What to do with retreating armies?

I'm losing patience already. Frequently, victory turns to even worse results, than defeat. after victory enemy remains retreats deep into my territory, and start wreaking havoc. Thanks to depletion of movement points none of my armies can reach this splinter armies. And now in 1.5 it becomes even worse - AI splits his armies to raid every possible facilities.
To mention that this campaign is for Russia things become far, far, far worse due to tremendous territory.
Is there any mod, that forces AI to retret closer to his territory, not the other way?

Maybe you should guard your border regions/eventful regions more closely, if you have the money use small miltia armies (2xMiltia1xProvincial Cavalry for example)
One of those in every affected region and use them to hunt down the annoying raiders.

The problem is - armies are overstretched and with Russia you should use virtually evey available units to hold incoming armies from every direction. Eventually, they all end up without movement points.

Then all you can do is to make sure that you kill all of the routing soldiers on the battlefield when you fight in or near one of your own regions.
Get some light dragoons, they are perfect for hunting down routers.

get a small army of horses only that you keep in reserve if it's a big deal - that should take care of the survivors problem quite nicely.

Not always helping, cuz got no money for spare permanent strike group

I have no issues with that. I do have issues with a single enemy unit never retreat even when I have more than half stack opposing them. Do they all at the end of their movement point ?

I think the majority of this problem could be fixed if CA would bring back a feature from the previous title (Medieval II TW), I'm talking about the ability to capture prisoners and then simply execute them.

I loved that ability! It made every victory a complete victory providing you had provincial cavalry to track down the retreating stragglers.

This thread is the reason why CA removed AI retreating. It's already tedious enough having to deal with raiders, imagine if they can all retreat and come back again next turn.

Originally Posted by aeoleron9

This thread is the reason why CA removed AI retreating. It's already tedious enough having to deal with raiders, imagine if they can all retreat and come back again next turn.

You don`t know this. It`s probably another unfathomable miss like no ambushes or prisoners or waiting for the weather to get better, inability to repair forts, etc.

I like enemies retreating, it`s strategy. i don`t play a game to have the AI hobbled for my benefit. Look at Naval Invasions, half the people like you were saying how annoying it would be to have the AI able to attack you whenever, and trying to put us off it, but it`s actually enhanced gameplay one-hundred fold. Where are those naysayers now? They`ve gone really quiet.

Making an AI act more realistically does not make a game worse, just better.


Anyway, retreating AI should retreat to its own side of the lines unless there are no other routes.

The bottom line is they jacked up the movement in this game. Being able to retreat without any movement points is something thats not in the other TWs. If they made the movement system the way it use to be there wouldnt be a problem with it.

I really doubt that its some kind of planned "feature" for the AI not retreating to make the game less annoying. It makes the game completely retarded! And sometimes makes me not want to play it at all. When AI general bodyguards defend a piece of ground against a full stack or AI cannon crews unman their guns for a good ole suicide charge into your lines. That is completely ridiculous.

Also, the AI came and put me under seige the other day. Their army consisted of 1 cannon 5 cavalry. So, I sally out and destroy the cannon and go back into the fort. Instead of retreating the cavalry just sits out there staring at my fort even though it has no way of getting in.

Its a part of the game thats broke and needs to be fixed bad!!!

Originally Posted by ssmarine

Also, the AI came and put me under seige the other day. Their army consisted of 1 cannon 5 cavalry. So, I sally out and destroy the cannon and go back into the fort. Instead of retreating the cavalry just sits out there staring at my fort even though it has no way of getting in.

Its a part of the game thats broke and needs to be fixed bad!!!

Really?
MTW2 had this problem too, but they patched it up so as soon as artillery was destroyed and there was no other way to take the walls you automatically won the battle.

Originally Posted by Humble Warrior

Really?
MTW2 had this problem too, but they patched it up so as soon as artillery was destroyed and there was no other way to take the walls you automatically won the battle.

yeah i know, it made me laugh and pissed me off at the same time when I saw it.

Retreating army should be retreating only from zone of control and not full the way who knows where... but i doubt anybody from CA cares about this aspect...



not sure if there is anything we can do about it, probably only solution would be reduce movement points drastically, and increase numbers of turns per year...

I never ever proposed to "turn off" AI retreating, cuz that's plain stupid - to remove one of the most important strategic actions. The point is that enemy retreats not towards his territory, but from it. More tothat - defeated enemy always replenish movement points. That is the thing most annoying.

Retreating army should be only allowed to move out of zone of control of attacking army. They shouldn't get full movement points.... CA should FIX this!

Armies will always retreat away from your army, so if you can make sure you attack them from the opposite direction you want them to retreat to.

yeah, but they will retreat as if they had full movement points, so they will get too far - in reality, retreating armies were chased by light cavalry like Hussars, but in ETW, you can forget about it...

like other posters say, try to kill as many as possible in battles. So when you get the message "continue or end battle", just continue. Later in the game, when you make more money, it will be easy to post a few patrolling units on your borders... I know russia is too big, but I have done this before. It takes time but you will get there.

Moved to Gameplay and Strategy Discussion