new orders planned?

[st.patrik]

Originally posted by Coffeedragon:

quote:

---

Originally posted by st.patrik:
'fire and flee' is broken.

Broken is usually understood to mean heavily over-powered. Fire and Flee is not broken, just pretty well useless.

---

I guess I meant broken more in the typical language sense and less in the computer-game-slang sense.

[johan osterman]

Originally posted by st.patrik:
I don't mean to be rude, but I think that this is a bit ridiculous. I mean, on the one hand you avoid the very rare occurence of all troops being ordered to refrain from melee, and on the other you make missile troops on 'guard commander' totally worthless. It seems really obvious which of these is the most important. Plus which it has been pointed out that there is an allowance for a battle ending which would be in stalemate otherwise.

Though I gather that the obvious conclusion in your mind is that it is more important for bodyguards to fire than it is to avoid staredwons, it should be clear that illwinter does not share this belief, obviously making it non obvious which one of the two is more important.

'Hold and Attack' orders allowing firing of missile weapons is (on the other hand) good news.

The thing that really gets me though is the 'fire and flee' command. As it is skirmishing is impossible, because your army of skirmishers will scatter to any adjacent provinces, inevitably meaning some are without commanders and cannot be regrouped. With all respect to Illwinter for an awesome game I must say that 'fire and flee' is broken. The change in 'Hold and Attack' doesn't help you skirmish, because the whole point is never to come to melee. Please please Illwinter make skirmishing possible - if you do it will change my style of play, and consequently the nations I play, considerably.

This is a different issue, and it hasn't been implemented for the usual reasons.

[Pocus]

Originally posted by Daynarr:
KO : {There is a new function in hold and attack}

This change is directed toward cavalry units. They will weaken enemy army that approaches and then charge into them. Makes those cavalry with bows actually useful. Why would you give your normal archers "Hold and Attack" order anyway?

indeed, if (as it is now) archers on hold&attacks dont use their bow after the initial hold, then it is still useless for them.

So to summarize we have a new hold&attack implementation, where dual missile/melee units will be able to fire, then charge to melee.

What is still missing is a hold+/fire

hold+ : same behavior than in the new hold/attack, that is hold if nothing in range, or fire missile weapons.
fire : same behavior as of now, that is, if nothing is in range move, otherwise fire.

Then archers would at Last be able to behave *somehow* historically. As of now we have our archers Groups which move to get in range of the enemy, with the usual problem of having them stomped by advancing enemy infantry.

-------------------------------------

allowing BG to fire their missile weapons:
I think its a non issue too, and I concur that its more annoying to not have this problem fixed, that to have in rare occurences 2 armies iddle, with the attacker retreating when the max number of round is elapsed. In fact where is the problem? That we will have to watch a replay where nothing happen during 30 rounds, once every one hundred battles??? Is it a so horrible prospect that IW prefer to stand adamant (& alone) in his belief?

[Pocus]

to add some water to the mill (a french expression...) about why I (we...) think that 2 armies with only archers on BG will be a very rare occurence...

We know that if an army has only BG, then as soon as one loss is incured, the whole army rout. So in essence, no player will ever dare to do that, except if he dont knows about the rule... => BG with missile firing ability is even less a problem that we all think of.

I really urge IW to reconsider their position. It dont makes sense to refuse fixing this big loophole for a reason so weak, argument wise.

[Kristoffer O]

Originally posted by Pocus:
I really urge IW to reconsider their position. It dont makes sense to refuse fixing this big loophole for a reason so weak, argument wise.

OK

(that was not a promise, just an OK on your thoughts)

[Kristoffer O]

Originally posted by Chris Byler:

However, I don't see why a "fire or hold" order (or firing by bodyguards) would be problematic. Dom II already enforces a time limit that resolves stalemated battles. At worst, you could have two regiments of archers that fire at each other, and if neither has routed by the time ammo is exhausted, they both stare across the battlefield at each other until the time limit arrives and the attacker retreats.

While this could certainly be unfortunate for the attacker, it's his own fault for not bringing a contingent of melee troops (or having them routed early) - or using the normal Fire order for his archers, which would let him give a target priority and have them attack when their ammo runs out. The battle will still end with a definite resolution.

We have found that people are not forgiving when they do stuff that they should not and the UI doesn't stop them. Own fault is apparently not an option.

A recent example: If you set your orders to retreat and try to assassinate someone you will retreat and die. This seems to annoy people.

Waiting for 50 turns of slow battle replays because you didn't expect the enemy to do the same 'stupid' battle setup as you, would be considered annoying.

[Arryn]

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
Waiting for 50 turns of slow battle replays because you didn't expect the enemy to do the same 'stupid' battle setup as you, would be considered annoying.

I really don't see what the big deal is with such a face-off. You quickly realize as you watch the replay that it's a stalemate, and you press Q to quit. How hard is that? It's only annoying to people stupid enough to actually sit through 50 turns of unchanging action. Hardly something that the rest of us, with better things to do with our time, worry about.

Sorry about the rant, but the arguments I'm hearing are getting rather silly, IMO.

[PDF]

Originally posted by Arryn:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
Waiting for 50 turns of slow battle replays because you didn't expect the enemy to do the same 'stupid' battle setup as you, would be considered annoying.

I really don't see what the big deal is with such a face-off. You quickly realize as you watch the replay that it's a stalemate, and you press Q to quit. How hard is that? It's only annoying to people stupid enough to actually sit through 50 turns of unchanging action. Hardly something that the rest of us, with better things to do with our time, worry about.

Sorry about the rant, but the arguments I'm hearing are getting rather silly, IMO.

---

Or just stop the battle if nothing happens for say 4 turns (no fire, no melee, no spells).
And note that currently we have to wait for dissolving leaderless magic creatures and end of poison effects, not counting routs where chasers can't outrun the routed army... And so ? Not a big deal neither, press Q !

[HJ]

I guess one of the points not mentioned yet is that "fire and hold" orders would be great for reducing friendly fire issues when your crossbowmen massacre units that pursue routers. If they would stop firing after two volleys, that would not happen any more. Also, after two volleys armies are pretty much engaged in melee already, and you usually don't want them to keep on firing into the fray (if you do, then you could just order them to "fire"). And yet, they would remain on the battlefield and serve as a Last-ditch defense of commanders if melee units fail to rout the enemy. Therefore, although the new Version of "hold and attack" will help combo units, such as Tien Chi cavalry, it saddens me that the problem of friendly fire still remains. This has been mentioned quite frequently as one of the things that can ruin the enjoyment of the game, and I hope that in future we'll have more options in order to avoid it.

edit: Btw, if orders could be geared towards number of volleys instead number of turns for missile units, that would be great. Otherwise, even with fixed "fire and flee", crossbows would only fire one volley and then retreat.

[ February 11, 2004, 20:46: Message edited by: HJ ]

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by PDF:
And note that currently we have to wait for dissolving leaderless magic creatures and end of poison effects, not counting routs where chasers can't outrun the routed army... And so ? Not a big deal neither, press Q !

Those are over quickly. You want to see a stalemate? Watch a battle where both sides have only paralyzed units! I got to watch a fun battle which involved an unconcious Sphinx facing off against a paralyzed Vampire Lord.

[ February 11, 2004, 22:03: Message edited by: Norfleet ]