Designated defender

[SpencerH]

This topic hasnt been brought up for a while (since v1.17-v1.18) so I thought I would do it.

Germany is attacking one of my cities (of course) early in the game. I'm defending with 3 regular spearmen and have 2-3 elite swordsmen and horsemen and a 1/2 HP strength horsemen army. After killing most of the German attackers they are left with 1 regular swordsmen who attacks my city and kills my army.

What crap!

If I reload and move the army out of the city, the swordsmen attacks the spearmen and is killed.

FIRAXIS, WHY CANT WE DESIGNATE A DEFENDER?

[Bambul]

It is a bit of bother. I guess they did it to reduce micromanagement.

Actually, you can get a round it by doing a bit of micromanagement. Just select the army and stand it down, making sure the separmen are fortified. Now the spearmen will have more defence. This won't work in all situations, but I do empathise with your situation.

[SpencerH]

The spearmen were fortified. I tried it with them fortified, unfortified, and with various other combinations. AFAIK the deciding factor is the number of HP possessed by a unit rather than the best defender ie highest defense points.

[jshelr]

Equally annoying: if you have a stack of swords protected by spears and one of your swords is promoted to elite, you can't protect him with vet spears anymore. The elite is designated as the defender. This is one big reason to favor the horseman early offense, since you can protect your elites and get more Great Leaders.

[SpencerH]

Yes, its the same problem except I lost an army instead of an elite.

[jshelr]

BTW, I think you can split your stack into elites and vets, with vet spears on top. The AI will avoid attacking the elites. So, if I'm right that the AI does this, you can sometimes avoid the problem I was whining about.

[vmxa1]

It is very annoying to watch an army fight one attacker after another, getting the HP reduced and still being selected as the defender, when down to 1 HP , while you have strong units sitting on their hands with 4 HPs.

[IthacaMike]

Originally posted by jshelr
Equally annoying: if you have a stack of swords protected by spears and one of your swords is promoted to elite, you can't protect him with vet spears anymore. The elite is designated as the defender.

I think the defender is the unit or army that has the highest defence strength time HPs left. The tie breakers seem to be the defender with the lowest attack strength and the defender with the lowest number of original HP other things being equal.

Mike

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by jshelr
BTW, I think you can split your stack into elites and vets, with vet spears on top. The AI will avoid attacking the elites. So, if I'm right that the AI does this, you can sometimes avoid the problem I was whining about.

IMO the AI goes after elite units (for the same reason you would.... so it cant spawn a leader.

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by IthacaMike


I think the defender is the unit or army that has the highest defence strength time HPs left. The tie breakers seem to be the defender with the lowest attack strength and the defender with the lowest number of original HP other things being equal.

Mike

If thats not it, its something like that . In my case the army was 7-8 HP X1D vs regular spearman 3HP X 2D so the army was chosen as the 'defender' and slaughtered.

Given that there are markers for attacker and defender units in the editor, would it be too much for Firaxis to change it to attack the defender units 1st then the attackers!