Battle Casualties Still Too High Yet Again

[Jagger2013]

In terms of retreats, no amount of polling through forums is going to convince me it's working correctly. Look at the battle below. Mack is still in Stuttgart. Why didn't Mack go to Ulm (and possibly get booted out of there by Soult). Though he "retreated", he remained in Stuttgart for some reason

Retreat takes time. It may take several days to march to the adjacent region. Dependent on what day the battle took place within the 7 day turn, there may not be enough days to complete the retreat by the end of the turn. Basically if there are not enough days left in the turn, the army will not reach its retreat distination until the next turn. So the retreat should continue and be completed on the following turn assuming nothing interrupts the armies retreat.

[vicberg]

This isn't a situation like that.

Entrenchments have a modifier on retreating and everything seems to be entrenching quite quickly. So I reduced the affects so see what impact that would be and reran turn.

Another 6 round combat at Wien. Starting on round 2, Grand Armee retreated along with 5th and 6th Corp. They were successful, but didn't retreat and continued combat. Same thing occurred on rounds 3-5. Each time, Grand Armee and Corps retreated. Each time they took pursuit damage and each time combat continued. The French took on average 50-70 hits from pursuit each round.

At end of turn both Corp are still in Wien on defensive posture (not even Passive) and Nappy is 1 region away and set to defensive posture.

This is looking more and more like an issue with Military Control. Just a feeling on my part with no hard data to support it. In a battle I just posted, Mack could have easily retreated one hex to the east in Wurttemburg and Austria has foreign access with Wurttemburg, but because it has 0 military control, it won't retreat there. I moved into Wien and Melk same turn and attacked Wien. Possibly no MC on either and thus no retreat.

Again, I've reduced the Control & Retreat modifiers in the hopes of getting some retreats, but no go.

[vicberg]

And here's the key to what's going on from the battle logs

[color="#FF8C00"]Group 1001412 5e Corps will retreat in same region Wien
10:17:52 AM (Reporting) Stack: 1001567 6e Corps is routing[/color]

So these forces aren't retreating out of region. That's question #1. Why is combat continuing? Question #2. Why isn't 6th Corp in Passive mode after routing? It's ended turn in Defensive Posture. Question #3.

Something isn't working right.

[veji1]

Retreat takes time. It may take several days to march to the adjacent region. Dependent on what day the battle took place within the 7 day turn, there may not be enough days to complete the retreat by the end of the turn. Basically if there are not enough days left in the turn, the army will not reach its retreat distination until the next turn. So the retreat should continue and be completed on the following turn assuming nothing interrupts the armies retreat.

The retreat to another province is supposed to be a mechanism that emulates this : the stack gets pushed out of the province but with losses (hits) from pursuit. It worked really well in AACW.

I really wonder if some changes to the engine to accomodate the specific warfare of TEAW, ie the trenches, don't have adverse effects that we can't see.

[JacquesDeLalaing]

In terms of retreats, no amount of polling through forums is going to convince me it's working correctly. Look at the battle below. Mack is still in Stuttgart. Why didn't Mack go to Ulm (and possibly get booted out of there by Soult). Though he "retreated", he remained in Stuttgart for some reason

8:11:10 AM (Reporting) Bayerische Armee succeeded in retreating
8:11:10 AM (Reporting) Bayerische Armee will take 3 hits while retreating (though no hits can be done on round 0)
8:11:10 AM (Reporting) Retreat Path Inspecting 902 Heilbronn
8:11:10 AM (Reporting) Not enough control, discarded
8:11:10 AM (Reporting) Retreat Path Inspecting 891 Heidelberg
8:11:10 AM (Reporting) Not enough control, discarded
8:11:10 AM (Reporting) Retreat Path Inspecting 892 Karlsruhe
8:11:10 AM (Reporting) Not enough control, discarded
8:11:10 AM (Reporting) Retreat Path Inspecting 897 Baden Baden
8:11:10 AM (Reporting) Not enough control, discarded
8:11:10 AM (Reporting) Retreat Path Inspecting 900 Ulm
8:11:10 AM (Reporting) Initial value from MC: 100
8:11:10 AM (Reporting) Value after move cost: 100
8:11:10 AM (Reporting) Value after structures ownership: 240
8:11:10 AM (Reporting) Value after enemy presence: 240
8:11:10 AM (Reporting) Value after friendly presence: 240
8:11:10 AM (Reporting) Value after bottleneckness / Passage hub : 408
8:11:10 AM (Reporting) Value after coming from this region bonus : 1020
8:11:10 AM (Reporting) ---> New best region: 900 Ulm Value: 1020
8:11:10 AM (Reporting) Retreat Path Inspecting 903 Schwaebisch Hall
8:11:10 AM (Reporting) Not enough control, discarded
8:11:10 AM (Reporting) Region picked : 900 Ulm
[color="#FFA500"]8:11:10 AM (Reporting) Bayerische Armee is retreating toward Ulm
8:11:10 AM (Reporting) Group Bayerische Armee has retreated[/color]

[ATTACH]36909[/ATTACH]

Well this looks a lot as if the military-control rule kicks in. As the log clearly states, retreat to any other region other than the "actual" region seems to have been prevented because the retreater lacks military control in all the adjacent regions. It's nice to see that this info (retreat interest per region) is available in the new engine/log! Can you confirm that you had no military control in any other adjacent region? If is just that, then there indeed is no bug at all.

As far as I know, there were discussions about how appropriate this rule was across all of ageods' titles. I can't remember which titles have the rule and which ones don't.

For the old engine, there is a "ctlAllowRetreat = 0 // Minimum control to have in a region to allow a retreat into it" value that can be adjusted (haven't fiddled with it for a long time though; in my mod the value is set to 0 and you can always retreat) Also, the battle report showed a special symbol if a faction wanted to retreat but was forced to stay in battle because of all retreat paths being blocked by lack of mc in the adjacent regions.

To find basic info on the engine, consulting the wiki is always recommended: http://www.ageod.net/agewiki/Main_Page. Especially this page: http://www.ageod.net/agewiki/Combat_Explained (links to Narwhals guides at the bottom of the page!)

[JacquesDeLalaing]

Honestly Loki, trying to find information on this forum is challenging at best.
I will be going through the NCP forums in a bit to gather as much information as I can there.

Well that's what the wiki is for: http://www.ageod.net/agewiki/Main_Page. And especially the page on combat: http://www.ageod.net/agewiki/Combat_Explained (also, take a look at the links to Narwhals guides at the bottom of the page!). I don't think that scanning through the NCP forum will give you any information of value (except if you're looking for a comparison of unit stats, etc.).

In fact, except for a few things (the power-formula, exact factors for retreat-success-tests, etc.), I think it's fair to say that almost all of the engine's mechanics have been laid open and are available for anyone interested. There are not a lot of games out there that offer such a level of transparency (okay, one also has to admit that the level of ingame-transparency is a bit small. Often, the engine is like a riddle if you don't know what was going on behind the scenes. The result might be plausible, but still players want to understand what exactly happened and why).Considering myself comparatively well informed, the problem I can see is the retreating behaviour which from my understanding seems to be bugged. Of course, this would be a rather big and fundamental bug. And I can't believe that the devs would not already be working on it if that's the case. All the other things mentioned in this thread are not a bug but a matter of calibration, representation and preference. They can be modded easily and of course changed officially if there is a consensus in the community. For more fundamental changes of models (changing hits, abilities, etc.), you'd need to wait for the release of the WON-database though.

[vicberg]

Have gone through Wiki extensively. It's how I figured out how these script commands work.

I'm almost 100% convinced the retreat issue is due to Military Control and the engine is doing something strange because of it.

Here's another attempt with August Scen, this time making sure I do NOT cut his LOS back to Wien. This is the beginning of the 4th turn. Mack retreated after 3 rounds back from Ulm to Ravensburg on turn 2 and from Ravensburg to where he is now on turn 3. In the prior example, Mack pushed to Stuttgart, didn't have MC to retreat back, combat continued (incorrectly) leading to all sorts of pursuit damage and combat continuance.

[ATTACH]36923[/ATTACH]

[veji1]

Have gone through Wiki extensively. It's how I figured out how these script commands work.

I'm almost 100% convinced the retreat issue is due to Military Control and the engine is doing something strange because of it.

Here's another attempt with August Scen, this time making sure I do NOT cut his LOS back to Wien. This is the beginning of the 4th turn. Mack retreated after 3 rounds back from Ulm to Ravensburg on turn 2 and from Ravensburg to where he is now on turn 3. In the prior example, Mack pushed to Stuttgart, didn't have MC to retreat back, combat continued (incorrectly) leading to all sorts of pursuit damage and combat continuance.

I remember that there was a retreat routine issue in CW2 at some point.

[Mickem2011]

This may or may not be of any value to the discussion but what were Mack's cavalry assets compared to the French. The reason I ask is if the French were loaded with cavalry and Mack wasn't then retreating would actually be more dangerous than staying put and fighting another day. The pursuit casualties that do show up would be from the actual battle not from any retreat.

[vicberg]

Once the armies succeeded in retreating, the combat should have been over. The issue is that for whatever reason, the armies retreated and the combat continued. Having CAV makes a lot of sense if there was a TRUE retreat going on. But when armies retreat and the battle hasn't stopped, that's a pure bug.

[vicberg]

And more process of elimination. It's not MC. This time for the battle of Wien that started this thread, I stopped short of Wien and got 100% MC. Next turn I moved into Wien, but this time I moved all 3 stacks (5th and 6th Corp plus Nappy).

After 4 combat rounds, the French retreated but stayed in the region. So now this is looking like a MTSG issue.

[veji1]

And more process of elimination. It's not MC. This time for the battle of Wien that started this thread, I stopped short of Wien and got 100% MC. Next turn I moved into Wien, but this time I moved all 3 stacks (5th and 6th Corp plus Nappy).

After 4 combat rounds, the French retreated but stayed in the region. So now this is looking like a MTSG issue.

Vicberg, I am honestly very thankful to you for what you do but honestly have you MPd he devs, I just find it crazy that they haven't at least posted once in here whereas it is the biggest thread in this whole forum !

[fred zeppelin]

I just find it crazy that they haven't at least posted once in here whereas it is the biggest thread in this whole forum !

No kidding. This is pretty ridiculous.

[Pocus]

And more process of elimination. It's not MC. This time for the battle of Wien that started this thread, I stopped short of Wien and got 100% MC. Next turn I moved into Wien, but this time I moved all 3 stacks (5th and 6th Corp plus Nappy).

After 4 combat rounds, the French retreated but stayed in the region. So now this is looking like a MTSG issue.

Do you have the saved game? (current turn, post battle and turn after battle.

[vicberg]

Yep

Here's the prior turn [ATTACH]36926[/ATTACH]

Here's the current turn [ATTACH]36927[/ATTACH]

And the battle log [ATTACH]36929[/ATTACH]

Steps to reproduce:
- Please run prior turn and review battle log (or just review this battle log). You'll see the multiple attempts to retreat.
- Look at the detailed battle report for Wien. Hold mouse over Nappy Retreats. You'll see 4 retreat attempts and 0 failures. How can you have 4 successful retreats?
- Roll back and change nappy's orders to go into Wien along with 5th and 6th Corp
- Review battle and you'll see 1 successful retreat by France (the round # varies)
- MTSG is causing the issue