retreat direction

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: bevilacqua

Conclusion: better than having a whole mountain chain between you and your enemy is having a couple of old trucks placed kilometers away one from the other.

Actually, such units facilitate breakthroughs. That's because you don't pay ZOC costs when overrunning. Try it again going right through the enemy units, instead of between them.

It's the stuff you can't overrun that's the problem. And if they're always going to retreat in good order they'll be an unhistorical problem.

[bevilacqua]

Thanks for taking your time and doing some tests. But, yet I find it strange since my supply points were to the rear. What do the units use: they retreat in the direction of the supply point, no matter the terrain between them or they try to find the shortest path, in which case they would avoid the hills behind and go for the road on the right side? The stack on this road is the only one, in addition to the one just above the broken units, which may have attained the stacking limit. I think that using the direction or stablishing a safest path would be the best solution, but I really don't know what the game uses.

I know that using overruns make it easier, but that would force units to ignore the nice path in front of them and go after the enemy. Suppose I placed the trucks on swamp hexes along improved road ones, just to deny this nice advancing path to my enemy. Or, what's worse, place them on dunes (not trucks). The fact is that, if you have units all around and want to use a straight path ignoring them, you'll have to pay the move cost, even if they are tiny (relatively). Obviously, I went to an extreme case. In most cases units won't be so tiny and won't even be dislodged. In those cases I think they should pose some restriction to movement, but proportional to their size and even lower if they are tiny and the enemy is able to spot their size.

I know it would break some scenarios, but that could be offered as an advanced rule. I mean, some scenarios would even benefit from it and the notion of breaking scenarios is also arguable if we consider that a lot of scenarios are not even balanced. I think that the better way to balance a scenario is playing it once and stablishing your victory conditions from this first time. Most of the time, the victory conditions stablished by the designers are unbalanced, because of bad design or even, perhaps, because of changes in the game along those years, which isn't all that bad (I think that most players don't want to go back to the earlier versions) and one can always stablish personal victory conditions.

[PRUSSIAN TOM]

I gotta go w/ Curtis [&o] on this issue, he has had a HELL of a lot of (unpaid) experience w/my favorite game, and is right 99% of the times in questions I've asked, or been interested in or tracked. In an in an old (but classic and well respect (board game), to name just one source Avalon Hill designer team on :Advanced Squad Leader" said, "...damn near anything can happen in a war, although some cases are very rare," to justify infrequent occurances of units "breaking and doing irrational things .

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

I've been doing some rigorous tests on retreats (using test scenarios), and I've been unable to cause any retreat direction other than towards the nearest supply point. HQs seem to be ignored. This has surprised me because I can clearly recall lots of game cases of units scattering in multiple directions. But I've tried the test scenarios all the way back to TOAW I (not ACOW - TOAW I).

One issue - the supply point chosen is the nearest one, even if it is in the enemy rear. This causes units to retreat towards the enemy. Even surrounding the combat with friendly supply points still has the units retreating in one direction.

It finally dawned on me that it's Retreat-Before-Combats (RBCs) that go in random directions. Retreat-From-Combats (RFCs) evidently go towards the nearest supply point (as best I can figure so far).

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: bevilacqua

Thanks for taking your time and doing some tests. But, yet I find it strange since my supply points were to the rear. What do the units use: they retreat in the direction of the supply point, no matter the terrain between them or they try to find the shortest path, in which case they would avoid the hills behind and go for the road on the right side? The stack on this road is the only one, in addition to the one just above the broken units, which may have attained the stacking limit. I think that using the direction or stablishing a safest path would be the best solution, but I really don't know what the game uses.

What scenario were you playing, and where on it was the combat?

I know that using overruns make it easier, but that would force units to ignore the nice path in front of them and go after the enemy. Suppose I placed the trucks on swamp hexes along improved road ones, just to deny this nice advancing path to my enemy. Or, what's worse, place them on dunes (not trucks). The fact is that, if you have units all around and want to use a straight path ignoring them, you'll have to pay the move cost, even if they are tiny (relatively). Obviously, I went to an extreme case. In most cases units won't be so tiny and won't even be dislodged. In those cases I think they should pose some restriction to movement, but proportional to their size and even lower if they are tiny and the enemy is able to spot their size.

Clearly it can be an irritant in many cases. But, baring the bizarre examples you conjured up, it, in general, is not the reason breakthroughs are so hard.

I know it would break some scenarios, but that could be offered as an advanced rule. I mean, some scenarios would even benefit from it and the notion of breaking scenarios is also arguable if we consider that a lot of scenarios are not even balanced. I think that the better way to balance a scenario is playing it once and stablishing your victory conditions from this first time. Most of the time, the victory conditions stablished by the designers are unbalanced, because of bad design or even, perhaps, because of changes in the game along those years, which isn't all that bad (I think that most players don't want to go back to the earlier versions) and one can always stablish personal victory conditions.

It's in the Wishlist already: item 7.7.

[Curtis Lemay]

In case we’d like to make retreat directions more sophisticated, here are my thoughts about how:

Loss setting affects probability of retreat being in direction favorable to defender:

Ignore Losses: 25%
Limit Losses: 50%
Minimize Losses: 75%
Routed units deduct 25% from above.
Otherwise, retreat is in direction most favorable to attacker.

A. If favorable to defender, priority sequence is as follows, in order:

1. Towards the nearest cooperative HQ.
2. Towards the nearest friendly supply point.
3. To a hex that is not in an enemy ZOC.
4. To the lowest MP cost hex.
5. To the lowest stack-count hex.
6. Random chance.

B. If favorable to the attacker, priority sequence is as follows, in order:

1. To a hex that is in an enemy ZOC.
2. Away from the nearest cooperative HQ.
3. Away from the nearest friendly supply point.
4. To the highest MP cost hex.
5. To the highest stack-count hex.
6. Random chance.

All the above would be determined and applied to each retreating unit individually, rather than to the combat as a whole. This routine would apply to both RBCs and RFCs.

To recap, the current RFC direction is towards the nearest supply point (which often is in a counter-intuitive direction), and the current RBC direction is random.

[bevilacqua]

I really like the idea of making it dependent on losses settings and the direction of the HQ being priority in case it succeeds to retreat in a favourable direction.

First of all, setting losses tolerance would be more meaningful than the simple fact of holding ground, it would signify how long should a unit go before retreating orderly to a pre-established location, not disrupting the front. It would even, perhaps, favour a breakthrough, since players wouldn't abuse setting all units to ignore losses when defending... limit losses could then be used to achieve orderly retreats, since the retreat would be more predictable. The great advantage would be less randomness.

HQs being the priority would make placement of HQs even more meaningful, even when not adjacent, and one would be able to direct the orderly retreat.

The only thing I don't like about the idea are the numbers. I think that limit losses should have a greater chance to retreat in the good direction, since routing would make this probability raise to 75%, which would be saying that a routed unit in the intermediate setting has a much greater chance of going into enemy direction. I think that a routed unit with limit losses should get a 50% chance. Ignore losses should be the setting with the highest jump in value, not necessarily proportional to the interval between minimize and limit losses. This is because it is in this setting that players are pushing all forces foward without much care to the back areas and in keeping communication lines.

[Meyer1]

So... found this thread, after having some weird retreats. Perhaps that behaviour is more prominent in scenarios with no HQ units, as the one I'm playing right now. Looking at the "what's new" file, it doesn't seem that the retreat direction suffered any changes in the 3.4 patch. Questions:

1) is that true? (that wasn't changed)

2) is this still considered to be a problem, or the consensus was the there wasn't one?

3) is going to be changed for TOAW IV?

[ralphtricky]

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

I've been doing some rigorous tests on retreats (using test scenarios), and I've been unable to cause any retreat direction other than towards the nearest supply point. HQs seem to be ignored. This has surprised me because I can clearly recall lots of game cases of units scattering in multiple directions. But I've tried the test scenarios all the way back to TOAW I (not ACOW - TOAW I).

One issue - the supply point chosen is the nearest one, even if it is in the enemy rear. This causes units to retreat towards the enemy. Even surrounding the combat with friendly supply points still has the units retreating in one direction.

It finally dawned on me that it's Retreat-Before-Combats (RBCs) that go in random directions. Retreat-From-Combats (RFCs) evidently go towards the nearest supply point (as best I can figure so far).

It adds the distance to the nearest friendly held supply point and the distance to the nearest HQ which has free cooperation together. It also gives +1 to hexes with adjacent units. It then finds the smallest number in the surrounding empty hexes and goes there.