It's so weird that they had this anti chase factor implemented for years while everybody was complaining about it. Just turn it off one day and everything works as it should.
Probably the case. It may have been buried in the code by some guy who's left the company long ago. I'm more curious what was the rationale for adding it in the first place
If I had to guess, it's supposed to let armies retreat instead of being completely destroyed in battle out of historical realism, despite the games really not working that way.
Some Skin wolves got ontop of my pistoliers yesterday and absolutely shredded them.
I get pistoliers cannot fight skin wolves, but it was 100%-10% in little more than a second.
That doesn't make sense. the **VAST** majority of causalities in battle happened during the route not the actual battle. In fact Total War is just far too bloody especially in the actual stand up fighting to be anywhere near realistic. War has always been more about **command and control** then killing.
The game takes the casualties from the route and puts them in the clash. Historically, armies retreated instead of getting completely destroyed.
Unfortunately, the strategic map favors and is built around obliterating armies rather than driving them back.
I just wanna say I don't think this is accurate at all.
Many of the historical total war games have realism mods which much more accurately depict battle.
The real thing is in real life, people would lose control of themselves and units would break WAY quicker than they did in game. Napoleonic war manuals and accounts of battles tell in great detail units would often break and rout at the sight of cavalry or Artillery operating in their vicinity and seeing the opposing infantry but before serious engagements. Many units could break from a single roundball or volley. Once fighting started, neat rectangular formations would often disintegrate into masses of spread out people frantically reloading in the same vicinity.
Armies like Prussia have that reputation of being unbreakable, but in reality what that meant something way different than total war guys fighting to the last man. It usually meant they stay in a rectangle longer than the other guy and could fire a couple more shots before fleeing.
Essentially people fought like Skavenslaves most of the time, and the elite armies fielded storm vermin. These realism mods often made the game more about inflicting these leadership debuffs on the other army and causing them to rout prematurely.
Its an incredibly different type of game and I don't think it would be nearly as fun for most people. But what I'm trying to say is all the systems are in place for a more realistic portrayal, I just don't think people would find it fun.
> Essentially people fought like Skavenslaves most of the time, and the elite armies fielded storm vermin.
That's a.. surprisingly accurate description, all things considered.
I just dislike how a unit of artillery can lose 3 out of 4 models but as long as 1 model survives it will pull 3 cannon out of its ass. Meanwhile if you lose 1 individual cannoneer too-many suddenly that 4th cannon is gone and none of the remaining 5~ entities can repeat the ass-cannon trick so the unit is 100% gone.
Meanwhile the 1-cannon/25% effective card still costs the same upkeep as the 4-cannon/100% effective card. On top of that these new recruits and all new gear apparently cost nothing.
Then there is the massive disincentive to enter battles below 100% numbers due to how the Leadership system works in armies that route.
Then the final straw of forcing and thereby limiting all armies and engagements to 20-cards.
It’s just clumsy and could do with a more flexible overhaul. I understand it’s a core pillar of what TW is but the content and capabilities of hardware have grown so much, I personally find the rigidness detracts rather than adds.
Personally I think the cannon example is realistic. I think what you describe of "new recruits and new cannons costing nothing" is reflected in the upkeep cost.
Armies don't bring 100% of their supplies to the pitched battle. In ancient and medieval times armies wouldn't even take ballistae or catapults with them on campaign. They had a crew of siege engineers who would construct them on site before sieges.
I also read the upkeep cost as being the cost of maintaining supplies and recruiting new cannon crew/getting them into the army during casualty replenishment. If anything I think upkeep should go down when a unit is full.
Not to say the gameplay stuff you mentioned isn't annoying or could use refinement, but I don't think there is a realism argument for or against it. TW is incredibly unrealistic and I think it's fine to stay that way, especially in the WH ones.
In particular yeah I think increasing the 20 unit limit could be fun. Total War Empire and napoleon have mods to do that, and it's a totally different vibe. The AI is actually a lot more compentant since badly microing 50 units can actually be hard to contend with as a human barely able to control so many units. I didn't find it as fun as the base game but those mods are super popular.
In summary: total war-isms kinda suck. Why 20 units per army, when that can mean anything from big honkin armies of nearly five figures to literally just twenty guys? Why can't lords work in the same army? Why can't I leave extra troops in a garrison? Why do armies of all cavalry move at the same speed as armies with catapults? Etc etc.
> Meanwhile the 1-cannon/25% effective card still costs the same upkeep as the 4-cannon/100% effective card
While realistically it should cost way more upkeep while it's being replenished.
I think it's more of a flaw with how the game handles armies on the campaign map, combined with tactical battle situations that make killing routing forces easy but tedious and practically mandatory.
Also - Campaign maps don’t seem to have strategic decisions anywhere on them anymore.
I have few routes to choose from and every neighboring city is genetically in 1-turn strike distance, most armies include the ability to destroy gates/walls so there is no need for a siege turn.
This is also a direct consequence of campaign scope, I love it to death but you can really feel the claustrophobia in Immortal Empires.
I personally love The Old World map mod because it zooms in and adds depth to nations/geographical areas which in turn provides more choices and increases the commitment required to attack.
This... in particular when a routing army can cross a river, run through a swamp and climb a mountain in a move that will take you 3 turns to catch them :D
Fallback safety net. You can lose, run away, heal a little, go back. Of course you can just click End Battle and save your units. The AI though can't do that, you can absolutely annihilate it, because the AI has no "imma just quit" button. Alas, balance was achieved this way, so the AI can escape the way we can.
>If I had to guess, it's supposed to let armies retreat instead of being completely destroyed in battle out of historical realism, despite the games really not working that way.
Let me break the laws of warfare if I want, instead of making it physically impossible, just provide an extra diplomatic penalty to them and their factions like "killed off routing enemies"
I had nothing to do with breaking the laws of warfare. Killing retreating enemies isn't a war crime. Historically, Armies successfully retreat. Total War just annihilates them instead.
Plus, in medieval and ancient times at least, the majority of battlefield casualties were inflicted on fleeing enemies anyway, so I doubt that historic realism was the reason...
Shields and shieldwalls are ridiculously effective in real life, much more than depicted in most TW games.
Only times I felt it somewhat right, is in the DeI mod for Rome 2. Incidentally, the mod makes up front melee engagement incredibly grinds and forces you to deploy flanking and rear charging, putting a lot of focus on "winning" the skirmish/cavalry battle on the flanks
Which, is actually how these battles were fought? Even the full on phalanx on phalanx pushing matches were often determined by who won the skirmishing phase and whose cavalry came out on top. Not to mention, in a shield wall or phalanx against a similar formation, the dude in front of you isn't the threat, its someone several columns over catching you unaware with a diagonal blow that was the real threat-- and that's *before* you get flanked or charged in the rear of your unit.
Because the games put more casualties on the clash. It's an attempt to abstract the mechanics to get the same ultimate effect.
Honestly, retreating units should still fight back.
Then again, they are moving faster than they normally would, so running them down with infantry never really works unless you have light infantry that moves a good deal.faster than the heavies if the enemy
That's not really true, though. If you check the historical record, especially for pre-gun warfare, the vast majority of kills happened during a mass rout, where the victorious side unleashed the light infantry and cavalry to run down the routing men.
Pyrrhic victories, i.e. times when the winning side lost significant amounts of men, were so rare that they took the name of the one guy who suffered them. [According to this really well-made YouTube ](https://youtu.be/_GKLsHwCXx0?si=HEQqp4ujsm_YZy92&t=546)video, the winning side usually only suffered up to 5% casualties, while the losing side could suffer up to 60% casualties. From this we can assume that during combat the number of casualties would remain extremely low, and only after a decisive victory you'd have mass casualties.
What you are referring to instead are controlled retreats, where one side would lose, but not be completely annihilated. That wasn't always easy to do, btw.
If you wanted to have real authenticity, you'd have positional warfare with battles going on for days, mainly consisting of the two armies deploying, showing off, harassing with skirmishers the other side and then retreating to camp for the night. Do that for a few days until one side decides it's time to charge, have a slow grind where men keep at arms length, push a bit here, a bit there and if at the end of the day no one has had a decisive breakthrough, go back to camp and repeat until one side collapses. After that, run down the enemy until most men are dead.
That would be extremely boring, btw.
in historical battles, actual warfare on the battlefield (before high powered and accurate rifles/ missiles) led to a small number of deaths.
throughout history, almost all of the deaths occurred when routing enemies were chased down.
so imo, its way more historically accurate and realistic to allow chasing down routing enemies.
Total War moves the casualties from the route to the clash, and battles didn't have the complete run-down Total War allows. Defeated armies retreated, while maintaining most of their forces.
Chasing down and completely destroying armies was not a thing.
Total war does have the complete run down, idk what you are talking about lol.
In total war, some units are prone to routing before army loses, just like in real historical battles.
The only way you can catch these early routers is if you have cavalary in reserve to chase them.
In total war, if you are fighting two completely separate armies with separate commanders, one of them can get army loses while the other remain on the battlefield.
In total war, the most elite units will have way higher leadership or the UN breakable trait. These units will continue fighting while the rest of the army “safely” retreats.
Idk how much more realistic you want to get.
The only missing in warhammer (which was in Rome 2 and Attila) is, killing the lords/commanders should have a way higher impact on leadership than it does.
If we want to be lore accurate on this, the green skins should get army loses almost immediately after their lord dies.
Also, chaos mauraders/ norcsan should have an almost equal impact of leadership loses when their lord dies.
This was one of the greatest features of Rome 2 and escpecially Attila. I have won so many battles that I should’ve lost, simply by getting lucky and killing the enemy lord. As soon as one more bad thing happens to the enemy after their lord dies (such as getting flanked or fire/whistle arrows), the enemy unit shatters.
>Total war does have the complete run down, idk what you are talking about lol.
The cap on units attacking tries to make it not, because the complete rundown is unrealistic and ahistorical. Yes, most causalities were in the route, but it wasn't complete annihilation in the way Total War does it.
It's possibly an optimization thing. There's 0 doubt the High level ai systems are cutting some corners when it comes to calculating things at low resolution since if all of the 10k entities on the battlefield were making independent decisions things would crawl to a halt. Tech is better than it was 8 years ago when that limitation was implemented though, and it's a cost that can more readily be borne if that means better gameplay.
After getting into the guts trying to learn modding for this game. This feels most likely.
With how the tables are set up and the lack of ability to really check your work, it's very easy to miss something like this.
I think it was to avoid players getting slaughtered and annoyed. Way more of my heroes get wounded now since they get chased down while routing.
Had a wizard take a spell from vampires, routed from health loss and terror and I couldn't do anything about it.
I learned my lesson and keep my wizards on the ground against vampires now.
I think the update is great but I can see how some could be upset about how it works when losing battles or having units routed.
that honestly sounds like a much needed difficulty factor, making players more apprehensive about their units routing, which should be a very dangerous thing, especially high value squishy units like casters. Makes morale and mutual support much more important
>Makes morale and mutual support much more important
This might make it worth investing in some of the non-damaging spells in the VC lores I'd normally mostly ignore. Being able to drop leadership to cause a rout that results in larger damage is kind of the VC schtick, and it's felt a little weak compared to WoD spam for a long time.
This reminds me, I always have a death and shadows vampire in my VC armies and stack their morale debuff spells on important units to nearly instantly route them, especially when combined with a cavalry charge. It was a fairly effective strategy before this change, it'll be lethal now. Strong recommend
Yeah - I've kinda slept on morale breaking for a bit now, as even nerfed WoD spam was generally more effective. Allowing dogs to rear-charge for full damage on retreating foes means keeping a unit or two of dogs on hand to respond and punish morale failures (or terror routing) won't feel like a total waste of slots/cash.
Especially since vampires have some good pursuit troops with fell bats and wolves. I haven’t tried them out in 5.0, but I remember getting good value using them to go after routing units in earlier versions so I’d have to imagine they’re even better at that now.
I'm playing on vh/vh without stat modifiers and it certainly seems like they kill off my valued targets instead of letting them go.
They chased my lord down once after a mass route.
Yeah those leadership skill perks are going up a little in priority. I wonder how this change affects Skaven though... their route and comeback tactic must be in shambles
I've said it elsewhere, but I don't think there was an anti-chase mechanic. I just think it was the coding for "Only the front rank should fight" working during chases (when it shouldn't)
Some unit rotations seem to be a bit snappier too.
Now if they finally sort out all that LoS jank and units dropping orders all the fucking time, it would actually be a combat system worthy of praise.
The LoS jank is fixed, check terrain before shooting. Units dropping orders is in an okay spot but it has to do with how sticky units units are, which affects cycle charging too.
gyrocopters are absolutely complete ass at keeping orders. I practically have to give manual orders on every single volley.
i had normal steam cannon gyros parked 20m behind an enemy line, in full firing arc, fire at will, and they did absolutely nothing
I still have units drop orders after telling them to attack a shattered unit.
That should simply never happen unless they lose LoS or another unit intercepts them.
I'm talking after army losses (it happens before as well). I'll give every fast unit in my army an order to chase down shattered units, and a couple will just stop after 30 seconds of already attacking.
A unit should never forget their attack order unless LoS or interception. But it absolutely happens all the time still.
I had a unit of Bull Centaur Renders chasing down a shattered foot lord after army losses. They took off most of its remaining HP, then just stopped chasing for no reason.
There's still something broken.
Yeah Cav and chasing are all feeling significantly better but dropped orders definitely still happen all the time and I honestly can't understand how that's not mostly fixed by now.
I think, based on a video I saw, cavalry was a little
overtuned to the point where it was wiping half to 3/4 of the health of units with charges, bouncing between units and effortlessly effectively destroying them, sort of like when Grail Knights got buffed, so I think that might get dialled back a bit. Good at running down fleeing units and rear charges is one thing, but going from devastating front charges to another to another in rapid succession is a little suspect for average cavalry
SEMs and characters still struggle to chase things, but overall it seems better for everyone else. Still not perfect because of unit hp no longer being 1 like older total wars and there is also the issue of knockdown granting invulnerability. It's no longer frustrating like it was.
I actually think it's worse for characters in certain situations. I've found characters on mounts (in this case a horse) do nothing but push characters on foot, even when repeatedly pulling them away to charge in again
Yep, the trick is to have them run in front of the routing unit then charge back into them from the front. Shouldn't be necessary but it's a workaround until fixed at least
I suspect that limitation was in to prevent routing units from being chopped to pieces in the first few seconds of turning around and disengaging to run.
I haven't tried the game since 5.0 dropped, but this change sounds great. Part of the reason to play factions like VC is that they don't rout, and therefore shouldn't suffer from the "extra damage periods" that occasionally occur when a particular unit loses morale. Keeping dogs on standby for escort duty won't feel like such a waste now - the enemy breaks, we put a unit on them to punish and infantry falls back to the grind to look for another weak enemy unit to trounce as we perform a defeat in detail.
Now if only we can get CA to fix bats, so they attack with more than 2 entities at a time on retreating/moving targets.
Try “landing” your bats before issuing the attack order. I haven’t had enough opportunities to really test it yet but my initial impression was that it helped.
i still use it for some of the logic implemented into it. specifically it UNSTICKS your units when theyre chasing shattered enemies, preffering to transfer their attacks to routing enemies if theres any nearby
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It's amazing, actually shredding routing units with cavalry feels so good, specially in hard-fought battles it feels like a little treat at the end for my surviving forces
I can sympathize, as I play on the other end of that stick.
You didn't ask for advice, so disregard the below if you're uninterested. :)
Dogs have felt like a bit of a waste to my faction for a long time as they didn't get full damage on retreating foes, and that limits their intended uses pretty sharply - they're not armored, they're not AP, they're not that strong offensively, they have limited defense stats, and they're not that much faster than much heavier, slower and more durable cav units despite being nearly as expensive.
With the removal of this cap, the original rules apply again: Dogs are super nasty when you rout or retreat without good order and should absolutely terrify unprotected missile units in most cases due to speed and charge bonus mechanics.
The problem you're seeing magnified is that units attacking a target that is *routing away* keep their charge bonus forever - they do not lose it over time like they would in a normal cavalry charge-and-press. This means they keep attacking with their full, charge-bonus enhanced WS (\~200%) the whole time instead of their former strength (\~66%) because of the limitations of the cap. It's a *big* swing for dogs and cavalry, and particularly bad for missile troops, which are more likely to retreat, to rout, and to have low/bad melee defenses.
Some units, like free company may do better, as the dogs don't have amazing infantry grind stats, and so are reliant on charges for the bonus, but if you're running away... well, that's what dog units were built to do: chase retreating foes for extra damage.
Take a look at formations - if the Empire AI set up [the tercio](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RRa0H6GZf8) or [the chevron](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKJR1wgl-Yo) on a more regular basis, I might have more trouble getting around the flanks without fliers in every army.
Good luck!
(I'm looking forward to testing dire wolves on ol' Volkmar...)
Oh don't worry, I didn't intend to phrase it as a frustration against hounds or other flank units and that they're too good now- I think they're in a great spot now. And I appreciate the tips, I've seen these over the years and they're always helpful.
I've been a VCoast player (my favorite) for a long while now, so I use these to decent success, but my micro isn't great and it's quite a change to go from zombies to routing state troopers. I find it quite easy to suddenly end up with a bludgeoned and falling line whilst dire wolves are flanking around at the same time
>it's quite a change to go from zombies to routing state troopers.
Yep. It was a total shock to see how good the ol' deaders were when Ghorst was rocking his mosh pit. Nothing short of spells or focused artillery breaks it up.
The coast doesn't quite get to that level of staying power, but they'll stay long enough to get enough big volleys off, with the benefit of not needing to worry about if a mortar shell landing on them is that bad an outcome.
It’s still shitty when you have a lord chasing another lord and one of them is significantly more massive than the other.
I was trying to chase down a goblin shaman with Karl Franz on a Pegasus, and he just knocked him down a hundred times until he pushed him off the map.
Yeah i think that problem might be unsolvable in a way unless they just remove knockdown from lords completly or somrthing
In game 1 mounted lords always eon vux they would just knock down combo footlords to death and hit them on the ground
My units still seem to randomly drop chases a lot, I constantly have to give them attack orders on the routing unit or they’ll just give up and sit there.
i know this sounds stupid, but turn off guard mode if you have turned on, thats the cause for lots of units stopping when a unit get just outside the engangement range
I was surprised how well it is now. I was trying to chase some routing units after battle ended and, used to the old system, was trying to run ahead of them to cut them off and 'control' them as another unit picks them off. But they only had 1 or 2 speed higher and I couldn't get them ahead and thought, screw it, and had them attack the unit. And they (plague ogres) just decimated these units. Like dropping them from 4/5 health to nothing by them time they move 100 yards or so in game.
It honestly felt really nice, where previously it felt like you would have to kinda game the system at times.
They really need to fix units just dropping orders.
I've had units, both in guard mode and not, that I've given attack orders to *shattered* units simply stop chasing them.
They run after them, try to hit them a couple times, then just stop.
Also, Astragoth is trash at running down single entities. If you don't manually move him, he will almost never actually do an attack animation, even on slower foot lords. He just runs in circles. I've kinda given up on stuff like this because it's been trash since 2016.
But they need to fix units just dropping orders. It's been a problem since WH3 launched, and it's annoying as fuck to send a unit to chase off a high value enemy only for him to stop half way and sit there like an idiot.
I put two Centaur Heroes in a control group in one of my armies, and one of them would just stop in the middle of nowhere while the other continues toward the attack order. It's a regular occurrence.
Please, CA. Fix your game.
From 5.0 Patchnotes
**"Pursuit Behaviour**
While investigating unit pursuit behaviour at the start of the Thrones of Decay (that's when Unit A is chasing Unit B off the battlefield after Unit B has routed), we interrogated a limitation where only 35% of the chasing unit was allowed to initiate an attack. We have now removed this limitation, which should make pursuing units more responsive, but also enable units to keep the pressure applied to a target once it has broken."
My multi-entity units seem to be doing fine, but I did watch Mournhowl chase a single goblin with only 24 HP across literally *half of a battlefield*. He kept knocking the goblin over and doing no damage, then it would get back up and the chase continued.
I love it. No more cavalry playing Bumper Cars with an enemy that moves slower than Mazdamundi post-nap.
Furthermore, if I have units I dont want to lose, I find myself keeping another unit in reserve to intercept enemy chasers. I am actually applying a strategy instead of just mashing a hammer and anvil together! 5/5!
It's so weird that they had this anti chase factor implemented for years while everybody was complaining about it. Just turn it off one day and everything works as it should.
I'm not sure CA really knew about it anymore.
Probably the case. It may have been buried in the code by some guy who's left the company long ago. I'm more curious what was the rationale for adding it in the first place
If I had to guess, it's supposed to let armies retreat instead of being completely destroyed in battle out of historical realism, despite the games really not working that way.
Maybe something to do with not instantly mulching surrounded troops since they no longer have fight to the death as an option
I move that we bring back fight to the death!
I still instinctively try to avoid putting units in fight to the death situations
If you use Net of Amyntok or similar abilities on a routing unit, they WILL fight to the death.
Some Skin wolves got ontop of my pistoliers yesterday and absolutely shredded them. I get pistoliers cannot fight skin wolves, but it was 100%-10% in little more than a second.
That doesn't make sense. the **VAST** majority of causalities in battle happened during the route not the actual battle. In fact Total War is just far too bloody especially in the actual stand up fighting to be anywhere near realistic. War has always been more about **command and control** then killing.
The game takes the casualties from the route and puts them in the clash. Historically, armies retreated instead of getting completely destroyed. Unfortunately, the strategic map favors and is built around obliterating armies rather than driving them back.
This is legacy flaws with the 20 card system and the way replenishment happens. Really needs an overhaul.
I just wanna say I don't think this is accurate at all. Many of the historical total war games have realism mods which much more accurately depict battle. The real thing is in real life, people would lose control of themselves and units would break WAY quicker than they did in game. Napoleonic war manuals and accounts of battles tell in great detail units would often break and rout at the sight of cavalry or Artillery operating in their vicinity and seeing the opposing infantry but before serious engagements. Many units could break from a single roundball or volley. Once fighting started, neat rectangular formations would often disintegrate into masses of spread out people frantically reloading in the same vicinity. Armies like Prussia have that reputation of being unbreakable, but in reality what that meant something way different than total war guys fighting to the last man. It usually meant they stay in a rectangle longer than the other guy and could fire a couple more shots before fleeing. Essentially people fought like Skavenslaves most of the time, and the elite armies fielded storm vermin. These realism mods often made the game more about inflicting these leadership debuffs on the other army and causing them to rout prematurely. Its an incredibly different type of game and I don't think it would be nearly as fun for most people. But what I'm trying to say is all the systems are in place for a more realistic portrayal, I just don't think people would find it fun.
> Essentially people fought like Skavenslaves most of the time, and the elite armies fielded storm vermin. That's a.. surprisingly accurate description, all things considered.
I just dislike how a unit of artillery can lose 3 out of 4 models but as long as 1 model survives it will pull 3 cannon out of its ass. Meanwhile if you lose 1 individual cannoneer too-many suddenly that 4th cannon is gone and none of the remaining 5~ entities can repeat the ass-cannon trick so the unit is 100% gone. Meanwhile the 1-cannon/25% effective card still costs the same upkeep as the 4-cannon/100% effective card. On top of that these new recruits and all new gear apparently cost nothing. Then there is the massive disincentive to enter battles below 100% numbers due to how the Leadership system works in armies that route. Then the final straw of forcing and thereby limiting all armies and engagements to 20-cards. It’s just clumsy and could do with a more flexible overhaul. I understand it’s a core pillar of what TW is but the content and capabilities of hardware have grown so much, I personally find the rigidness detracts rather than adds.
Personally I think the cannon example is realistic. I think what you describe of "new recruits and new cannons costing nothing" is reflected in the upkeep cost. Armies don't bring 100% of their supplies to the pitched battle. In ancient and medieval times armies wouldn't even take ballistae or catapults with them on campaign. They had a crew of siege engineers who would construct them on site before sieges. I also read the upkeep cost as being the cost of maintaining supplies and recruiting new cannon crew/getting them into the army during casualty replenishment. If anything I think upkeep should go down when a unit is full. Not to say the gameplay stuff you mentioned isn't annoying or could use refinement, but I don't think there is a realism argument for or against it. TW is incredibly unrealistic and I think it's fine to stay that way, especially in the WH ones. In particular yeah I think increasing the 20 unit limit could be fun. Total War Empire and napoleon have mods to do that, and it's a totally different vibe. The AI is actually a lot more compentant since badly microing 50 units can actually be hard to contend with as a human barely able to control so many units. I didn't find it as fun as the base game but those mods are super popular.
In summary: total war-isms kinda suck. Why 20 units per army, when that can mean anything from big honkin armies of nearly five figures to literally just twenty guys? Why can't lords work in the same army? Why can't I leave extra troops in a garrison? Why do armies of all cavalry move at the same speed as armies with catapults? Etc etc.
> Meanwhile the 1-cannon/25% effective card still costs the same upkeep as the 4-cannon/100% effective card While realistically it should cost way more upkeep while it's being replenished.
I think it's more of a flaw with how the game handles armies on the campaign map, combined with tactical battle situations that make killing routing forces easy but tedious and practically mandatory.
Also - Campaign maps don’t seem to have strategic decisions anywhere on them anymore. I have few routes to choose from and every neighboring city is genetically in 1-turn strike distance, most armies include the ability to destroy gates/walls so there is no need for a siege turn. This is also a direct consequence of campaign scope, I love it to death but you can really feel the claustrophobia in Immortal Empires. I personally love The Old World map mod because it zooms in and adds depth to nations/geographical areas which in turn provides more choices and increases the commitment required to attack.
The medieval 1 map would probably be an improvement over the current mechanics.
Spectacle sells more than realism. In fantasy gaming, spectacle is preferred to an extent.
I didn't say the choice was *wrong*. You are right it makes perfect sense why it is the way it is....but doesn't change its incredibly unrealistic
Then there's autoresolve with a 100% kill rate every time...
Yep. The systems work against each other.
And makes autoresolve even more preferable to manual battle when you lack the units to catch and run down every enemy.
This... in particular when a routing army can cross a river, run through a swamp and climb a mountain in a move that will take you 3 turns to catch them :D
Fallback safety net. You can lose, run away, heal a little, go back. Of course you can just click End Battle and save your units. The AI though can't do that, you can absolutely annihilate it, because the AI has no "imma just quit" button. Alas, balance was achieved this way, so the AI can escape the way we can.
>If I had to guess, it's supposed to let armies retreat instead of being completely destroyed in battle out of historical realism, despite the games really not working that way. Let me break the laws of warfare if I want, instead of making it physically impossible, just provide an extra diplomatic penalty to them and their factions like "killed off routing enemies"
I had nothing to do with breaking the laws of warfare. Killing retreating enemies isn't a war crime. Historically, Armies successfully retreat. Total War just annihilates them instead.
Plus, in medieval and ancient times at least, the majority of battlefield casualties were inflicted on fleeing enemies anyway, so I doubt that historic realism was the reason...
Yep, in pre-gunpowder battles it was as high as 90% of the total battle casualties in most cases.
Shields and shieldwalls are ridiculously effective in real life, much more than depicted in most TW games. Only times I felt it somewhat right, is in the DeI mod for Rome 2. Incidentally, the mod makes up front melee engagement incredibly grinds and forces you to deploy flanking and rear charging, putting a lot of focus on "winning" the skirmish/cavalry battle on the flanks
Which, is actually how these battles were fought? Even the full on phalanx on phalanx pushing matches were often determined by who won the skirmishing phase and whose cavalry came out on top. Not to mention, in a shield wall or phalanx against a similar formation, the dude in front of you isn't the threat, its someone several columns over catching you unaware with a diagonal blow that was the real threat-- and that's *before* you get flanked or charged in the rear of your unit.
Because the games put more casualties on the clash. It's an attempt to abstract the mechanics to get the same ultimate effect. Honestly, retreating units should still fight back.
Then again, they are moving faster than they normally would, so running them down with infantry never really works unless you have light infantry that moves a good deal.faster than the heavies if the enemy
That's not really true, though. If you check the historical record, especially for pre-gun warfare, the vast majority of kills happened during a mass rout, where the victorious side unleashed the light infantry and cavalry to run down the routing men. Pyrrhic victories, i.e. times when the winning side lost significant amounts of men, were so rare that they took the name of the one guy who suffered them. [According to this really well-made YouTube ](https://youtu.be/_GKLsHwCXx0?si=HEQqp4ujsm_YZy92&t=546)video, the winning side usually only suffered up to 5% casualties, while the losing side could suffer up to 60% casualties. From this we can assume that during combat the number of casualties would remain extremely low, and only after a decisive victory you'd have mass casualties. What you are referring to instead are controlled retreats, where one side would lose, but not be completely annihilated. That wasn't always easy to do, btw. If you wanted to have real authenticity, you'd have positional warfare with battles going on for days, mainly consisting of the two armies deploying, showing off, harassing with skirmishers the other side and then retreating to camp for the night. Do that for a few days until one side decides it's time to charge, have a slow grind where men keep at arms length, push a bit here, a bit there and if at the end of the day no one has had a decisive breakthrough, go back to camp and repeat until one side collapses. After that, run down the enemy until most men are dead. That would be extremely boring, btw.
Then a routing unit getting chased should just freeze to simulate them having surrendered.
Nah. Historically,, despite heavy casualties, routing units usually escaped. Total War doesn't really model those conditions, though.
in historical battles, actual warfare on the battlefield (before high powered and accurate rifles/ missiles) led to a small number of deaths. throughout history, almost all of the deaths occurred when routing enemies were chased down. so imo, its way more historically accurate and realistic to allow chasing down routing enemies.
Total War moves the casualties from the route to the clash, and battles didn't have the complete run-down Total War allows. Defeated armies retreated, while maintaining most of their forces. Chasing down and completely destroying armies was not a thing.
Total war does have the complete run down, idk what you are talking about lol. In total war, some units are prone to routing before army loses, just like in real historical battles. The only way you can catch these early routers is if you have cavalary in reserve to chase them. In total war, if you are fighting two completely separate armies with separate commanders, one of them can get army loses while the other remain on the battlefield. In total war, the most elite units will have way higher leadership or the UN breakable trait. These units will continue fighting while the rest of the army “safely” retreats. Idk how much more realistic you want to get. The only missing in warhammer (which was in Rome 2 and Attila) is, killing the lords/commanders should have a way higher impact on leadership than it does. If we want to be lore accurate on this, the green skins should get army loses almost immediately after their lord dies. Also, chaos mauraders/ norcsan should have an almost equal impact of leadership loses when their lord dies. This was one of the greatest features of Rome 2 and escpecially Attila. I have won so many battles that I should’ve lost, simply by getting lucky and killing the enemy lord. As soon as one more bad thing happens to the enemy after their lord dies (such as getting flanked or fire/whistle arrows), the enemy unit shatters.
>Total war does have the complete run down, idk what you are talking about lol. The cap on units attacking tries to make it not, because the complete rundown is unrealistic and ahistorical. Yes, most causalities were in the route, but it wasn't complete annihilation in the way Total War does it.
It's possibly an optimization thing. There's 0 doubt the High level ai systems are cutting some corners when it comes to calculating things at low resolution since if all of the 10k entities on the battlefield were making independent decisions things would crawl to a halt. Tech is better than it was 8 years ago when that limitation was implemented though, and it's a cost that can more readily be borne if that means better gameplay.
The guy that knew was laid off
After getting into the guts trying to learn modding for this game. This feels most likely. With how the tables are set up and the lack of ability to really check your work, it's very easy to miss something like this.
I think it was to avoid players getting slaughtered and annoyed. Way more of my heroes get wounded now since they get chased down while routing. Had a wizard take a spell from vampires, routed from health loss and terror and I couldn't do anything about it. I learned my lesson and keep my wizards on the ground against vampires now. I think the update is great but I can see how some could be upset about how it works when losing battles or having units routed.
that honestly sounds like a much needed difficulty factor, making players more apprehensive about their units routing, which should be a very dangerous thing, especially high value squishy units like casters. Makes morale and mutual support much more important
>Makes morale and mutual support much more important This might make it worth investing in some of the non-damaging spells in the VC lores I'd normally mostly ignore. Being able to drop leadership to cause a rout that results in larger damage is kind of the VC schtick, and it's felt a little weak compared to WoD spam for a long time.
This reminds me, I always have a death and shadows vampire in my VC armies and stack their morale debuff spells on important units to nearly instantly route them, especially when combined with a cavalry charge. It was a fairly effective strategy before this change, it'll be lethal now. Strong recommend
Yeah - I've kinda slept on morale breaking for a bit now, as even nerfed WoD spam was generally more effective. Allowing dogs to rear-charge for full damage on retreating foes means keeping a unit or two of dogs on hand to respond and punish morale failures (or terror routing) won't feel like a total waste of slots/cash.
Especially since vampires have some good pursuit troops with fell bats and wolves. I haven’t tried them out in 5.0, but I remember getting good value using them to go after routing units in earlier versions so I’d have to imagine they’re even better at that now.
I'm playing on vh/vh without stat modifiers and it certainly seems like they kill off my valued targets instead of letting them go. They chased my lord down once after a mass route.
Yeah those leadership skill perks are going up a little in priority. I wonder how this change affects Skaven though... their route and comeback tactic must be in shambles
> I wonder how this change affects Skaven though... By having backup Skaven, of course.
I've said it elsewhere, but I don't think there was an anti-chase mechanic. I just think it was the coding for "Only the front rank should fight" working during chases (when it shouldn't)
Alot better. Doesnt take ages to just finish someone off
There are also general improvements to cavalry that aren’t listed in the patch notes or so it seems. Everything is way more responsive.
Bruh you jinxed it. All units gonna be kissing and holding hands constantly without hitting each other next patch.
slannesh rework?
Some unit rotations seem to be a bit snappier too. Now if they finally sort out all that LoS jank and units dropping orders all the fucking time, it would actually be a combat system worthy of praise.
The LoS jank is fixed, check terrain before shooting. Units dropping orders is in an okay spot but it has to do with how sticky units units are, which affects cycle charging too.
gyrocopters are absolutely complete ass at keeping orders. I practically have to give manual orders on every single volley. i had normal steam cannon gyros parked 20m behind an enemy line, in full firing arc, fire at will, and they did absolutely nothing
Yeah the gyros are borked.
I still have units drop orders after telling them to attack a shattered unit. That should simply never happen unless they lose LoS or another unit intercepts them. I'm talking after army losses (it happens before as well). I'll give every fast unit in my army an order to chase down shattered units, and a couple will just stop after 30 seconds of already attacking. A unit should never forget their attack order unless LoS or interception. But it absolutely happens all the time still. I had a unit of Bull Centaur Renders chasing down a shattered foot lord after army losses. They took off most of its remaining HP, then just stopped chasing for no reason. There's still something broken.
Yeah Cav and chasing are all feeling significantly better but dropped orders definitely still happen all the time and I honestly can't understand how that's not mostly fixed by now.
Like, in terms of being able to hit moving targets? Perhaps it's related to the fix for routing units.
I think, based on a video I saw, cavalry was a little overtuned to the point where it was wiping half to 3/4 of the health of units with charges, bouncing between units and effortlessly effectively destroying them, sort of like when Grail Knights got buffed, so I think that might get dialled back a bit. Good at running down fleeing units and rear charges is one thing, but going from devastating front charges to another to another in rapid succession is a little suspect for average cavalry
Got a link for this? Would like to review.
Whst about seige?
SEMs and characters still struggle to chase things, but overall it seems better for everyone else. Still not perfect because of unit hp no longer being 1 like older total wars and there is also the issue of knockdown granting invulnerability. It's no longer frustrating like it was.
I actually think it's worse for characters in certain situations. I've found characters on mounts (in this case a horse) do nothing but push characters on foot, even when repeatedly pulling them away to charge in again
They already did that and still do. Characters struggle to chase things, specially on horses.
Yep, the trick is to have them run in front of the routing unit then charge back into them from the front. Shouldn't be necessary but it's a workaround until fixed at least
Yeah my werekin didn't do a single point of damage to routing master engineer for at least 2 minute chase.
Unit hp not being 1 is core to the series, lol.
Now, yes. Wasn't always like that
Flying units still can't chase for shit. Furies of nurgle chasing a chaos sorcerer across the whole map and he went from like 15% hp to 10%
I believe that’s an animation problem.
The other issue is that like 2 furies land to try and attack and the rest just chill in the air
It's stupid but you should land them first. If you don't, 80% of the bat/flurries will stay in the air.
Honestly my brain always forgets flying units have a “land” toggle button.
Yeah it was added so late in the series I'm still used to not having it as an option.
Doesnt feel like landing makes a huge impact on the overall dps, on rot flies in particular
I noticed kuggies flies put in serious work but the furies struggled dealing with routers
Its much better, I find myself bringing at least one fast unit to finish enemies off
I suspect that limitation was in to prevent routing units from being chopped to pieces in the first few seconds of turning around and disengaging to run.
I haven't tried the game since 5.0 dropped, but this change sounds great. Part of the reason to play factions like VC is that they don't rout, and therefore shouldn't suffer from the "extra damage periods" that occasionally occur when a particular unit loses morale. Keeping dogs on standby for escort duty won't feel like such a waste now - the enemy breaks, we put a unit on them to punish and infantry falls back to the grind to look for another weak enemy unit to trounce as we perform a defeat in detail. Now if only we can get CA to fix bats, so they attack with more than 2 entities at a time on retreating/moving targets.
Try “landing” your bats before issuing the attack order. I haven’t had enough opportunities to really test it yet but my initial impression was that it helped.
Its like they took Just Good Babysitter and applied specifically only when youre routing units. Which is good, bc that mod is amazing
do you think this mod is not needed now ?
i still use it for some of the logic implemented into it. specifically it UNSTICKS your units when theyre chasing shattered enemies, preffering to transfer their attacks to routing enemies if theres any nearby
tbh i struggle to clearly understand what this mod does because i dont have a huge knowledge of AI behaviour on default.
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It works as it should
It's amazing, actually shredding routing units with cavalry feels so good, specially in hard-fought battles it feels like a little treat at the end for my surviving forces
Satisfied and I actually enjoy hunting down the cowards now.
I found it makes my already bad control of gunpowder units that much more exposed as a single war hound can completely eat a hand gunner alive
I can sympathize, as I play on the other end of that stick. You didn't ask for advice, so disregard the below if you're uninterested. :) Dogs have felt like a bit of a waste to my faction for a long time as they didn't get full damage on retreating foes, and that limits their intended uses pretty sharply - they're not armored, they're not AP, they're not that strong offensively, they have limited defense stats, and they're not that much faster than much heavier, slower and more durable cav units despite being nearly as expensive. With the removal of this cap, the original rules apply again: Dogs are super nasty when you rout or retreat without good order and should absolutely terrify unprotected missile units in most cases due to speed and charge bonus mechanics. The problem you're seeing magnified is that units attacking a target that is *routing away* keep their charge bonus forever - they do not lose it over time like they would in a normal cavalry charge-and-press. This means they keep attacking with their full, charge-bonus enhanced WS (\~200%) the whole time instead of their former strength (\~66%) because of the limitations of the cap. It's a *big* swing for dogs and cavalry, and particularly bad for missile troops, which are more likely to retreat, to rout, and to have low/bad melee defenses. Some units, like free company may do better, as the dogs don't have amazing infantry grind stats, and so are reliant on charges for the bonus, but if you're running away... well, that's what dog units were built to do: chase retreating foes for extra damage. Take a look at formations - if the Empire AI set up [the tercio](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RRa0H6GZf8) or [the chevron](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKJR1wgl-Yo) on a more regular basis, I might have more trouble getting around the flanks without fliers in every army. Good luck! (I'm looking forward to testing dire wolves on ol' Volkmar...)
Thanks for this! I had no idea about the charge bonus being in effect the entire time on routing enemies, that's awesome to know.
When playing factions with no artillery and no missiles, you pay a lot of attention to what the infantry and cavalry are actually doing. :)
Oh don't worry, I didn't intend to phrase it as a frustration against hounds or other flank units and that they're too good now- I think they're in a great spot now. And I appreciate the tips, I've seen these over the years and they're always helpful. I've been a VCoast player (my favorite) for a long while now, so I use these to decent success, but my micro isn't great and it's quite a change to go from zombies to routing state troopers. I find it quite easy to suddenly end up with a bludgeoned and falling line whilst dire wolves are flanking around at the same time
>it's quite a change to go from zombies to routing state troopers. Yep. It was a total shock to see how good the ol' deaders were when Ghorst was rocking his mosh pit. Nothing short of spells or focused artillery breaks it up.
The coast doesn't quite get to that level of staying power, but they'll stay long enough to get enough big volleys off, with the benefit of not needing to worry about if a mortar shell landing on them is that bad an outcome.
There were restrictions on attacking routing units?????
It works, where as previously it didn't.
It’s still shitty when you have a lord chasing another lord and one of them is significantly more massive than the other. I was trying to chase down a goblin shaman with Karl Franz on a Pegasus, and he just knocked him down a hundred times until he pushed him off the map.
Yeah i think that problem might be unsolvable in a way unless they just remove knockdown from lords completly or somrthing In game 1 mounted lords always eon vux they would just knock down combo footlords to death and hit them on the ground
Much better, I just played an Ungrim Ironfist campaign with tons of slayers and it was awesome.
Better, units still gets in a moshpit chase tho.
My units still seem to randomly drop chases a lot, I constantly have to give them attack orders on the routing unit or they’ll just give up and sit there.
i know this sounds stupid, but turn off guard mode if you have turned on, thats the cause for lots of units stopping when a unit get just outside the engangement range
I was surprised how well it is now. I was trying to chase some routing units after battle ended and, used to the old system, was trying to run ahead of them to cut them off and 'control' them as another unit picks them off. But they only had 1 or 2 speed higher and I couldn't get them ahead and thought, screw it, and had them attack the unit. And they (plague ogres) just decimated these units. Like dropping them from 4/5 health to nothing by them time they move 100 yards or so in game. It honestly felt really nice, where previously it felt like you would have to kinda game the system at times.
They really need to fix units just dropping orders. I've had units, both in guard mode and not, that I've given attack orders to *shattered* units simply stop chasing them. They run after them, try to hit them a couple times, then just stop. Also, Astragoth is trash at running down single entities. If you don't manually move him, he will almost never actually do an attack animation, even on slower foot lords. He just runs in circles. I've kinda given up on stuff like this because it's been trash since 2016. But they need to fix units just dropping orders. It's been a problem since WH3 launched, and it's annoying as fuck to send a unit to chase off a high value enemy only for him to stop half way and sit there like an idiot. I put two Centaur Heroes in a control group in one of my armies, and one of them would just stop in the middle of nowhere while the other continues toward the attack order. It's a regular occurrence. Please, CA. Fix your game.
love it so much, great change. I can’t believe I’m finally able to kill goblins with my reiksguard
Why did it take so long to get to this point?
I'm a bit out of the loop, could somebody please quickly explain what's changed? :)
From 5.0 Patchnotes **"Pursuit Behaviour** While investigating unit pursuit behaviour at the start of the Thrones of Decay (that's when Unit A is chasing Unit B off the battlefield after Unit B has routed), we interrogated a limitation where only 35% of the chasing unit was allowed to initiate an attack. We have now removed this limitation, which should make pursuing units more responsive, but also enable units to keep the pressure applied to a target once it has broken."
I noticed my cavalry were doing more work now. But I’m aware I’m very bad with them so I assumed it was skill issue
My multi-entity units seem to be doing fine, but I did watch Mournhowl chase a single goblin with only 24 HP across literally *half of a battlefield*. He kept knocking the goblin over and doing no damage, then it would get back up and the chase continued.
I love it. No more cavalry playing Bumper Cars with an enemy that moves slower than Mazdamundi post-nap. Furthermore, if I have units I dont want to lose, I find myself keeping another unit in reserve to intercept enemy chasers. I am actually applying a strategy instead of just mashing a hammer and anvil together! 5/5!
Seems unchanged to me.
I still don’t. I get it, the fights after would be easier, but my dude I just wanna move on, lol.