I'm very confused as to how and why I lost a

[Cainehill]

Ah - so you were attacking? My guess is that you may be right, the army got stuck in the gates while trying to clobber the earth mother.

Because the earth mother regenerates, she wouldn't seem to be taking any damage, since the most carrion tend not to do much damage.

And then, turn 50 of the battle, the attacker automatically routs.

Either that - or you're watching a battle replay with the wrong Version, but I'm guessing you might be playing SP, so that wouldn't be it.

[Nappa]

It was a SP game. So this is a known bug?

I checked all the monsters in the area and they did not have fatige and no spells were cast on them. They just seemed to get stuck near the defenders side of the gate. Then my entire army got backed up and only a few creatures were able to attack the earth mother.

If this happened to me in a MP game I'd be pissed as my game would be over.

[Taqwus]

Design decision, not bug.

Attacker automatically routs after a certain point; a while later if the battle hasn't already ended, all remaining attackers (berserkers, mindless and other unbreakables; the unconscious; those bogged down and blocked by a horde of defenders; those simply not fast enough e.g. due to injury, interfering spells and location) -die- regardless of stats.

Blocking a gate is a reasonable tactic for the defender, but not an unbeatable one in that an attacker can bring ranged firepower (magic, missiles) and fliers in addition to trying to carve one's way through. Pan CW might have a hard time massing archers (not too many Sag Carcasses get generated) and battle mages (the emphasis, IIRC, is on Nature, which is wonderful for support but less so for direct damage attacks) , but you can get other mage branches (Lamia Queens, Spectres come to mind) and you do get some heavy inf (minotaur carcasses, and the Ettin Mandragora can be very brutal given decent gear).

The auto-killing of berserkers is something to watch out for. In an SP game, I recently lost a nicely-equipped Tartarian Cyclops who was using the Unquenched Sword; the sword berserked him and immobilized the defenders through fatigue, but there were enough unconscious defenders at the end that he couldn't kill them all before auto-kill kicked in.

[Thufir]

Nappa said:
It was a SP game. So this is a known bug?

I checked all the monsters in the area and they did not have fatige and no spells were cast on them. They just seemed to get stuck near the defenders side of the gate. Then my entire army got backed up and only a few creatures were able to attack the earth mother.

If this happened to me in a MP game I'd be pissed as my game would be over.

From everything I've read in this thread it is far from clear that you have a bug here. Dom2 is a tremendously complex game, and surprising (and arguably counterintuitive) effects are far more common than bugs.

[Nappa]

The problem was the gate was NOT blocked by defenders. The earth mother was back and to the side. I purposesfully had many vine ogres in the army because they do lots more damage than carrion creatures which are great at immobilizing opponents.

About 50% of the defenders side of the gate got blocked by my creatures attacking the earth mother which was fatigued about 2 elephant lengths back from the gate. The rest tried to go around and appear to be stuck even though there appears to be a lot of space to move through. And actually having watched the replay again, they did initially move through and spread out and then simply stopped moving for the entire rest of the battle. No fatige, no spells, just stopped dead. I believe it is a pathing problem.

This is a bug, not a design issue.

[Nappa]

Another interesting observation.

The after battle report shows:

Commanders 18, Killed 0.
Regular units 46, killed 38
Undead beings 318, killed 309

I thought mindless and undead all dissolve and don't route? How can I have any left? The only things in my army were vine ogres and carrion.

[archaeolept]

you should be able to attach the two files in your game folder to a post in this thread; then someone could look over the battle in question. there could be something simple you are overlooking, or there could be a real bug.

[Nappa]

that makes sense

Here it is: