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Today I encountered something that may be a bug in withdrawal behavior.

I was playing the Eindhoven historical campaign, and I wound up smashing the 6 Durham Light Infantry Battalion against the rocks of the 107 Panzer Brigade. After some hours of heavy fighting I decided to withdraw the 6 DLI and give them some time to recover.

I gave a withdrawal order, and some short movement occured, but not much. Most of the Brits were above 50% fatigued, and so they chose to rest in place rather than pull back. What I eventually discovered, however, was that they wouldn't move even when they had rested down to lower fatigue. By this time the 107 Pz Bde was pretty worn out too, so the fighting was not heavy, and I would have expected the 6 DLI to pull back as ordered.

Now the weird part: I realized that I could "nudge" my units by modifying the original withdrawal order, switching between regular movement and fast movement. Each alteration would produce about fifteen minutes of immediate movement from everyone in the battalion, and then they would rest again in place until I switched the speed option back the other way. Thus I eventually micromanaged them off the field and into the withdrawal position.

But should this have been necessary? I can't remember how long I waited, but it seemed like several hours of watching the 6 DLI rest in place before I stumbled on the trick.

Is this a known issue? A bug? A quirk of the engine? (I assume it isn't intended to work this way.)

I've seen similar, but with very fatigued units - sometimes you can keep nudging them forward by changing the march from forced march to normal, then back again a short while later. I've seen it with move orders, not withdraw, but I suspect the root cause is the same.

OK... I'll have a look at that. Can you send us a saved game?

Alas, I didn't save it until after I had resolved the issue.

[:(]

I *may* have a save of an older (but patched) game where it happened - I'll try to find one. Alternately, I'll try to make sure I take a save if it happens again.

Here's a withdraw question... what is the best way to pull a unit off the line? My fusilier Btln had put up a good day's fight, limiting the progress of the allied juggernaut in front of them. With 40 men remaining, I gave the withdraw "saftest" command at night, with no units to its immediate front. I had brought up a PG coy to hold the line, and hoped that the fusiliers would withdraw through them. Instead, the fusiliers chose to withdraw right past a Allied inf. coy and was quickly shot to pieces, ending up with just 5 men remaining.

Should I have chosen "shortest" to faciliate a direct movement to the rear through the now dug-in PGs??? Should I have just changed their defend task to "In Situ"?

What Intel setting is the above picture using - current, recent or all. It amy be a case of the unit in question not having intel on the F.117 enemy coy that I presume shot him up. In which case it would have chosen a perfectly valid route. Essentially, safest route should follow the path that is the most covered ( ie woods/urban ) and has the least known enemy firepower. As you suggest, though, a shortest path would guarantee a move along the route you had in mind. Alternately, use "safest" but have a number of waypoints close together at the sharp end to guide them to a point you know they will be safe.

I usually play intel setting "current" but in the above it looks like I might not have been in that mode. Thanks for the ideas on witdrawing - [:)]

Just a quick bump to ask whether anyone has looked into this issue. Is the start-stop (and "nudge") behavior that I described above a real bug, or just an anomaly to watch out for?

Thanks for the great support!

Paul,

Yes I noticed this myself just yesterday while testing the new Mixed Mode Movement code ( slope effects et al ). I'll have a look at this shortly.