Routing Units

[Colonel Hopper]

Is it possible to alter routing units so that they are not massacred whilst in melee? As in a slightly more orderly retreat, or actually survival instincts. Better still, if this only applied to units that are routing, but not shattered, although I don't see how that could work.

[Kaunitz]

That would be awsome. But I don't think it is possible. CA designed the game so that battles are decided by inflicting casualties and shooting down about 80& of the enemy army, not by morale. They thought it to be more "fun" in this way. I don't even dream of routing units that still resist the enemy.

According to my very limited modding experience, these points apply to routing units:

- Units in ETW rally only once per battle (my experience from custom battles; maybe it's a consequence of my settings, but I don't think so)
- They usually suffer a lot when they're routing out of a melee, because they turn around slowly while they're still being attacked by the enemy.
- They use their running speed. It's most painfull that there is no seperate routing speed (which should be unaffected by fatigue). In vanilla ETW, charging speeds are usually faster than running speeds (?), which means that routing units can be pursued very easily.
- One can lower the broken treshold so that units never get shattered. They will be able to rally in this way (not when there are too many negative morale factors though).
- I don't know exactly if all defensive values (defensive skill, shield, armor) are "disabled" for routing units, but I think so - having experimented with very high armor values for cavalry. So even cavalry suffers really bad when it routs...

[Colonel Hopper]

Too bad... Well there goes my idea of battles not being complete bloodbaths, got really sick of both sides in even battles losing 80-90% of their troops. Most battles in reality were much lower. Also, I have seen units rally up to three or four times with modified morale.

[Kaunitz]

You've seen units rally three to four times!? That's interesting news for me. May I ask in which mod you've seen this happen?

You can still prevent battles from being horrible blood baths by modifying morale (e.g. see my project in my signature).

[taw]

You've seen units rally three to four times!? That's interesting news for me. May I ask in which mod you've seen this happen?

This happens all the time very easily for low morale units (citizens, militia - especially without
generals in their army) even in vanilla. Such units rout very quickly under even minor shocks,
but if not chased they'll get back to order unless battle is already lost.

High morale units like line infantry don't do that because they only rout after heavy loses,
and morale penalty for total loses is persistent, unlike all other which fade away quickly.

Cavalry and other melee units also don't do that much, because they get charge bonus for charging,
which will only be overwhelmed by massive loses, and by that time total loss penalty is persistent.
And fatigue penalties fade when resting, but they only increase when routing.

Try setting up a small army of some carcass shot artillery + line infantry versus a
lot of low-morale militia or citizens (definitely no general for testing).
You should see a lot of multiple routing and rallying on enemy side.