taking the brunt of the attack and routing.
C. Fodder against tramplers, so that the frontline and archers have a bit more time.
D. Make it to the rear and do some damage, or die trying.

I haven't tried anything else. Preferably, in Dom III there will be a "Disband" command.

[Ironpaw]

Okay, very nice.

I guess I had it in my mind that them fleeing/dying was bad globaly, but I guess the engine is only unit based on morale checks, so these tactics would work great.

Thanks much.

[Ironhawk]

The morale system per squad and per battle, Ironpaw.

Per squad, morale is checked whenever a fellow squadmate is wounded or killed. And if more than half (i think?) of the squad fails morale checks, then the squad will rout.

Per battle morale works like so:
1) If all commanders are routed or killed, all squads rout
2) If all squads are routed or killed, all commanders rout
3) If your army consists of only commanders, the first friendly casualty will cause the rest to rout.

Rules 2 and 3 are very important to remember when using SCs or solo mages.

As for what I do with my wounded, I'm actually pretty lenient. The only wound that *really* concerns me is Battle Fright because that compromises the effectiveness of the squad. Those men are used as Lance Cushions like Bummer describes. Additionally, if I am facing an Assassinating opponent I will sometimes use Limp and Crippled units as bodyguards for my non-critical commanders

[Alneyan]

Ironhawk said:
3) If your army consists of only commanders, the first friendly casualty will cause the rest to rout

4) If your army consists of only Bodyguards, the first casualty in your ranks will result in a general rout.

A Caelum Seraph taskforce was destroyed by PD because all their troops were on Bodyguard; how nice to kill troops worth 800 gold coins with capital PD.

Incidentally, not all units count for the battle rout: for example, a Virtue spamming Ghost Wolves will not rout when her Ghost Wolves are killed. I believe only units brought in at the beginning of the battle matter for rout purposes, but don't quote me on that.

[PashaDawg]

I somehow recall that there is a command that highlights all wounded troops when you're in the army setup screen. Is this true, or am I making it up?

[Agrajag]

You are, its the 'w' shortcut key. (and therefore not a command )

[Arralen]

Mark one unit in a squad, hit
"w" for wounded,
"e" for experienced (**) troops

[Oversway]

The only annoyance is that you have to mark a unit, and so after pressing w (or e), that unit will be selected along with all the other wounded (or experienced) units.

[Cainehill]

Except that 'e' hasn't worked for several patches now, which is very inconvenient.