Annoying bugs? Or bad function?

Hey

I'm talking about how battles seem to end prematurely. You are chasing down routers, you have plenty of time, but suddenly the game proclaims you victor and the enemy gets to withdraw with battered remains of units that can just afterwards raid your buildings which is a hassle...

It's even worse at sea, where the goal is often prize money. I attack a few merchantmen, spend alot of time making sure I do not sink them but cause them to surrender, and then the battle ends suddenly as the last ship surrender... then I get NO ships and the surrendered one just flees anyway. WTF?

In battles against real warships I can have 5-6 enemy SotLs surrender. They stay afloat for a long time in battle, so it's not like they are about to sink. Then when the battle is over I get maybe 2-3 prizes only. ..

SO annoying. I want ma ships goddamnit!

I don't think it happens the same to me at sea, but I mostly autoresolve there, so...

Yep, it's very frustrating on land, but you can just click Continue Battle if you're sure you can hack them all.

Originally Posted by RO Citizen

I don't think it happens the same to me at sea, but I mostly autoresolve there, so...

Yep, it's very frustrating on land, but you can just click Continue Battle if you're sure you can hack them all.

No I mean after I do Continue Battle the battle will end prematurely sometimes even when I am running them down.

Try some sea battles and see if you can capture every ship, or at least every ship that doesn't accidentally sink.

When you say that you are "running them down" are they actually in contact or perhaps the computer knows that they will escape without further kills or captures. (I have never seen such happen in any other Total War game, but I am just starting Empires and Napoleon.)

I know the frustration of sea - when you have nailed down the enemy admirals flagship to 20 guns from 122, and there are 30 crew left, its demasted and the ship is on fire, they surrender, the game ends, and apparently they have escaped and gone to their nearest port. Oh well, perhaps they got out of the brig and recaptured the ship?:p

Originally Posted by squatlover

I know the frustration of sea - when you have nailed down the enemy admirals flagship to 20 guns from 122, and there are 30 crew left, its demasted and the ship is on fire, they surrender, the game ends, and apparently they have escaped and gone to their nearest port. Oh well, perhaps they got out of the brig and recaptured the ship?:p

There's definately cases similar to this that happened in the actual fleet engagements of the 1700s and early 1800s.

Originally Posted by squatlover

I know the frustration of sea - when you have nailed down the enemy admirals flagship to 20 guns from 122, and there are 30 crew left, its demasted and the ship is on fire, they surrender, the game ends, and apparently they have escaped and gone to their nearest port.

That has never happened to me.
If they surrendered, they were always available as prize in the capture screen.

Originally Posted by squatlover

I know the frustration of sea - when you have nailed down the enemy admirals flagship to 20 guns from 122, and there are 30 crew left, its demasted and the ship is on fire, they surrender, the game ends, and apparently they have escaped and gone to their nearest port. Oh well, perhaps they got out of the brig and recaptured the ship?:p

Yes this is exactly what I meant and is the greatest frustration - because there is nothing you can do about it. You have basically just wasted your time for nothing when you could just auto-resolve and get the same result. ... or had the pleasure of turning their ships into floating bombs... as your 122-gun first rate smashes the enemy ship apart at point blank range.

@oldboy: Hmm yes this might be possible. It's usually only when there is one unit left routing.. but it's just silly that 80 men become impossible to chase down because 3 men of the same unit managed to escape...Well at least now I not that I can pretty much end the game a bit before If I suspect the unit has spread out that much.

@Nimits: There is no way such a damaged ship could escape a whole fleet that has just captured it. Overpower their guards and escape in life boats, maybe, IF close to port. But to get away with a demasted heavily leaking ship while there are frigates about able to chase it? No. I'm guessing a demasted ship might even need tugs to get to port anyway, which probably requires other SotLs.

If you want an ad-hoc excuse instead of just calling it a bug, a more likely situation would be that a storm sunk them on the way to port (which happened to the massive Spanish 1st rate at Trafalgar).

Still no excuse for the damaged frigate that got away after surrendering. It had 10 cannons left.... 10! And then when I sent my 32 gun frigate to finish it it won against it in auto-resolve! Argh!

Daniu you are lucky and this worked in ETW for me as well.. only happened in NTW this last bug. In ETW you only lost surrendering ships that were also sinking or on fire.

I know what you mean but I don't think it's a bug. What happens is when your trying to rout and kill off the last of a particular unit that is retreating, even if one soldier in that unit manages to escape the battlefield (crosses the red boundry line) the game recgonises this as though the enemy has escaped and ends the battle before you can kill anymore soldiers in that particular unit.

It only happens when there is still one unit on the battlefield but all it takes is for one soldier from the unit to cross the red line and end the battle. Actually it could be two or three units but so long as one soldier from each unit reaches the boundry, the game will end regardless of whether there are still soldiers from the unit on the battlefield.

It also happened to me, very often.

I still auto-resolve in sea battles. I am stupid, but I get sea sick.

It happens to be at sea ALL THE TIME. Every engagement one ship ALWAYS escapes. It can be on fire, I could be boarding it and you think the capture "victory" window is going to pop up and it shows one ship escapes. It is very very frustrating because then I have to go fight the battle again if I have enough movement points left over. It is like it is programed to let the last ship always escape which must be a bug because it is obviously either destroyed or captured.