Fleeing through enemy lines penalty

I hate it when I flank an enemy, they flee straight through me, then re-engage after fleeing one inch behind me.

There needs to be a severe penalty for fleeing through enemy lines either in terms of
1) massive morale penalty (i.e. they flee REALLY FAR)
2) Massive Casualty penalty (i.e. most of the guys die)

This can lead to some interesting new tactics as well.

Sid Meiers Civil war strategy game had some great modifiers. Units got morale boosts when friendly units were on their flanks - as in a long fighting wall. Something similar would prevent over aggressive use of rearing, which usually leaves your flanks exposed.

BC is the best strategy Sid Meier's Civil war, so I hope BC developers can look to the MASTER for some hints.

Jim The Bow

+1
Units fleeing right through my army without being scratched seems really weird to me.

+1

This has already been discussed here, http://www.battleconforum.com/t1660-enemies-fleeing. Maybe we can move discussions to that one ?

THIS IS ENOUGH!!!

I just had a coop with Dobraine, and we fought vs Orcs.|
My 4 HI was engaged with them and the 1 enemy HI fled right through my 4 HI and then regrouped when they were through!      

Then they reared my arse off!      

This should be adjusted!

-20% morale fleeing through enemy lines
or  
At least half of the unit that flees dies. (example: if a unit of 20 is reduced to 14 and the unit flees through enemy lines 7 should die.)

Nothing less please.  

- Gimli
  (ign- Gimlithedrunk255)

      

Would seem to me you would run AWAY from the army killing you...not into their lines...  

Maybe make it where they head away from the biggest concentration of enemy troops and then if they hit others the units get free swipes at them like at half attacks....

To simulate getting a quick slash at them or something>?

Two things.

1. The likelihood of enemies retreating in the wrong direction needs to be looked at. It happens far too often.

2. Just have units that flee through enemy units suffer trample damage (just as when they are being chased down), but have it happen twice as fast.

XViper wrote:

The likelihood of enemies retreating in the wrong direction needs to be looked at. It happens far too often.

There is no wrong direction. When a unit is surrounded by enemies, it will flee directly away from the enemy unit which caused the last hit and consequently caused the fleeing action. Since the unit is surrounded, there is a great possibility of the unit fleeing through enemy units.

Simer77089 wrote:

Maybe make it where they head away from the biggest concentration of enemy troops and then if they hit others the units get free swipes at them like at half attacks....

To simulate getting a quick slash at them or something>?

XViper wrote:

Just have units that flee through enemy units suffer trample damage (just as when they are being chased down), but have it happen twice as fast.

It does...It receives AOO (Attacks of Opportunity).

What we can do is increase the damage so it is more painful to flee through enemy units.

Noted and it will be implemented.

maybe solution could be little different. When enemy units fleeing throw my fighting units it gets no damage then recover and rear my troops. What if my troops could hit flleing unit still fighting with enenmy (of course if they have soldeirs free to do for example 15 soldiers left in units 5 soldiers are fighting against one enemy and another 5 could hit retreating unit passing throw battlefield).

To be fair it's only when I will rear an enemy is when they will flee through my units. I have never had it happen before if it was just my units battling theres.

Scaren wrote:

To be fair it's only when I will rear an enemy is when they will flee through my units. I have never had it happen before if it was just my units battling theres.

I have had it happen when one unit (or group of units) causes a unit to rout and that unit ends up running completely through other units of mine. Not the ones that caused the rout.

On the rare occasion I have had it where the unit routs from one unit, immediately rallies and gets hit from a flanking unit that causes the same thing but that is a pretty rare setup.

If they get AOOs that is something at least. Maybe give them an AOO without the benefit of the defense a fighting unit gets that is not equipment related or at a reduced value?

Just tossing out suggestions here...

in my opinion they should not flee through opponents lines always flee in free direction and if they got surrounded just fight to the end or surrender (unit disappears) depends on morale check

Surrendering enemy units would be fun. We could throw them in the dungeon to torture them and subsequently brainwash them. I would like a dwarven hi thinking it s an actual skellie unit.
Maybe a crazy feature that could be implemented for one week a year.

The problem that I see is that enemies flee through your troops NOT when they are surrounded. They flee through my units during head-on collision and then regroup and either rear my army or go destroy my cannons. What's the bloody point of having a defensive line if the enemy flees through my army that is still engaged and cant do anything unless I want to risk a cluster**** of a situation. This is a serious serious problem. It happens like every battle but the enemy usually stops fleeing fast enough to be reengaged by the main force or is low in units so gets insta-killed when rearing my troops.

No one would complain about this if the enemy would flee to the other side from which they get reared or flanked. The problem is that they flee FORWARD when engaged by multiple troops that are completely in front of them. Please fix this.

Piktas wrote:

The problem that I see is that enemies flee through your troops NOT when they are surrounded. They flee through my units during head-on collision and then regroup and either rear my army or go destroy my cannons. What's the bloody point of having a defensive line if the enemy flees through my army that is still engaged and cant do anything unless I want to risk a cluster**** of a situation. This is a serious serious problem. It happens like every battle but the enemy usually stops fleeing fast enough to be reengaged by the main force or is low in units so gets insta-killed when rearing my troops.

No one would complain about this if the enemy would flee to the other side from which they get reared or flanked. The problem is that they flee FORWARD when engaged by multiple troops that are completely in front of them. Please fix this.

This is exactly the thing why I suggested a disengage function some time ago. It is unrealistic to see enemy units break through your line defense by ''retreating''. When your defense is pinned down by continued fighting with enemies, your cannons are completely vulnerable and are easily destroyed. It happened too often that almost intact mercs, cav. or other enemies broke through by retreating and I only had the choice of having my units retreat too or just have my cannons routed. Since my cannons are in the bottom, my retreating units may also probably walk off the map if I chose to retreat them. This is a problem and should not occur at all.

Just wanted to make a note that I just had a fight that went down like this....

5 light infantry units behind a cliff with my archers (gunners as I am a dwarf) behind them.

Demon spawn army comes around corner...my dwarves smash into them, gunners fire...

Zerks dying well, little red demons break nicely....and run RIGHT THROUGH MY ENTIRE ARMY INTO MY ARCHERS AND RECOVER RIGHT BEFORE TO ATTACK THEM....

Now...the lad killed them right proper..but, here are some facts...

1) There were NO UNITS behind, flanking, rearing or anyplace but IN FRONT of this fleeing enemy. There was NO REASON WHATSOEVER for them to rout TOWARD ME.

2) I was in SOLO FIGHT (Defend a region quest) so there were no ARCHERS or other outside forces hitting these units. It was a toe to toe, in your face fight.

3) The unit that routed RALLIED almost IMMEDIATELY after leaving my massed dwarven infantry, paused just a sec to see the archers, and made a bee line for them. This took maybe 1-2 seconds to completely happen.

My archers were engaged in melee before I could even CLICK them to give a new command and of course, my 5 other infantry units are engaged with the remained of the army these demons just came from kicking butt so THEY can't do what the demons just did...disengage and turn to attack the very things they just routed.

It could have easily been the exact thing being talked about here that these demons got to REAR ATTACK my army instead of hitting the archers. I think the only thing that saved me from it was the archers were ALREADY FIRING at this unit and pulled their attention.

The reason for this post is two fold.

1) I want to make it CLEAR that the idea that an enemy unit always flees AWAY from the army that is hitting it is FALSE.

There is no WAY there was any attacks hitting this demon unit from any direction except straight in front of it. I had no other units but these, no allies are on the board so short of their OWN MELEE FIGHTERS hitting them, there was no attacks from behind on them to send them into my army.

and -

2) To support those that say this kind of thing happens all to often.

Simeron77089 wrote:

Just wanted to make a note that I just had a fight that went down like this....

5 light infantry units behind a cliff with my archers (gunners as I am a dwarf) behind them.

Demon spawn army comes around corner...my dwarves smash into them, gunners fire...

Zerks dying well, little red demons break nicely....and run RIGHT THROUGH MY ENTIRE ARMY INTO MY ARCHERS AND RECOVER RIGHT BEFORE TO ATTACK THEM....

Now...the lad killed them right proper..but, here are some facts...

1) There were NO UNITS behind, flanking, rearing or anyplace but IN FRONT of this fleeing enemy. There was NO REASON WHATSOEVER for them to rout TOWARD ME.

2) I was in SOLO FIGHT (Defend a region quest) so there were no ARCHERS or other outside forces hitting these units. It was a toe to toe, in your face fight.

3) The unit that routed RALLIED almost IMMEDIATELY after leaving my massed dwarven infantry, paused just a sec to see the archers, and made a bee line for them. This took maybe 1-2 seconds to completely happen.

My archers were engaged in melee before I could even CLICK them to give a new command and of course, my 5 other infantry units are engaged with the remained of the army these demons just came from kicking butt so THEY can't do what the demons just did...disengage and turn to attack the very things they just routed.

It could have easily been the exact thing being talked about here that these demons got to REAR ATTACK my army instead of hitting the archers. I think the only thing that saved me from it was the archers were ALREADY FIRING at this unit and pulled their attention.

The reason for this post is two fold.

1) I want to make it CLEAR that the idea that an enemy unit always flees AWAY from the army that is hitting it is FALSE.

There is no WAY there was any attacks hitting this demon unit from any direction except straight in front of it. I had no other units but these, no allies are on the board so short of their OWN MELEE FIGHTERS hitting them, there was no attacks from behind on them to send them into my army.

and -

2) To support those that say this kind of thing happens all to often.

The real tragedy here was a dwarf using archers   

Scaren wrote:

Simeron77089 wrote:

Just wanted to make a note that I just had a fight that went down like this....

5 light infantry units behind a cliff with my archers (gunners as I am a dwarf) behind them.

Demon spawn army comes around corner...my dwarves smash into them, gunners fire...

Zerks dying well, little red demons break nicely....and run RIGHT THROUGH MY ENTIRE ARMY INTO MY ARCHERS AND RECOVER RIGHT BEFORE TO ATTACK THEM....

Now...the lad killed them right proper..but, here are some facts...

1) There were NO UNITS behind, flanking, rearing or anyplace but IN FRONT of this fleeing enemy. There was NO REASON WHATSOEVER for them to rout TOWARD ME.

2) I was in SOLO FIGHT (Defend a region quest) so there were no ARCHERS or other outside forces hitting these units. It was a toe to toe, in your face fight.

3) The unit that routed RALLIED almost IMMEDIATELY after leaving my massed dwarven infantry, paused just a sec to see the archers, and made a bee line for them. This took maybe 1-2 seconds to completely happen.

My archers were engaged in melee before I could even CLICK them to give a new command and of course, my 5 other infantry units are engaged with the remained of the army these demons just came from kicking butt so THEY can't do what the demons just did...disengage and turn to attack the very things they just routed.

It could have easily been the exact thing being talked about here that these demons got to REAR ATTACK my army instead of hitting the archers. I think the only thing that saved me from it was the archers were ALREADY FIRING at this unit and pulled their attention.

The reason for this post is two fold.

1) I want to make it CLEAR that the idea that an enemy unit always flees AWAY from the army that is hitting it is FALSE.

There is no WAY there was any attacks hitting this demon unit from any direction except straight in front of it. I had no other units but these, no allies are on the board so short of their OWN MELEE FIGHTERS hitting them, there was no attacks from behind on them to send them into my army.

and -

2) To support those that say this kind of thing happens all to often.

The real tragedy here was a dwarf using archers   

Eh, one unit of gunners to shoot the ones that flee so I don't have to try to chase em....can't help everyone but the bone bags run from us...heh.

RuneSlayer wrote:

XViper wrote:

The likelihood of enemies retreating in the wrong direction needs to be looked at. It happens far too often.

There is no wrong direction. When a unit is surrounded by enemies, it will flee directly away from the enemy unit which caused the last hit and consequently caused the fleeing action. Since the unit is surrounded, there is a great possibility of the unit fleeing through enemy units.

Yep, I also call this as not quite right. I've had enemy AI flee directly toward the only unit hitting it a number of times today, just as Simeron has described. Only difference being I had no archers so my units were immediately flanked from behind.

It also appears the change to minimum flee time is not really working properly; I still see units flee for a very short time sometimes (less than 5 seconds).

There is a side effect to increasing flee time though... units which flee at 75% morale could end up much more easily running off the map and becoming useless before they've even got started. I feel like the upper limit of morale for a unit to flee should maybe be reduced, to say maybe 60%? It's very frustrating to see 75% morale units fleeing. And it will be more noticeable if the minimum flee time is increased. I'm not saying the likelihood of fleeing should be lower, but just the bounds of morale when a flee is allowed.

Bobba wrote:

It also appears the change to minimum flee time is not really working properly; I still see units flee for a very short time sometimes (less than 5 seconds).

There is a side effect to increasing flee time though... units which flee at 75% morale could end up much more easily running off the map and becoming useless before they've even got started. I feel like the upper limit of morale for a unit to flee should maybe be reduced, to say maybe 60%? It's very frustrating to see 75% morale units fleeing. And it will be more noticeable if the minimum flee time is increased. I'm not saying the likelihood of fleeing should be lower, but just the bounds of morale when a flee is allowed.

It's at 75% when a unit flees now? I thought it was 70% in Everos? Well anyway I thought 70% was too much in Everos. Perhaps at 70% shiver can happen and at 65% then fleeing could happen. I'm not exactly what percentage shiver happens either.

Scaren wrote:

Bobba wrote:

It also appears the change to minimum flee time is not really working properly; I still see units flee for a very short time sometimes (less than 5 seconds).

There is a side effect to increasing flee time though... units which flee at 75% morale could end up much more easily running off the map and becoming useless before they've even got started. I feel like the upper limit of morale for a unit to flee should maybe be reduced, to say maybe 60%? It's very frustrating to see 75% morale units fleeing. And it will be more noticeable if the minimum flee time is increased. I'm not saying the likelihood of fleeing should be lower, but just the bounds of morale when a flee is allowed.

It's at 75% when a unit flees now? I thought it was 70% in Everos? Well anyway I thought 70% was too much in Everos. Perhaps at 70% shiver can happen and at 65% then fleeing could happen. I'm not exactly what percentage shiver happens either.

It might be 70%, I'm not actually certain. I'm almost certain it's either 70% or 75% though. I don't think it has been changed since Erevos.

Enemy fleeing through units is a very annoying issue that can support other annoying issues...

For one in PVE, rearing enemy is being punished. I honestly stopped trying (unless its undead) because there is always someone who gets through my line, gathers and rears me instead, which is far worse for me than just brawling head on head. Flanking is the most one can afford right now.

Secondly there is that part especially about cavaleries who flee at very high morale for no obvious reason. If AI happens to have 3, you are bound in combat forever and cannot do anything but wait because when 1 flees another returns and soooo on. Assumed AI does not have FF from archers this current fleeing through units and fleeing without any reason makes enemy archer packs, no matter which ones, the most deadly units. Yeah really.

On suicide you cant afford to not focus all your units on melee and you cant leave that melee until everyone is dead or fleeing for good. Which involves every AI unit that is able to flee, to flee and return at least 2-3 times, and a lot of those times go through your lines which makes battles that look easy, very hard instead.

More attacks of opportunity for all soldiers that are not involved in a hand to hand + higher morale loss for breaking through is needed.

Ok I am SICK of doing all kinds of different stuff and getting the same damn results. If i don't flank and just fight the enemy head on i have no chance of winning vs undead and even if I do start making orc and DL flee they flee THROUGH MY TROOPS. Who flees through the enemy? When no one is flanking them? And then guess what they rear my troops and it's game over. How about if i decide to go by the book and flank or rear the enemy? Well surprise surprise they stop fleeing either in the middle of my whole army or just in time to flank and/or rear me. Same result. Whatever you do you have to have capped units to avoid this stupidity. So much for strategy in a strategy game.

Seriously get a handle on this nonsense. Core mechanic of the game is just broken.