Does anyone else having issues with their soldiers withdrawing!?

**marceror** · April 14, 2012, 02:34 PM

So I'm fighting a battle, and my main army has plenty of firepower to win without reinforcements, and my reinforcements (which happen to be garrisoned in a nearby city in range of the fight) are coming in just to the side of the enemy force, well in range of their cannons.

So I think, no big deal... I'll just have those soldiers withdraw as soon as the battle begins. Err, it didn't go exactly as I had planned, as the soliders basically just started running in all directions... a good number of them ran off the battlefield... which was mere inches from them, but the units overall just started spreading out and running in ALL directions, so I literally had close to 1000 men running aimlessly, getting pelted by cannon fire. I thought... maybe I just told too many units to withdraw at once, so I restarted the battle with the intention of withdrawing only one unit at a time. Well, even with this approach about half the unit would run out of the battle, and the others would spread out into the battle and spread into this ever increasing circle. I'd say the withdraw feature could use a bit of programmer love!!

At any rate, when I try the battle for the 3rd time I'm just going to move my garrison force out of range, so it shouldn't be an issue. I just thought it prudent to document the issue incase CA happens to take notice.

**♘Top Hat Zebra** · April 15, 2012, 01:34 AM

TW games have always done this, I thought.

**marceror** · April 15, 2012, 11:14 AM

I've not had issues like this with withdrawing units in previous Total War titles. Admittedly, it's not a feature that I use often, but I certainly use it. The idea of a withdrawal is that it's a planned, tactical maneuver, not some chaotic, aimless wander across a battlefield with no consideration for the dangers present on that battlefield. In the past, withdrawing has functioned in such a manner. You tell a unit to withdraw and they all head as a unit to the nearest convenient parallel dimension.

What I experienced yesterday was a class A cluster f^&*!

**Ferdiad** · April 15, 2012, 11:20 AM

The AI was RPing a incompetent nephew in charge of your reinforcements.

**Felixlynch777** · April 15, 2012, 12:15 PM

I really wish you could make it so that if you don't want reinforcements to join you in battle, you can make them stay in the castle. Fighting with smaller number of units is easier to manage and when I'm up against 3 enemy units my 15 or so units is a little overkill...

**marceror** · April 15, 2012, 12:36 PM

Agreed Felix. There should be an option as to whether the army that is "available" to reinforce actually needs to mobilize and join the fight. Not only is it sometimes easier to manage a smaller force, but there are often strategic reasons not to bring in the reiforcing army - e.g. it's a small force that's going to come in right behind the large enemy force and have no chance to survive!