A "retreat" capability should be added to soldiers.

[AIEND]

Soldiers now seem to only run when chasing or escaping uncontrolled by the player, making running a non-existent setting for the player.
There should be a formation dedicated to retreat, which leaves the soldiers scattered as if they were not in formation, allowing soldiers (especially melee infantry) to withdraw from the battlefield as quickly as possible while greatly reducing defenses. Makes them more vulnerable once overtaken by enemy troops, especially cavalry.
Or add a command button of "Retreat to Barracks" on the interface, so that soldiers in combat immediately run to the nearest CC, Barracks and Fort.

[alre]

strongly agree on the 'retreat to barracks' command, as already stated in previous discussions.

[Stan`]

3 hours ago, alre said:

strongly agree on the 'retreat to barracks' command, as already stated in previous discussions.

How would that work? Which barracks ? What of naval maps ?

[alre]

same as the alarm bell basically, but with men instead of women, and possibly from selecting the men who you want to call back, instead of from selecting the cc.

[AIEND]

1 小时前，斯坦` 说过：

那将如何运作？ 哪个军营？ 海军地图呢？

The navy should probably give one more button command "withdraw to port", of course I would suggest adding an aura of repairing ships to the dock.

[Lion.Kanzen]

It's like call to arms but the unit is seeking a shelter.

[AIEND]

3 分钟前，Lion.Kanzen 说：

这就像号召性用语，但该单位正在寻找庇护所。

In fact, it does not necessarily need to be a shelter. It can be that the army gathers to the hero. The retreat is not a scattered operation without command, but usually follows the order of the commander.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

3 hours ago, alre said:

same as the alarm bell basically, but with men instead of women, and possibly from selecting the men who you want to call back, instead of from selecting the cc.

I thought at one point you could click alarm bell for women and alarm bell again for men to find all available garrison points?

To be honest, I cannot envision a need for this in gameplay, but I guess it can't hurt.

 

Currently in the game to do this after selecting a group of units is hold control alt and garrison each barracks. I guess it would be nice for training melee units and avoiding getting your barracks captured.

Edited April 26, 2022 by real_tabasco_sauce

[real_tabasco_sauce]

another way to do it is to queue garrison orders: so garrison one barracks the queue to garrison the next barracks and so on... the ones that are garrioned into the first barracks are removed from the selection so the remainder go to the next barracks.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

I think I remember there used to be a feature where you could "highten" the alert by clicking the bell again, this would send all men to garrisonable places as well. The problems with it were that you could accidentally double click and cause a catastrophe with all your units in places you don't want. I remember when this happened there was always difficulty making sure all people were where they were supposed to be. I have heard of a "back to work" button that might make this more practical to use in game. 

9/10 times, however, emergency garrisoning all your men is a bad idea. It will allow your enemy to find a better position, take out your buildings and isolate groups of units that degarrison from those destroyed buildings.

[alre]

queuing garrison orders is how I do it right now, although it can be a bit inefficient when the garrisonable buildings are not at the same side of you retreating forces, and inefficiency while being chased can be catastrophic.

10 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

9/10 times, however, emergency garrisoning all your men is a bad idea. It will allow your enemy to find a better position, take out your buildings and isolate groups of units that degarrison from those destroyed buildings.

that's why I suggested allowing it on a selection of men instead of from the cc. it would only affect them.

the utility would be that you save your men from a sudden overwhelming attack and at the same time you save your buildings from capture, meanwhile you can regroup the rest of your men and maybe ask for help from your allies, and think about the next move. I've saved desperate situations using garrison order to deny favorable fights to attacking forces.

[Grapjas]

Shouldn't be that hard to implement this feature, code wise. I would do it like alre suggests, a button you can click when you select your men. With the code you would get all entities of the e.g. Barracks class and store it to a variable. Calculate in a loop which one is closest and order them to garrison to it or just stand near it (which they automatically do if the building is full). You can also send them to the next barrack if full but that might work out against you if you don't pay attention and have multiple bases.

wHy NoT Do iT YoUrSeLf?! Because i don't necessarily want this feature

I'd say go to phab and make a patch for it and if you don't know how to this wiki is a start.

In regards to unreachable terrain, i'm not sure if there is a function in place already to check that. IIRC theres not and units will go back and forth trying to reach that terrain. Haven't played in a bit though.

Edited April 26, 2022 by Grapjas

[Stan`]

16 hours ago, AIEND said:

The navy should probably give one more button command "withdraw to port", of course I would suggest adding an aura of repairing ships to the dock.

How about units on a different island with no barracks or no building? Should they command a ship to go back to their dock, so they can go back to some barracks. That seems like a messy edge case.

[Lion.Kanzen]

3 minutes ago, Stan` said:

How about units on a different island with no barracks or no building? Should they command a ship to go back to their dock, so they can go back to some barracks. That seems like a messy edge case.

Good catch.

[chrstgtr]

It would be nice if there was a runaway option whenever charging is implemented. Otherwise, it will be all offense and no defense. 

[alre]

2 hours ago, Stan` said:

How about units on a different island with no barracks or no building? Should they command a ship to go back to their dock, so they can go back to some barracks. That seems like a messy edge case.

how does the bell works in these cases? I would make use of shared code for the two fearures.

in any case, I suggest having an "error sound" that gives feedback that the order failed.

we can consider another edge case: there is not enough garrison space for all men. in that case the error sound would play as well. maybe we can also make so that units who manage to run for shelter are taken out of the selection, and those who are left out can be given new orders seamlessly.

[Yekaterina]

5 hours ago, Stan` said:

How about units on a different island with no barracks or no building? Should they command a ship to go back to their dock, so they can go back to some barracks. That seems like a messy edge case.

Consider the same case for women: if they were isolated when the civic centre alarm is raised, they would head towards the closest house and stop at where the passability class is 'ships'. Same should apply for soldiers: they stand at the beach if they can't reach their barracks. 

 

It is only necessary to raise alert for soldiers in early game when you are losing against an early push but do not want to sacrifice all of your soldiers. By the time you are able to reach an isolated island, you are most likely able to immediately withdraw your units back to your ship, or, win the fight. So the extreme case isn't a big problem. 

 

I am personally for this retreat bell, because in my early days of playing, the AI often push at minute 8:00 and kill all of my infantry units. If such an alarm bell was added, it would make defending against early AI pushes much easier.  It would also reduce the deadliness of Carthaginian mercenary cavalry because the defending soldiers can escape to safety easily as well. 

 

[LienRag]

On 27/04/2022 at 8:30 AM, chrstgtr said:

It would be nice if there was a runaway option whenever charging is implemented. Otherwise, it will be all offense and no defense. 

Imho retreat and running away cannot really be implemented before there is a good morale system, else people will just "dance" forever.

Some units were historically trained to "dance", like Mongol horse archers, but that's very rare and should be specific formations allowed only to those units.

Other units trying to "dance" would lose morale with a risk of routing, as was the case historically.