Fire and Flee

PvK · #1 March 5th, 2004, 08:33 PM

Ya planned retreat works better in Dominions I, where all retreaters go to the same province.

I think each unit should only go to a random province if it is routing. That would help.

I think this was said or implied already, but I think up to five turns of archer fire and then flee can be achieved by having all commanders flee after five turns, and the archers set to simply Fire. That means you can't have troops sticking around to win the battle, though.

Caelum "hit and run" I think refers to strategic-level movements, not necessarily tactical-level movements. That is, you fly to a province with low defense, take it over, pillage/whatever, and fly away before any army comes to fight your army.

PvK

fahdiz · #2 March 5th, 2004, 08:35 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by tinkthank:
But I thought "Fire and Flee" might be nice, because Illwinter explicity writes in the only description of Caleum (in the Choose Nation screen) that they are fond of "hit and run" tactics. Now what could these be?

Actually I think Illwinter means that Caelum's flying troops are great for raiding, harassment, and cutting off supply lines.

Example: a big opposing army is making a beeline for your capitol. By attacking the provinces *behind* the big army with your fliers, while meeting the big army with your ground forces (Wingless + Mammoths + archers) you can force the big army to separate or starve, cut off their lines of retreat, and cause them all kinds of havoc.

Chazar · #3 March 6th, 2004, 12:48 AM

Fire and flee is useless in my opinion. I also extend what has already been said here:

With caelum, tie fighters set to guard commander to a storm general, who is ordered to hold,hold,hold,attack rear; while my archers are set in similar manner to another general. With the patch, the archers will fire as soon something comes into range (hence I usually put them forward a bit)...

In this way you can fire 1-5 rounds before engaging in meele...

EDIT: Oops, I was wrong here, as guarding units dont use missile weapons even if the enemy is approaching pretty close. They just engange in meele. Can we consider this as a bug?

- depending on the speed of the enemy's cannon fodder (yes, you need to scout ahead) marching towards you and leaving its commanders/archers undefended on their rear.

...the only nasty thing is that my troops in the rear prevent the enemy from routing - since they stand in their way, which usually gives me the most losses of the whole fight!

---

Yeah, lets continue solving Caelum-related questions here, as the original thread got taken over by hobbits...

[ March 06, 2004, 11:00: Message edited by: Chazar ]

SurvivalistMerc · #4 March 6th, 2004, 03:33 PM

Chazar,

I understand where you are coming from. It is kind of sad to watch your expensive iceclads die to routing troops toward the end of a battle. This is especially true when you're attacking an independent province. Later on, though, you might want to attack specific routing commanders. It would just about be useful to Caelum to have a query as to whether the fliers should surround routing enemies.

Everyone attacks routing enemies, but the problem with a race of fliers is, as you noted, the routing enemy will be surrounded with no way to truly rout, and the troops standing in the way will be attacked and usually suffer casualties. Making matters worse, archers still fire and kill your troops at this time, too.

I like this idea for fire and flee with regard to orderly retreats. I think I like the current rules better for morale failure routs.

fahdiz · #5 March 7th, 2004, 05:25 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Chazar:
Yeah, lets continue solving Caelum-related questions here, as the original thread got taken over by hobbits...

Heh. Looks like it's back on track over there now...they're back to the RotR weakness/strength discussion.

Gandalf Parker · #6 March 7th, 2004, 05:30 AM

Fire and Flee can be used with a few cheap archers put way out front to draw the enemy into a gauntlet. Gets the enemy to concentrte fire and cavalry on a few fleeing units instead of the wall of Hvy Infantry doing hold&attack/closest with crossbowmen on each side of them

[ March 07, 2004, 03:31: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

Wauthan · #7 March 8th, 2004, 02:06 AM

Fire and Flee got its uses. I use it when I massed a lot of archers in a high supply province and want to attack a into a wasteland or a bottleneck.

Also good for harrasing the enemy strongpoints if you got matching strengths in armies and noone wants to take the first blow. It's sort of a rare cirkumstances order but I'm glad it's there.