Surprise encounters

[Markiss]

I am playing a game as Allies where Barbarossa has just begun. I have some of my units in entrenched in cities to help slow the German advance, a common tactic.

One German unit advanced a bit recklessly, and had a surprise encounter with one of my entrenched units. My unit won the initiative, and then proceeded to launch a foolhardy attack against a far superior unit. My unit suffered severe casualties, and inflicted none upon the enemy.

Stalin executed the fool who ordered this attack personally.

Obviously, when it is my opponent's turn, I cannot control my units, but I would like to see them make a better decision in this case.

If there is a surprise encounter, and the defending unit wins the initiative, I think the unit should decline to attack if the predicted combat results are negative. After all, they did surprise the enemy, they should not then proceed to do things that are not in their own best interest.

Would that be easy to fix?

[Ktonos]

If the unit do not take the attack option then the enemy will not lose his action point and be able to make a normal attack which will certainly be under worse conditions for yours. Other than that the prediction is just a prediction.

eg the Ambushing unit's AI might saw these options: Ambush for 1-1 or wait and get attacked for 0-2. Opted to ambush and got 0-2, not that rare to have combat results far from their predictions.

[Markiss]

I was thinking that the attacking unit, once it had lost the initiative in the surprise encounter, would only have the option to move if the defending units did not choose to attack, not have the initiative returned to it and be able to attack itself.

When an attacking units wins the initiative, it has the option to attack or not. I am just trying to give the defending unit, if it wins the initiative, the same choice, a choice that would be decided by consulting the predicted combat results. I understand that there is some variability in the results, but the predicted result could be assumed. I agree that even under those circumstances, it is still possible to get a poor combat result.

[Hubert Cater]

ORIGINAL: Markiss

I am playing a game as Allies where Barbarossa has just begun. I have some of my units in entrenched in cities to help slow the German advance, a common tactic.

One German unit advanced a bit recklessly, and had a surprise encounter with one of my entrenched units. My unit won the initiative, and then proceeded to launch a foolhardy attack against a far superior unit. My unit suffered severe casualties, and inflicted none upon the enemy.

Stalin executed the fool who ordered this attack personally.

Obviously, when it is my opponent's turn, I cannot control my units, but I would like to see them make a better decision in this case.

If there is a surprise encounter, and the defending unit wins the initiative, I think the unit should decline to attack if the predicted combat results are negative. After all, they did surprise the enemy, they should not then proceed to do things that are not in their own best interest.

Would that be easy to fix?

Hi Markiss,

The way it should work is that the hidden defending unit only wins the initiative if and only if it will be able to inflict more predicted losses on the moving attacker than the other way around.

If this is not happening then it would be a bug.

However with random number generation for the combat results it could in theory go from let's say a 0:1 to a 1:0.

Do you remember off hand what the combat results were so it could help me to narrow it down?

Hubert

[Markiss]

Thanks for responding Hubert,
I believe that it is possible that the result I saw was within the tolerance of poor combat results as outlined by Ktonos. Maybe I just got the worst possible result.. it was just odd to "win" the surprise combat, then get pummeled anyway. Maybe I just got pummeled a little less than I would have otherwise.. still, it was odd to see one of my units choose to do something that I would not have chosen, and get crushed as a result. I would have liked them to just stay in their fortifications.. and forced the enemy to attack them.

[Hubert Cater]

I think the easiest thing to do in this case, and to hopefully resolve all concerns, is to remove the +/- 1 on this type of encounter only, i.e. where the hidden defender gains the initiative. This way if it is predicted it will have the advantage, the ensuing combat will reflect this and you won't feel like you were penalized after the fact.

I feel that would be reasonable since this is indeed the one case you have little control of over your unit for such a situation.