Fort Retreat Survival --> call for discussion

[cleveland]

Endoperez said:
Can they retreat if someone is still besieging? Or does that only happen when the besieger sent all of his forces to storm the castle?

Just tested: yes, retreating defenders will survive even if the attacker leaves a commander on "Siege."

vfb said:
Fort defenders can survive if they retreat during a sally (break siege). They can retreat to any neighboring friendly provinces. They just can't retreat back into the fort.

Page 69 of the manual, under Break Siege movement command: "Units which retreat are eliminated." If you're sure they aren't eliminated, then [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Bug.gif[/img]?

Jazzepi said:
It would be a lot less interesting from a gameplay perspective if all I had to do was pin him down and then route his forces. Instead I would have had to, quite literally, surround the castle.

Then shouldn't the fort defender be able to freely move troops in & out of the fort? In my mind, whatever circumstance prevents defenders from leaving a besieged fort should also prevent them from safely fleeing it when stormed.

sector24 said:
They just dial up the Stargate to an adjacent province.

It is the Fargate. We're not getting sued.



There's a larger strategic consequence here:
Intuitively, when an enemy force approaches one of my forts, I SHOULD face two choices:
(1) withdraw the defenders, sacrificing the fort but saving the troops
OR
(2) dig in, keeping the fort at the risk of the defenders' annihilation

Instead, I'm faced with no such choice: the smartest, most obvious option is to always dig in; if besieged, simply teleport in as many BagsOfWine needed to keep the troops full; when the walls are breached, retreat. I get to have my cake and eat it too: I deny my enemy the fort (and more importantly, his besieging army) for as long as possible, and STILL get to keep my defenders. Nonsense.

[Sombre]

I like it the way it is. This is just another case of the manual being completely wrong.

From a gameplay standpoint I agree with Jazzepi and from a theme perspective you can argue it either way. Unless something is obviously wrong in terms of flavour or basic common sense, theme shouldn't come into it.

[vfb]

I got confused by the wording in the manual on this too.

It actually says, "Units which retreat are eliminated instead of being able to return to the fortress."

What that means is, they cannot break siege, then retreat to the fortress. The manual does not say they cannot retreat to a neighboring province.

I like it the way it works now (if you hadn't guessed that already ).

[Agema]

Survivors from the losing side of a siege isn't that improbable. During the rout some could escape the fortress outright through tunnels, sewers, maybe a river or the sea if there's one available. Some might play dead, or hide, remove their uniforms and pretend to be non-combatants, then rejoin the cause when it's safe.

In terms of famous survivors from a siege in myth (and Dom3 is surely based on myths!), Aeneas and a load of Trojans escaped Troy to later found the progenitor of Rome.

Edit:
Actually, I should add: if you want additional casualties after a siege, you should give an additional morale bonus to the defenders. If their chance of dying after routing is increased, you can bet they'd fight a lot harder too.

[Maraxus]

Moral failure describes: "This unit values it's life higher then the victory in the battle. This (in case of really slow units, this combined with a total lack of battle-overview) makes them retreat rather then fight on."

I think you should avoid "fleeing troops die" as much as possible, unless you add a really good "nothing to loose" boost to moral for such situations.

[archaeolept]

eh, it does allow the "exploit" or sortieing w/ your army set to retreat... you could save your entire besieged force that way

[cleveland]

Maraxus said:
I think you should avoid "fleeing troops die" as much as possible, unless you add a really good "nothing to loose" boost to moral for such situations.

They aren't dying, they're surrendering.

[Endoperez]

To nations like Sauromatia, who eat the captured enemies.