Stop the (routing) Madness!

[Kristoffer O]

I have come across strange incidents where commanders sometimes stay and fight. I have noticed this only when all soldiers are killed in the first round of battle or something soimilar. It was long since Last time and I'm not sure what happened. IIRC it was a PD battle.

Commanders rout when all troops are lost. If you summon one skeleton (twin spear is working now) and the skeleton is killed you have lost all your soldiers and you will therefore retreat.

[En Forcer]

Here's a dumb question:

Do all the rallying and morale boosters also work on commanders? The Standard, Horn of Valor, Special abilities and all that...

This whole problem also sounds a lot similar to the Moloch/imp issue.

[Cainehill]

Kristoffer O said:
I have come across strange incidents where commanders sometimes stay and fight. I have noticed this only when all soldiers are killed in the first round of battle or something soimilar. It was long since Last time and I'm not sure what happened. IIRC it was a PD battle.

Commanders rout when all troops are lost. If you summon one skeleton (twin spear is working now) and the skeleton is killed you have lost all your soldiers and you will therefore retreat.

The twin spear one I could understand, at least according to game mechanics.

But the commanders are staying around when the troops were killed long after the first round of combat : the 4th round or later, and not just with PD. Air Queens, Tuatha, PD commanders, etc, none of which were berserk. Would turn files showing this be helpful in debugging and tracking it down, or do you need files from the host server as well?

[Soapyfrog]

Kristoffer O said:
Commanders rout when all troops are lost. If you summon one skeleton (twin spear is working now) and the skeleton is killed you have lost all your soldiers and you will therefore retreat.

But surely this isn't desirable? Shouldn't an exception be made for battle summons?

[Cainehill]

Soapyfrog said:

But surely this isn't desirable? Shouldn't an exception be made for battle summons?

Especially given that otherwise, a group of commanders with no troops can attack, and on turn 5 (or sooner, with haste/quicken) a phantasmal warrior or skeleton is summoned, gets killed, and routs.

Except of course, that the commanders currently might not rout until they're all dead, which is arguably worse.

[Esben Mose Hansen]

We've had the discussion about early routing before.,

Poll: morale and routing

Why have it again? More than half voted for no change at that time.

I, for one, like the current routing rules, except for one small thing already mentioned in the other thread.

Commanders not routing sounds like a bug, I agree. I havn't experienced this myself, so I have no opion in this matter.

[Molog]

I dislike the commanders always route when all units have been killed rule.

[deccan]

It isn't so much that we hate a particular rule than that we wish that there would be a particular fixed rule that we can confidently know applies consistently.

[Arryn]

Molog said:
I dislike the commanders always route when all units have been killed rule.

The devs have posted their defense/justification for this so if you hold out any hopes of it changing, expect to be disappointed. Personally, FWIW, I dislike it too. But Dominions is predominantly a game about armies, not heroes (despite the HoF), and the (rout) mechanics reflect this.

[Cainehill]

I'm not suggesting a discussion about the routing - my bane lord routing was as I might have predicted based on the current game mechanics. ( I do think it's flawed that I might have a mighty spellcaster wearing the shoes that teleport him around the battle, casting mighty spells, but routing as the 6th spell is randomly phantasmal soldier. )

But right now, there are battles that should have been won that aren't, because the routing rules weren't applied, and commanders lost for the same reason. Sometimes the nation whose commanders don't rout when they should have wins, because an SC keeps rampaging when it shouldn't. Sometimes the nation loses the commanders, which it should have been able to count on retreating when all the troops were lost.

I don't think it's supposed to be, "Sometimes non-berserk commanders will rout when all troops are killed or retreat, and sometimes they won't."