[DESIGN] Retreat needs Fixing

[SMIFFGIG]

This is a post a made a long time back before the source code was released (or even thought about being released)

Retreat option is just one big bug

Well other than the fact the AI is unable to use the option granting the human play a stupidly big advantage. You can abuse the retreat system so easily

eg. I havent got a spy so i just attack a city and retreat immediatly and hey presto, i can see every single unit in the city and what they all are, plus my one unit is still alive as i retreated straight away. There is no morale system in the game, that would help a tiny bit but still no where near enough. I think if possible the retreat option should ONLY be available for defending players (im not sure if this can be done) and even better the current retreat system (that activision must have tottaly rushed into CtP2) total scrapped. Could it be done randomly using SLIC. This would be more realistic (random) as in battles there aint 100% chance of a successful retreat 100% of the time as currently is. Also it would make the stupid spying/retreat bug obsolete.

Original Thread is here: http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=70092

Anyway, retreat at the moment is hugely flawed, but with some work could be made into a very good feature
One thing it should never be is 100% successful IMO (i.e. Unit health represents military number, so health decreases to represent loss of units)

another very interesting point mapfi mentioned in that old thread was

Even without the retreat option you only have to sacrifice one little weak unit to look what's inside a city. That's the way it's done in MP

Now this is ridiculous but true
Example, in real life, if your city had a garrison of 100,000 troops, which included seige weapons, archers, footmen etc, and you where attacked by a band of 100 barbarians
You would hardly send all 100.000 units to the battle to defend

Something has to be done about this, maybe small unit amounts get attacked and retreat/get anhilated before getting to attack the city, due to bombard/long range units in city + city defences (Ballista towers etc [Although i find this quite an odd city improvement for all civs, but thats a different issue])
Or maybe when you are attacking, only the neccessary participating defending units are displayed in the battle window (and if u attack with one puny unit, this will likely only be one unit displayed, maybe only even some bombard/long range units.)

But the fact you can find out the exact details of entire city defences, simply by attacking and retreating (or attacking and dieing) is utterly unrealistic and ridiculous.
Its pure annoying in mplay and makes the AI un-necessarly weaker.

Thanks for listening, and I hope strongly that both the (Retreating) and (Revealing of all units) will be fixed

-SMIFFGIG

[Maquiladora]

Well it isnt 100% sucessful, the side that isnt retreating gets a free attack as the other side retreats. But i think it should be scrapped altogether.

[SMIFFGIG]

The main issue i have, is the fact u can find out the entire contents of a defending cities army, or a defenders army in general.
Scrapping the retreat issue would not rectify this problem, as (what mapfi says) you can simply attack with a single crappy unit to reveal the entire contents of a entire army.

For example i could use my good old Warrior unit, to attack an enemies modern day city and reveal the entire Modern day fleet of Marines, Tanks, Jet Planes, Cruisers and Howitzers.

At the expense of my feather hatted friend ......


Now thats ridiculous

[Solver]

There is a way to make it so that you can't see all defending army, I think. In the code, it would work like that. When an attack takes place, consider the attacking unit. Then consider the entire defensive stack. Count, based on the attack/range/defense values, how many of the units in the defensive stack are required to eliminate the attacker. Then, as the battle starts, show only so many units. Then, if you attack a stack of 4 Pikemen + 4 Cannons with an Archer, only one Pikemen (maybe also one Cannon, depends on how it's implemented) will appear in the battle screen.

I realise that coding that will have a tricky moment or two, but it's definitely doable.

[Flinx]

1) In SP it is up to you if you want to use this exploit against the AI

2) In MP agree that this exploit is disallowed before you start a game

If you think of units as representing 100’s or 1000’s of people, even in situations where all of your units are killed, a ‘few people’ are likely to make it back from the front lines to report on enemy strength. In the single warrior versus 12 tanks type cases SMIFFGIG has raised however it is quite likely that no one would return and you should just get a text pop-up letting you know that your army was utterly destroyed before any intelligence was returned from the front line.

It is likely to require a significant amount of coding to implement any modification of the combat system; this is not a big issue for me, and I can live with the exploit being in the game.

[Solver]

Well, Flinx, it is in fact quite possible to change it in some ways that are very easy to code. An example.

If the defensive units are at least 5 times more numerous, then kill the attacking ones and just give a textbox. That would mean that you would only be able to "spy" on 4-stacks with 1 unit, or on 9-stacks with 2 units.

[SMIFFGIG]

In SP it is up to you if you want to use this exploit against the AI

Im sorry but you could use this logic to justify almost any Human vs AI advantages/bugs that could ever exsist.

The fact is it needs fixing

[child of Thor]

sending small(expendable) units to uncover enemy information is one of the oldest tactics in the book militarily speaking.

Still in terms of gameplay in CTP2 it does need sorting out,just because the AI cant back out like the player can.
And like Solver was suggesting, some sort of partial info should only be discovered - not the whole lot. If this cant be done then maybe scraping it altogether is the only way(you would still have spies to do recon of cities).

How tricky to give the AI a retreat option(like when it gets to 50% of its origonal force(could be dependable on gov type?))?
I can sort of envision running battles where by the player is forced to field a few armies to try to hem in the weaker foe to finish them off and stop them escaping to fight another day.

[Maquiladora]

The AI dont need to use retreat because it more often than not picks fights its likely win.