Stupid flying units getting killed makes me angry

[LintMan]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
I'm less concerned with the fact that the pursuers won't fight back as long as they can keep running, than the fact that they will get away! This can be supremely annoying and offensive to my sense of thoroughness. A huge pack of fliers can more or less eliminate this troublesome nuisance. There are very few, if any, survivors when an army gets mauled by a swarm of a few dozen devils on Attack Rear. KILL THEM! KILL THEM ALL!

Sometimes I wish the combat AI would be a little less aggressive about trying to eliminate those fleeing units: it's quite frustrating to take more losses, post-enemy routing, to friendly fire than during the main battle. Ie: your 45 crossbowmen fire a huge cloud of bolts at the 4-8 fleeing militia that your flying troops have completely surrounded.

I'd love to have a per-army setting that lets me toggle between "kill them all" (which is the current behavior) and "drive them off", where it would cause your armies to immediately re-focus on any non-routed enemies whenever their current target routes. Sometimes you can ill-afford the extra losses from prolonged (but victorious) battle that the kill 'em all option causes.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by LintMan:
it's quite frustrating to take more losses, post-enemy routing, to friendly fire than during the main battle. Ie: your 45 crossbowmen fire a huge cloud of bolts at the 4-8 fleeing militia that your flying troops have completely surrounded.

Crossbowmen should DEFINITELY not do this unless the target is completely clear, if the target is routing: Crossbowmen simply lack the precision needed to actually strike their targets with reasonable confidence.

Fliers (and cav), on the other hand, should be encouraged to not only pursue enemy routing troops, but perhaps have a command to preferentially pursue routers. I know that's what *I* use light cav for in Medieval: To run down enemies as they flee and KILL THEM ALL!

[Tris]

This seemed an appropriate place to reply to Norfleet's sig...

"Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions, and you are a conqueror. Kill all, and you are a god!""

Actually, if you think about it, when you "KILL THEM ALL" you just end up being a very very lonely man.

[Vynd]

Disagree if you like, but I stand by my original opinion: flying units being stupid and plopping themselves down in front of routed units and getting themselves killed makes me angry. Chasing down units from behind, or flying up next to them and attacking them, I can live with. But personally I'd rather see a few units escape (to be killed in the next battle) than lose my expensive flying units. The whole point of using the fliers to Attack Rear is to wipe out the enemy commanders and cause an early rout, thus keeping my casualties down.

I'm not saying that this is a game breaker or anything, just that I find it personally very annoying. Also, I think the various explanations people have offered for why flying units should be getting themselves killed in this manner are more along the lines of rationalizations. I don't believe for a second that the designers sat down and thought: "Let's counterbalance the power of flying units by making them more likely to get killed by retreating units. Plus it'll help deal with the 'units should sometimes get cut-off and be forced to fight back' issue we've been worrying about." I like my own explanation better, which is that the combat system is fairly simplistic and simply can't handle concepts like "don't stand in front of retreating units, attack from the side instead."

[PvK]

But Vynd, if they "improve the AI" by making pursuing units never block enemy retreat, then Norfleet and I and others will just have new complaints about how suddenly pursuers are immune to any risk (except from the fratricidal archer AI), and how our pursuers never block the escape route.

PvK

[NTJedi]

Originally posted by Tris:
This seemed an appropriate place to reply to Norfleet's sig...

"Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions, and you are a conqueror. Kill all, and you are a god!""

Actually, if you think about it, when you "KILL THEM ALL" you just end up being a very very lonely man.

I would have to agree that this quote from Jean Rostand has several flaws.

[Chris Byler]

In my opinion, the behavior of flying units is fine, but archers should be less likely to fire at routed enemies if there are friendly troops near them. Hold your fire and get closer instead.

If the flying units are getting killed in melee by cut off routing enemies... you need some tougher flyers. But in my experience the main threat in this situation is the archers/crossbowmen continuing to fire at the routing units and hitting their pursuers instead.