Retreat Mechanic Needs Work

[SirGroggy]

Retreat mechanics is the main thing which is broken in my opinion, if you could fix this mechanic during development this would improve the game immensely.
The issue is that your company is virtually immortal if you retreat as soon as things are against you, because you just get a temporary injury which heals on all members. It is also asymmetric because the AI opponent cannot pull this move but you can, hence it is a massive cheat.

Possible solutions:

A) Randomly allocate minor injuries, permanent injuries, and deaths (according to some improved and more realistic formula). This is the most basic and least desirable, but better than the current system.

B) Auto-calculate the actual retreat at high speed, in other words the AI takes over and tries to manually retreat the men step-by-step, and whoever cannot reach the edge is killed. It just simply automates (rapidly) the actual retreat with AI control, and the consequences are final.

C) You could make manually retreating the company easier and actually viable instead of almost certain death for most members. The way to do this might be to hit a button (perhaps with a horn icon), sounding the retreat! (A nice horn sound could play. Note it should be a horn of retreat not a white flag of surrender – but I’m being autistic). Anyhow at this point the men could all have a retreat status in which they are unable to attack, but they are able to move through zones-of-control without being attacked. Also, perhaps their movement rate could be increased, or some other changes induced by the retreat. Perhaps they also have to drop their weapons and shield or something like (or a chance to do so), in order to be able to retreat at higher speed.

The retreat mechanics should be symmetrical for the company and the enemy. Whatever options for retreat are available should be available to both sides – hence making it balanced, realistic and not feeling like a cheat which breaks the immersion.

Fix the retreat mechanics and the game mechanics go from good to great – that’s my opinion.

[Vera]

hello, I’m new on this forum, very grateful for such a good grim and the most difficult game, I really appreciate it. I always play without running away because it’s too unfair that you are essentially immortal if you have a lot of gold and you just heal in the temple, it would be more realistic if there were more severe fines for escaping from the battlefield until death. so that the player could adjust how he is ready to play before the start. Thank

[SirGroggy]

Yes, I think until the retreat mechanics are changed (if & when…) the option for a ‘hardcore’ experience is to not allow yourself to hit the cheating retreat button.

You can still try to retreat the normal way (running to the edges).

The problem with that is
a) you’re not playing the game the way the game was designed & balanced
b) it’s very punishing – a lot of your men will be killed

[SirGroggy]

Also another problem with manual retreat: if you are attacked by an enemy such as the necrosavant, it’s almost impossible to run away ‘manually’.

[Wargasm]

Necrosavants usually wait turn when they’re accompanied by ancient dead, however, and that means that you can retreat everyone out of their range before the next turn, and they’ll probably keep waiting turn until you’re engaged by the slow dead, which won’t happen.

[JoyfulRogue]

I agree, the old retreat with deaths made the game better. It feels dirty to be surrouneded by orcs from all sides, press retreat and survive with a stubbed toe or some other minor injury.

[Rap]

We’ve chosen to go a similar route as with your option B for overhauling the retreat mechanics. If your men are already on the edges of the map, you’ll safely retreat as before. If they aren’t, they’ll now attempt to speedily move to the edges of the map by themselves until either they succeed or die. While this is going on, they’ll get a defense bonus for moving through zones of control, the amount of which scales with the chosen difficulty level. They can still fail at getting away, get shot in the process and whatnot, but there’s a reasonable chance that they succeed, so that retreating always remains an option.

The new mechanics speed up the process of safely retreating quite a bit if the enemy isn’t able to close the distance anyway, but it also means that you can’t just teleport everyone to safety anymore if you’re already engaged. The skill and equipment of your men, your positioning, and who you’re fighting against now all have an impact on your chances to retreat unscathed, and it’s no longer just random injuries for everyone.

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[Sarissofoi]

That is actually a great news.
Is it whole team based or unit based? Aka can you tell single unit to retreat or its order for whole team? Also can panicked soldiers run from battle by their own?

[RusBear]

Christof, thank you for answer. That is good news for sure.

[kem]

How player is suppossed to run away from encounter with gobcav or vampires?
Suffer more than half of men dead to combo of ++acc spears and insane mobility?

[Wargasm]

Well, retreating will presumably be distinct from fleeing, with some degree of a defence bonus rather than a penalty, and presumably with any active skills still active (e.g. shieldwall, riposte, spearwall, indomitable).

[Namespace]

Idk guys, does that not open the possibility of just re-rolling your fight with no risk, no time consumption and only a slight reputation loss?
If I have that chance I feel like I should just re-roll Hedge Knight fights until he comes with a famed weapon.
Early game just re-roll if the enemy has the good kind of crossbows and so on.

Oh well, it’s better than nothing and better than how it is right now.

[Trappist]

Wow just seen Raps reply. This is a huge step forwards in QoL. No more Alt-F4 retreats!

Just need to avoid cheesing it as Namespace points out. But with random deployment roulette and no scouting mechanic I reckon this is a great compromise

[Author]

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