Auto-routing alternatives

[Zeldor]

We are playing a game with pretenders. Most units fanatically follow their beliefs.

Routing from your last bastion shouldn't be an option. You stay there and die in the glory of your god. Well, glory of what's left from that god.

cleveland:
If there was no routing on both sides at all I think I would win that batttle. Golem was not hurt as long as my mages were there. They would banish remaining manikins and golem would probably kill your leaders.

[cleveland]

Zeldor said:
If there was no routing on both sides at all I think I would win that batttle.

Definitely. But your army routed thematically: their champion was paralyzed. My army routed athematically: it was supper time, and you can't kill a paralyzed 3hp golem on an empty stomach.

------------
Back to the topic of the thread:

Endoperez said:
I'd understand initiating the auto-rout at turn 125, auto-kill at 150, but 400 turns?

I just threw 5X out there as a seemingly impossible-to-reach-without-having-entered-an-infinite-loop turn limit.

125/150 seems pretty reasonable, and would certainly be better than 50/75.

I frankly don't have enough experience to suggest "optimal" turn limits, but 50/75 is too short; simply increasing the limits would be a quick and easy way to alleviate the problem (read: available in 3.16, in time for the megagame).

[Zeldor]

cleveland:

No, my Golem had absolutely nothing to do with it. My elephants had probably around 70% HP of my whole army, golem was doing fine but 1 feebleminded mage with bodyguards decided to help the golem, they died and it was enough to get over 75% limit and start routing of my other mages. If I had no elephants it would never happen, quite stupid solution.

And about limit:
Yep, it should be really increased. Sometimes there are situation when you just cannot finish it very fast. But you need most of the time just few turns more. Usually with all that stales there are just few units and processing that is very fast. My tartarian in urapara would just get few more afflictions [I wonder what happens if he gets all possible ones] but many mindless beings would be saved from that humiliating death.

[thejeff]

Of course the old (dom2) 75% or units was worse. 2-3 points of PD routing or dying meant your SC pretender fled the field.

[vfb]

I'd prefer to not see the combat length extended beyond 75 turns. In the late game you can end up with 2 big armies fighting each other, both sides with Fog Warriors up, some Army of Lead/Gold, Antimagic, Rigor Mortis, Storm Warriors, Life after Death ... etc etc. That kind of fight can just drag on and on, and mages don't help much because they fatigue out almost as fast as the armies.

What I'd like to see is, instead of death at turn 50 or 75, just move the attackers to a friendly neighboring province, as if they had retreated. No need to auto-route the attacker at turn 50 either. The defender still has a chance to wipe out the entire attacking army, by cutting off all avenues of retreat.

[Endoperez]

vfb said:
What I'd like to see is, instead of death at turn 50 or 75, just move the attackers to a friendly neighboring province, as if they had retreated. No need to auto-route the attacker at turn 50 either. The defender still has a chance to wipe out the entire attacking army, by cutting off all avenues of retreat.

That would actually be far worse punishment: you have to rescript your entire army, redistribute your troops among your commanders again, etc etc. So much hassle for what was, essentially, a defeat.

You had a good point about long battles, though.

[Ironhawk]

Are people seriously bumping into the auto-rout limit in pitched battles that much?? I havent seen it once in any of Dom3 games where it wasnt something that probably should have been decided by auto-rout anyway (like a horde of chaff unable to damage an SC or something).

[thejeff]

I just hit it, I think, in a battle against Ermor. Fog Warrior regenerating chaff against Will of the Fates, Army of Lead longdead horse, with neither side having any real large area evocations to do serious damage.

The attacker broke with a lot of troops left on the field, I think it was the turn limit, but I didn't count and I'm not running it again. It ran for at least an hour.

[Loren]

Ironhawk said:
Are people seriously bumping into the auto-rout limit in pitched battles that much?? I havent seen it once in any of Dom3 games where it wasnt something that probably should have been decided by auto-rout anyway (like a horde of chaff unable to damage an SC or something).

I've had one game with multiple problems with the auto-route. The culprit was an AI monolith. All his magic was long gone, all he could do was stand there. Despite that he took back his capital from a strong PD force--*defender* auto-route. I then had multiple failures retaking it from him. IIRC I had to buff my army so they could do damage fast enough to kill him in 50 turns and I had to leave an army there to keep killing him until the battlefield overload bug ended the game.

[NTJedi]

Endoperez said:

That would actually be far worse punishment: you have to rescript your entire army, redistribute your troops among your commanders again, etc etc. So much hassle for what was, essentially, a defeat.

You had a good point about long battles, though.

It's a far worse punishment when units/commanders die because of a battle time limitation. It's only natural to want spending the time reorganizing the units/commanders instead of completely losing the units/commanders.
"Let's see 55 disorganized units and commanders of mine in my friendly provinces OR 55 DEAD units and commanders of mine. "