Why do my armies refuse to execute (assault) orders?

[pantsukki]

This is a very common occurrence, and also very annoying, especially because of the one month long turns. In the attached save, during the previous turn (April 86) I ordered the Italian army to march through hostile Croton (level 1 fort) with red-red orders towards Rhegium. They ended the turn besieging Rhegium, with Croton still in Populares hands. Similar thing happened with Sulla's army in Greece, he had red-red orders to march to hostile Athens (level 1 fort, the province also had a hostile army), and then to continue to Southern Greece to attack the Pontic army (that is, I dropped Sulla's stack on top of the Pontic army). What happens? Athens still in Pontic control, and Sulla engaded the Pontic army in the south once (my other major annoyance is the execution of that "drag on top" order, shoudln't the selected army then aggressively pursue the target?).

I can provide the scripts and logs if needed.

[yellow ribbon]

This is a very common occurrence, and also very annoying, especially because of the one month long turns. In the attached save, during the previous turn (April 86) I ordered the Italian army to march through hostile Croton (level 1 fort) with red-red orders towards Rhegium. They ended the turn besieging Rhegium, with Croton still in Populares hands. Similar thing happened with Sulla's army in Greece, he had red-red orders to march to hostile Athens (level 1 fort, the province also had a hostile army), and then to continue to Southern Greece to attack the Pontic army (that is, I dropped Sulla's stack on top of the Pontic army). What happens? Athens still in Pontic control, and Sulla engaded the Pontic army in the south once (my other major annoyance is the execution of that "drag on top" order, shoudln't the selected army then aggressively pursue the target?).

I can provide the scripts and logs if needed.

for Greece, you meet the enemies army nearly always. Sulla tries to fight the army, as he can be blocked from movement from them.
unfortunately, once the battle happened he might even change to orange/offens. only and recover from battle

for the hunting down of the Pontics, yes, but only as long he can find them. in the best case you can even have 4-5 battles while hunting them down and always attack red-red until your cohesion doesnt allow it or the enemy is destroyed.
but as you might know, the enemy can evade you (especially if running away green-green after a major battle or getting lost in the nort-north-eastern mountains for instance).

[pantsukki]

So this is because the game changes the stack's stance? Huh. I might understand the stance change after a battle, but in this instance there was no battle in either Athens or Croton.

[yellow ribbon]

So this is because the game changes the stack's stance? Huh. I might understand the stance change after a battle, but in this instance there was no battle in either Athens or Croton.

its enough that something blocks you during turn processing. unfortunately the engine is not issuing the order automatically after the disturbing element is gone either by fight or for it moved along.
As said, if you just hunt down troops this should not happen, but there in south Greece its a bottleneck.

i take it, that what you tell about Sulla did happen in a different turn/game?

[Emx77]

I am not sure this is working as intended. I will concentrate on pantsukki first example:



Octavius' Corps has red-red order. IRC that means attack every enemy force AND structure you encounter on the way to your final destination. In above example, this translates into: Assault and take Croton (level 1 fort) then proceed over Locri to Rhegium and put it under siege (you cannot attack Rhegium directly as it is defended by level 2 fort). However, what actually happens is that Octavius' Corps simply bypasses Croton without attempt to assault it and goes to Rhegium leaving enemy controlled city behind its back.

Also, I noticed that force with red-red command sometimes assaults first structure and, after successfully take it from enemy, just aborts rest of the movement.

[pantsukki]

its enough that something blocks you during turn processing. unfortunately the engine is not issuing the order automatically after the disturbing element is gone either by fight or for it moved along.
As said, if you just hunt down troops this should not happen, but there in south Greece its a bottleneck.

i take it, that what you tell about Sulla did happen in a different turn/game?

Both happened during the same turn, the stack in Italy ignored Croton, and Sulla's stack in Greece ignored Athens.

Emx77, that's exactly what happened, one picture is worth a thousand words!

"Also, I noticed that force with red-red command sometimes assaults first structure and, after successfully take it from enemy, just aborts rest of the movement. " Yes, this also happens very often, which means that often your stack(s) waste most of the turn. Frustrating as well.

[yellow ribbon]

i cant say what happened in your turn, but i replayed the turn as POP and OPT


during turn processing OPT gained MC in Croton, but did not took the city for an automated garr. took the city and then was dissolved when Romans were farther south

POP main stack escaped and was attacked and killed in Rhegium, its also not INSIDE of the town, but marching when i restore the save

for Athen i am not sure, need to look into the log files, but i believe the unit didnt even walk there despite pathfinding touching the edge of the province.
even when the AI plays OPT, i takes every province towards the isle westwards (MC) including the cities, but not Athens.

that indicates that the stack passed through in orange or red orders. If it was in Athens, the mosts Pontian units are OUTSIDE and there should have been a fight.

EDIT:

now i played it as PONTIANS and set all troops in Atica in red-red and after turn processing its still so for one commander and one unit. NO COMBAT NEITHER

[color="#FFFF00"]Edit 3rd: when i send them manually to Athens and then to Magar. the battle happens, not when automatically passing through[/color]

2nd Edit:

by restoring his save the POP is NOT inside. why should i issue new orders when i try to understand HIS situation he is reporting?

[Pat "Stonewall" Cleburne]

Red-red hasn't worked for me so far (it usually asaults at the destination, but not anything in between). It's also annoying if you are sieging something, and decide to go assault something else. In red-red or red-orange, it tries to assault the unbreached fort you are besieging first and cancels the stack to orange-orange by the time it gets to what you want to assault. I don't think assault is working quite like it does in the other games.

[Emx77]

POP main stack escaped...

To prevent POP stack to escape (AI has already plotted movement for that stack) you need to load POP save and cancel movement order. Save and resolve the turn. Now POP stack will be inside Croton while OPT stack will just pass by.

[caranorn]

Wasn't a change to assault introduced in one of the previous games? I distinctly recall such.

Iirc assault order now only enters into effect in the target province. So your force set to assault would not assault cities in the province it starts or passes through but only in the final province of it's move. Possibly when a force's movement is stopped by enemy ZoC (often happens when you try to move through enemy held provinces with fortresses) it will then execute the assault order (as movement has already been cancelled it will end the turn in that province after the assault)...

For the above examples, that would give just marching by Croton (had an enemy force stood in the field there a battle would have taken place as if your force had been in offensive (organge) stance, had no garrison been in Croton you would have taken the city without assault before passing through), arrived at Rhegium no assault as you cannot assault an unbreached level 2 fort (except leader trait). In the Greece example, your targetting the enemy force probably superceded any routing order you issued before, so your force passed around Athens (where it might well have been blocked by enemy ZoC) and arrived in southern Greece engaged the enemy...

To me this kind of behaviour is correct as it makes no sense for an army to just walk up to an enemy's walls, assault, move on, assault the next city, move on etc. It's already too easy to take small cities by assault, no need to speed up movement even more and end up using Blitzkrieg like tactics two milenia early...

[Blind Sniper]

To me this kind of behaviour is correct as it makes no sense for an army to just walk up to an enemy's walls, assault, move on, assault the next city, move on etc. It's already too easy to take small cities by assault, no need to speed up movement even more and end up using Blitzkrieg like tactics two milenia early...

To me is incorrect, we are speaking about one month per turn, is not Blitzkrieg is a matter of scale.
In this way you need two months to take two small cities, I would call Slowkrieg even if in Roman Era.

If you send your whole Army to take 8 cities in a row, even if you are so lucky to take all of them, your Army will be vulnerable against a strong enemy and your supply line surely won't be in good shape.

[pantsukki]

To me is incorrect, we are speaking about one month per turn, is not Blitzkrieg is a matter of scale.
In this way you need two months to take two small cities, I would call Slowkrieg even if in Roman Era.

This. If the turns were two weeks like in RoP, this would be more understandable. Right now it often happens that your army takes a (very small!) city within the first few days of a turn, and then does absolutely nothing for close to one month. Even if you have given orders to the contrary.

[Jim-NC]

Wasn't a change to assault introduced in one of the previous games? I distinctly recall such.

Iirc assault order now only enters into effect in the target province. So your force set to assault would not assault cities in the province it starts or passes through but only in the final province of it's move. Possibly when a force's movement is stopped by enemy ZoC (often happens when you try to move through enemy held provinces with fortresses) it will then execute the assault order (as movement has already been cancelled it will end the turn in that province after the assault)...

For the above examples, that would give just marching by Croton (had an enemy force stood in the field there a battle would have taken place as if your force had been in offensive (organge) stance, had no garrison been in Croton you would have taken the city without assault before passing through), arrived at Rhegium no assault as you cannot assault an unbreached level 2 fort (except leader trait). In the Greece example, your targetting the enemy force probably superceded any routing order you issued before, so your force passed around Athens (where it might well have been blocked by enemy ZoC) and arrived in southern Greece engaged the enemy...

To me this kind of behaviour is correct as it makes no sense for an army to just walk up to an enemy's walls, assault, move on, assault the next city, move on etc. It's already too easy to take small cities by assault, no need to speed up movement even more and end up using Blitzkrieg like tactics two milenia early...

I want to say you are correct. This was an game engine change a while back. It was asked for the units to assault only in the end province, not what they move through. IIRC this was done with AACW a few years ago.

This way you could assalt something far away, and not get stuck at the 1st enemy structure. So imagine you want to capture a town 20 days away behind enemy lines, but not engage the large army next to you. That's what this simulates.

[Henri]

I want to say you are correct. This was an game engine change a while back. It was asked for the units to assault only in the end province, not what they move through. IIRC this was done with AACW a few years ago.

This way you could assault something far away, and not get stuck at the 1st enemy structure. So imagine you want to capture a town 20 days away behind enemy lines, but not engage the large army next to you. That's what this simulates.

If I understand correctly this means that a force can NEVER move (during the same move) after carrying out an attack? This also means that one could slow down a strong enemy advance almost indefinitely by putting a series of weak units with red attack orders in the path of an advancing enemy where the enemy could only fight one of them every month? The advancing enemy could counter this somewhat by breaking up his army into smaller stacks (assuming he could see all the defending units), but this sounds very gamey...

[caranorn]

If I understand correctly this means that a force can NEVER move (during the same move) after carrying out an attack? This also means that one could slow down a strong enemy advance almost indefinitely by putting a series of weak units with red attack orders in the path of an advancing enemy where the enemy could only fight one of them every month? The advancing enemy could counter this somewhat by breaking up his army into smaller stacks (assuming he could see all the defending units), but this sounds very gamey...

No, this only applies to assault (red), not regular attack (orange)...

[Gresbeck]

This. If the turns were two weeks like in RoP, this would be more understandable. Right now it often happens that your army takes a (very small!) city within the first few days of a turn, and then does absolutely nothing for close to one month. Even if you have given orders to the contrary.

Well, we can't say "it does absolutely nothing". It probably recovers cohesion and (though I'm not sure about it) it probably increases military control over the province, which, after all, needs time. And if the city to be assaulted is really so small, you can always split your force to assault different cities with different stacks during the same turn.

The advancing enemy could counter this somewhat by breaking up his army into smaller stacks (assuming he could see all the defending units), but this sounds very gamey...

Not sure about the movement after combat. But AFAIK the attack order can always be combined with the evade combat order: which means the moving force should be able to evade combat in the transit provinces, and attack only units present in the target province. I don't think the engine could easily be exploited through "ants".

[Pat "Stonewall" Cleburne]

I want to say you are correct. This was an game engine change a while back. It was asked for the units to assault only in the end province, not what they move through. IIRC this was done with AACW a few years ago.

This way you could assalt something far away, and not get stuck at the 1st enemy structure. So imagine you want to capture a town 20 days away behind enemy lines, but not engage the large army next to you. That's what this simulates.

They added that, but left in a way to assault multiple structures. Red/red assault is supposed to assault multiple structures. Red/orange and below is supposed to just assault at the end. This was done to help the AI not accidentally assault structures in between since they don't use red/red.

[Yarpen]

They added that, but left in a way to assault multiple structures. Red/red assault is supposed to assault multiple structures. Red/orange and below is supposed to just assault at the end. This was done to help the AI not accidentally assault structures in between since they don't use red/red.

Sounds OK, but the problem is it doesn't work like this, at least not always. I had cases when an army put on red/red and sent a few provinces away assaulted only the first one and stopped there not going further down the planned route (and no, it was not >1 level fort).

[Emx77]

Almost a year has passed since pantsukki reported this issue but obviously thread went unnoticed by devs. I would really like to hear official explanation regarding this (mis)behavior of units. To remind you, this is what rulebook says about so called red-red order:



During a game players are faced with two situations which are not according to above cited rules. In the next screenshots I will give examples of both situations.

Situation 1 - Army assaults only the first objective then stops and refuse to move further without any apparent reason






Situation 2 - Army bypass objectives





Please, can someone from the Ageod's team answer if this is WAD or bug?

[PhilThib]

A save of the turn and the script reports will be needed

[Emx77]

A save of the turn and the script reports will be needed

Inside 1-MariusSulla870.zp archive, backup2 folder contains orders for Situation 1 and backup3 folder contains orders needed for recreation of Situation 2 (described in above screenshots). Actually, I think you can easily recreate similar situations on your own regardless of scenario (it happens all the time). Many other players in above posts (including original poster) reported exactly the same behavior.

[Narwhal]

To complete Emx, I believe it comes from the fact that the army checks whether it can go further BEFORE resolving the assault. When going through cities without walls, there are no issues, but the walls will block the movement.


It is such a well-known, systematic issues that :

- I always scout ahead when possible on the other side of the fortress when I give a RED/RED orders, so my force is not interrupted.
- I plan my orders assuming that any force which cannot "scout" ahead WILL be stopped at the first wall, regardless of the orders.


I believe it leads to very unrealistic situation. In my current game against Emx, I actually used my knowledge of that "issue" (never knew if bug or WAD) to forecast my opponent moves.

Mostly an issue in AJE because :
- You cannot assault walls without breach in ROP
- No sane person would use a red-red order in RUS, and there are no fortress anyway
- There are only 4 or 5 fortresses in total in WiA

[James D Burns]

Please, can someone from the Ageod's team answer if this is WAD or bug?

I'm not a dev, but the first thing that jumps out at me is the fact it only takes one day to get to each region. What are your battle delay settings? If you are like me and play with long delays, it could be he simply doesn’t have enough time to generate a battle before moving to the next region. Just guessing but might be worth looking at.

Jim

[Emx77]

I'm not a dev, but the first thing that jumps out at me is the fact it only takes one day to get to each region. What are your battle delay settings? If you are like me and play with long delays, it could be he simply doesn’t have enough time to generate a battle before moving to the next region. Just guessing but might be worth looking at.

Jim

Jim, that is not the case here. In all of above scenarios battle occurs pretty early during turn resolution. Instead of advancing further (as ordered) Sulla decides to take a 20-27 days long vacation after battle and do nothing for the rest of turn, just sitting in the province.

[Emx77]

To complete Emx, I believe it comes from the fact that the army checks whether it can go further BEFORE resolving the assault. When going through cities without walls, there are no issues, but the walls will block the movement.

Narwhall, I really think that your suggestion about game checking the status of blocked/not blocked AFTER resolving the assault is a desired direction for solving this issue. But please note that we have two issues here. First issue (army assaults only the first objective then stops), could be related with checking the status of military control of region(s) in order to determine if the movement is blocked or not. But that doesn't explain what is happening in situation 2 (described in above screenshots: post #5 and #19). According to rules, army with red-red orders shouldn't bypass enemy structures while moving.

Additional info about this is on this screenshot:



Why Sulla gets blocked at Pharsalos but easily passes around Thebae?

[Franciscus]

Hi

Indeed what you describe is easily replicated and is very perplexing.

Reported to Pocus

Thanks and regards

[Narwhal]

Hello hello

Is this considered as bug as per Pocus opinion ? With the number of walls in AJE, fixing this bug could be game-changing [for the better imo, though it may unbalance a few things]

[Franciscus]

Hi

Issue and save reported to Pocus, but we must wait a bit more, CW2 imminent release is occupying 200% of his time.

Regards

[Emx77]

During my current PBEM game (Marius vs Sulla scenario), I've noticed another possible problem with Rules of Engagement (ROE). It is about enemy stacks passing each other or staying in the same province without provoking battle when they should. For example, sometimes Sulla's army managed to pass Pontus huge stacks without fighting. On one occasion Sulla's army entered province with Pontus blocking mega stack, switched to offensive posture but battle didn't occur. According to rules: "A Force that enters a hostile region automatically assumes an Offensive Posture" (Manual, p. 55). Then, "A Force with offensive posture will attack any opponent it detects in its region" (Manual, p. 52). According to rules, battle should have happened regardless of Pontus stack orders or status (active or inactive).

This is another fresh example from same scenario:



Or how it looks during turn replay (animated gif):



How is this possible? Why Optimates stack didn't engage passing Populares? Why Populares stack, which should have been in offensive posture upon entering enemy province, didn't engage Optimates? Simply, why there was no battle? With all of this, blocking passages in key provinces doesn't work. As I said in another post, moving units in AJE sometimes is more an art of magic than anything else. To get a feel for it, you need a sixth sense.

[Narwhal]

Weird indeed as we had other cases, but never with the army "not engaging" in Offense.

Did you check whether it is due to your general choosing not to engage a five dots army with his 2 dots ?