Wishlist: Set Battle Orders : More Options

[Ironhawk]

Any orders which make units hold position extensively or move backwards instead of forwards just dont have a place in Dominions combat. While they seem reasonable to you and I, in the real world, they break the model of dom combat which is that it always progresses forward without ceasing. And I believe it does so with good reason - as Edi points about above, if you give orders which hold back or wait excessively you end up just having armies sit around and see how long they can stare at each other. This is a battle! The armies need to get in there and fight and resolve it.

To get this thread back to what the OP was about tho: I think Atredi's suggestion is a great one. Others have suggested spell lists, and selecting spells which the AI should never cast, but these are too much MM. Having a really rough tool like this tho could give the player more flexibility without much Micro.

[Agema]

Originally Posted by Ironhawk

Any orders which make units hold position extensively or move backwards instead of forwards just dont have a place in Dominions combat. While they seem reasonable to you and I, in the real world, they break the model of dom combat which is that it always progresses forward without ceasing. And I believe it does so with good reason - as Edi points about above, if you give orders which hold back or wait excessively you end up just having armies sit around and see how long they can stare at each other. This is a battle! The armies need to get in there and fight and resolve it.

I agree entirely with the stand ground problem. Although you can possibly do sort of do that by setting a commander to stay behind troops and giving his unit guard commander orders. If they are archers, they may even fire if enemies are in range - I can test it over the weekend if no-one else does.

I was pretty much assuming for a "skirmish" order the unit would move forward initially, start firing/retreating, and then move forward again once ammo was expended (or couldn't retreat any more as the back of the battlefield got in the way).

Hold and fire would be nice. Although I guess with good placing you could put your archers far enough behind the frontline that they'd move up for a few turns and then start shooting when the enemy got in range which would be a bit like hold&fire.