Fort Retreat Survival --> call for discussion

[Zeldor]

Seve82:

Do you know any wars that made use of geneva conventions? I think that is just a dead and worthless thing because no one respects it.

[sector24]

The Geneva Convention is just a set of rules, nations and individuals can choose to obey them or not. However, its existence provides accountability, i.e. if you do bad things you will be tried for war crimes when we catch you. So in that sense all wars make use of the Geneva Convention. But yes, there's always someone that does something we consider reprehensible even in the context of a war.

I think cleveland's idea of making all forts into the Alamo sounds like it would increase strategic options. But I don't expect anything to change and the way things are now isn't bad.

[Zeldor]

sector24:

That means completely nothing. The only way to judge anyone for breaking Convention is to win war against him. So it changes nothing - previously if you won a war you killed/punished your opponent. Wars now are not less bloody - look at Africa, Kosovo, Iraq. It is just wishful thinking that Convention like that will change anything.

[sector24]

The existence of laws don't deter all criminals, but they do deter some. The Geneva Convention might not stop an Iraqi dictator but it will stop an American one. So it's not useless. But this is off topic, so we don't have to agree.

[NTJedi]

cleveland said:
Apparently, units defending a stormed fortress survive if they retreat from the battle.

This seems unthematic to me. I'm curious to know what the community thinks.

Should fort defenders - who otherwise couldn't leave the besieged fortress, and would die if retreating during a sally - survive if they retreat when the fortress is stormed?

It basically comes down to the game not being complex enough to cover whether or not units can retreat. The game would have to include other features such as:
1) A hidden escape tunnel (possible new structure or spell)
2) Retreating units would need to fight enemy units patrolling the castle. Basically the units would start the battle already routing and need to run past the patrollers.
3) Some castles depending on terrain could also make retreat impossible... a sort of "Helms Deep" with no tunnels. It would be wrong to assume all castles have no way of retreat.
4) An in-game formula which has a percentage of those retreating disappear from wild animals, being lost, loss of faith, etc,. .
5) Retreating via boat if one of the commanders has sailing and water provinces are nearby thus reaching friendly province(s) across water.

In any case this discussion should wait until the beginning of development for DOM_4... we're not going to see a code change this late in the game.

cleveland said:

They aren't dying, they're surrendering.

Only in our recent modern history does surrendering exist with a happy ending. I don't think any troops would be willing to surrender to late age ERMOR or middle age C'Tis and other such nations.
If late age ERMOR won the castle you were patrolling... and you surrendered... they would instantly turn you undead to make sure you wouldn't surrender again.

[cleveland]

@ NTJedi
I'm a bit confused. Do you:
(A) agree with me that routed defenders SHOULD NOT survive,
or
(B) disagree with me, arguing instead that routed defenders SHOULD survive, as is currently the case

[NTJedi]

cleveland said:
@ NTJedi
I'm a bit confused. Do you:
(A) agree with me that routed defenders SHOULD NOT survive,
or
(B) disagree with me, arguing instead that routed defenders SHOULD survive, as is currently the case

I believe routed defenders should not survive if the game had additional programming to provide scenarios creating valuable strategies to the game. Such as patrollers would have a second battle screen where routed units run past them.

It's definitely a good game suggestion, let's hope Illwinter is inspired to create a Dominions_4 where a more realistic scene of troops routing can exist which would increase strategic gameplay.

[Micah]

Just cap the adjacent provinces if you want to kill off the defenders, if you can't manage that your army doesn't really control the field enough to justify a complete elimination of the defenders.

[Gregstrom]

Conventions of war:

There were some conventions of war as far back as the Crusades and possibly before. They weren't always applied, though. In some cases in the crusades, defenders of a castle were converted at swordpoint and then released (the conversion didn't stick, oddly enough, and the soldiers in question probably went home and joined their army again).

[cleveland]

Micah said:
Just cap the adjacent provinces if you want to kill off the defenders, if you can't manage that your army doesn't really control the field enough to justify a complete elimination of the defenders.

Following that line of reasoning, why then can't a defender freely reinforce/evacuate an unsurrounded fortress?