Unconscious Great Mother - unbeatable!

[Moritz Moeller-Herrmann]

I think I found a bug. I fought against an Abysian Great Mother with Regeneration +59 HP, which my army could not kill. Well, the GM went unconscious after some lightning strokes and some spell casting. My remaining army started chopping, but the GM healed faster than they could damage it. (Should have brought some bane with me...) Finally Abysia was routed. The message flashed 10 times. But the GM ***** was unconscious. So in the end MY victorious army retreated after what seemed like an eternity of chopping the *****... This happened twice!

Seems like a bug to me.... Why should a routed but immobile and unconscious surviving enemy constitute a victory?

[Endoperez]

Did she have a fire shield?

This seems to be a bug, pretenders unable to move (sphinx and friends) die if unable to retreat, but the code seems to forgot to check this for pretenders highly fatiqued.

I think the rout of your army happens because the game checks which side routs (after the limit of 30 rounds of battle has filled) without taking already retreating army into account. Then your side retreats (though it would take bad luck for this to happen twice).

[General Tacticus]

A routed army is not yet defeated, technically. Not until the Last of its units has left the battlefield. It might even win, if the other army dies or routs too and get out first. One of my first battles was a double rout, the fastest one losing the battle

I have had a similar experience to yours : I had given Ermor a ince sphynx (500 hp pretender) and very high dominion (but no magic) before turning it over to the computer. Later on, I attacked, and spent the whole battle hacking at the sphynx, from all sides. I barely scratched him, and my army eventually retreated because of the time limit. Worse, I lost all the mercenaries that were in that battle And all that against a totally harmless sphynx that just happened to have 30 protection and about 600 hp (dominion bonus)

[ywl]

It's a well known feature. And it's been commonly used to the advantage of immobile pretender (Sphix et al.)

But if the immobile units are in the attacking army, they would be wiped out, assumed to be destroyed, after a certain number of round of battle (not sure how many).

A Great Mother is killable, especially when she is unconscious. Even if you can't, you can at least pile tons of afflictions on her. You just need to have some heavy hitters.

[Bowlingballhead]

Although I've seen some oddities myself in this vein. I had an army of illithids paralyze a dragon in the first round of combat, destroy all of his troops, run up to finish him off by hand - and then immediately flee in terror.

Dragons must be scary or something. I know illithid don't have especially good morale. Had to bring in some mindless units to finish the job. Really, killing gods is often about finding the strategy they're vulnerable to!

[NTJedi]

My personal opinion is that the defending party should not be fleeing just because the number of x turns have passed.

To have lost a territory you were defending just because x amount of turns have passed and a paralyzed attack unit could not flee seems like a flaw.

The paralyzed unit should live but be pushed back to another territory.

[Psitticine]

Originally posted by NTJedi:
The paralyzed unit should live but be pushed back to another territory.

Or, in this case, rolled.

[ywl]

Originally posted by NTJedi:
My personal opinion is that the defending party should not be fleeing just because the number of x turns have passed.

To have lost a territory you were defending just because x amount of turns have passed and a paralyzed attack unit could not flee seems like a flaw.

The paralyzed unit should live but be pushed back to another territory.

I think it's the other way, at least in Dom 1. After a certain number of turns, the attacker automatically rout and all remaining units (because of being immobile of unconscious) are assumed to be eliminated! It is a major handicap to the attacker.