Flying units attacking rear ?

[Nephelim]

Originally posted by Psitticine:
The mechanics are that, essentially, the unit must pass a check to bypass each unit and keep moving further back. The more units within range of their passage, the less likely it is that they'll reach the rear row.

What's the logic behind a flying unit needing to do so?

Would they mistakenly believe that -this- unit is the Last unit? I assume that units can see the entire battlefield, especially when airborne.

Is it a game-mechanics thing, so that a bunch of flying units aren't immediately a mage-killer?

[liga]

So, it'is not a problem of how much far are my flayers in the battlefield but what they meet mefore reaching the end ...

so teh best way is to split my flayres in small Groups trying to cover as much battlefield as possible and also, as Gandalf suggest, give some of them the attack archer orders ... I'll try!

thks
Liga

[PvK]

Well, my theory is that it's fine to put them in the back corner, or back middle, and that Hold and Attack is best, or Guard Commander with the commander on Hold Hold ... Hold Attack Rear, and that it's best to have as many such units as possible, and it's best to have as many Groups of such units as possible.

In watching these things, it seems to me that if one of your own Groups has targetted an enemy group, it seems more likely that an Attack Rear group will bypass those and go for an unengaged group. So the more Groups on attack rear, the more likely to get to the actual rear. But the numbers in each group seem to help too. If you have a ton of units on attack rear, then some tend to get to the actual rear, especially if they are flying.

PvK

[tinkthank]

It depends on how the enemy army is grouped, I think. I *think* it may be a question of "rearmost" in terms of squads.
If they are all lumped together, the troops *will* go to the rearmost.

I made a little post here with an anecdote which may illustrate what I mean:

http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin...&f=74&t=002246

[velk]

Originally posted by Argitoth:

The ice devil will attack rearmost because the army is not in the way.

This is my hypothesis (educated guess).

This seemed reasonable, and straightforward enough to test, so I set up the following.

Test 1 : A black knight at the rear middle of field with orders to hold. An ulm bodyguard in the center of the field, directly in front of him, also with orders to hold.

On the opponent side a van in the front center ( in line with bodyguard and commander ) also with orders to hold, and behind him at the rear a valkyrie with orders to attack rear.

Results : About 50% of the time the valkyrie would attack the knight, and about 50% of the time his bodyguard.

Test 2 : I moved both the valkyrie and knight to the bottom of the screen, and the bodyguard and the van to the top of the screen.

Results : About 50% of the time the valkyrie would attack the knight, and about 50% of the time his bodyguard.

Overall I am kind of puzzled. My best guess is that there is some kind of fudge factor applied to prevent you from ambushing commanders easily.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by velk:
Overall I am kind of puzzled. My best guess is that there is some kind of fudge factor applied to prevent you from ambushing commanders easily.

That's exactly what happens, as stated by the devs quite some time ago.

[Gandalf Parker]

Im not sure if its "fact" or not. Im terrible at doing proper scientific testing. But Ive developed an arrangment of putting fast units (4-leg, flyers, etc) at extreme flanking postitions such as Argitoth was showing, and justslightly back from the frontline troops so they dont get targeted by enemy infantry.

I set the left flank (upper one on the screen) to attack archers, and the right flank (lower one on the screen) to attack rearmost. I think I developed this because it works better that way for most armies I meet which didnt have a human make their arrangment. Feel free to test it.

[ April 08, 2004, 18:13: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]