Are armies 'fast' units?

[Parmenion]

Now that C3C has improved armies, they have the Move rate of the slowest unit in the stack +1. Does that mean they have the retreat option when fighting a 'slow' unit?
I'm interested because my army of legionaries is about to be banjoed by a Babylonian Med Inf and I wanted to know whether to retreat this round or not.

 

[sealman]

Could not answer you, my armies have never even reach the point of contemplating retreat.

 

[Longasc]

All hail Parmenion, greatest Strategos ever.

No, Armies NEVER retreat even if they have increased movement. They always fight to the end.

 

[Zeekater]

guess again, they do, seen them do it.

my guess is, it only happens when fighting a unit with movement one, and all units in the army have movement 2 or more.

 

[Parmenion]

Since I had C3C I've seen 2 armies destroyed by 'slow' units (1-movement). The armies both had cavalry in them, so already had 'fast' unit abilities. However, they didn't retreat.
I figured that an army of 'fast' units would retreat anyway, but I never saw that happen in C3 or PTW. So, even if it were the case, would an army of 1-movement (increased to 2-movement) units have the retreat capability?

 

[dze27]

I can add a data point, I definitely saw my 13-HP Mounted Warrior army retreat after attacking (and failing to get a single hit) on a regular pikeman that was on a mountain. I suspect Zeekater is right, but I don't know for sure.

 

[Parmenion]

But MW already have the retreat capability.
Would an army consisting solely of Med Inf have the ability?

I agree with Zeekater in that all the units need to have a move of 2 or more.

 

[Hygro]

I've seen 'em retreat, even with just all swordsman.

 

[Chieftess]

Armies *DO* retreat, atleast in C3C. I've seen a Sword army retreat.

 

[Hygro]

wow. I just said the exact same thing. But you've just cleared any possible doubts I had that I saw something other than what I thought

 

[Wakboth]

Part of the confusion is that even fast units dont always retreat, whether in an army or not.

If the opposing unit is one hp from dying, your unit will always fight one more round of combat, even if your unit is also at 1 hp. Also. A unit will never retreat unless it has taken at least one point of damage in the current battle. Thus a combat will always go at least one round before a retreat will occur.

This should be apparent. We've all seen it. Your horseman gets attacked and retreats with 1hp. A second unit then attacks it and destroys it. The only way for a 1hp fast unit to survive a battle is to win it. It will not retreat, no matter how many rounds of combat occur. It must defeat the other unit, or die (and they usually die about then).

Armies are no different. Um... Except for one important detail. Armies are still counted as X number of separate units when they fight (Ok, kinda). It calculates the likelyhood of a retreat based on the damage to an individual unit, not the whole. There's more though, since it will first cycle to a "fresh" unit instead of retreating. I haven't done any extensive testing, but this is how I *think* it works.

Your army gets attacked. The best defensive unit defends. If it's whittled down to red, it'll switch to the next best defensive unitl. If that's down to red, it'll switch to the next unit. If the last unit is reduced to red, then it may retreat. I would expect, however, that if that last unit only had 1 hp to start with (had older battle damage maybe? Also may be *why* it's the last unit in the stack since it started out weak), the army wont retreat, since that particular unit has to lose a point before retreating and that point will "kill" him. Of course, the unit doesn't actually die, but the army as a whole is left with less hp then it has units (which it can do). However, it will then switch back to whatever is the best remaining defensive unit. Since that's considered a separate fight for that unit, I believe it will again not retreat until that unit also loses one point of damage. Since the odds are once you get into this state that all the units in your army only have one point left, your army will not retreat but will instead just die in place.

Again. I don't know if that's exactly what's going on, but that's what it looks like happens.

Um... Good rule of thum is to not ever get your armies into the red. They are very vulnerable to being killed in that state, and the AI will go after them. Usually, the only time I lose an army to warfare is when I got a bit too ambitious with one on attack and left it redlined, and the AI counterattacked and killed it. Hehe. Try to avoid that...

 

[Pounder]

I think if you start the battle with 2 or more movement points left, you may retreat, but if you have travelled a distance and start the battle with only one movement point left you will not retreat.

 

[lbhhh]

Originally posted by Pounder
I think if you start the battle with 2 or more movement points left, you may retreat, but if you have travelled a distance and start the battle with only one movement point left you will not retreat.

That sounds logical but I've often seen 1 movement point remaining cavalrys retreat. Retreating or not also depends on the status of the troop( veteran, elite). Its more likely for an elite to retreat than a veteran etc. You can check this out in the editor.

 

[Wakboth]

Hmmm... I still say it has nothing to do with the level of the unit. If you watch your units, they will *always* retreat if they are reduced to 1 point of damage and the other unit has 2 or more remaining. If your unit is at 1 and the other is also at 1, it will *always* fight one more round of combat (so you either win or lose at that point and will not retreat). I've never seen any other behavior then this.

 

[Oddible]

they will *always* retreat if they are reduced to 1 point of damage and the other unit has 2 or more remaining

Not true, there is a chance that they will retreat but it is not 100%. The behavior may be different attacking than defending.

 

[lbhhh]

Originally posted by Wakboth
Hmmm... I still say it has nothing to do with the level of the unit. If you watch your units, they will *always* retreat if they are reduced to 1 point of damage and the other unit has 2 or more remaining. If your unit is at 1 and the other is also at 1, it will *always* fight one more round of combat (so you either win or lose at that point and will not retreat). I've never seen any other behavior then this.

Have a look in the editor, here's a screenshot. It clearly show the retreat bonus as being 50. Veteran is 58, elite 66. So the experience level of a unit does matter, unless of course retreat bonus has nothing to do with the chance of a unit retreating, which is unlikely.

 

[anarres]

In Civ3 vanilla (unpatched) fast units ALWAYS retreated at 1hp if the enemy had 2hp or more, but they obviously had to change that, it was waaaay too unbalanced.

 

[lbhhh]

Originally posted by anarres
In Civ3 vanilla (unpatched) fast units ALWAYS retreated at 1hp if the enemy had 2hp or more, but they obviously had to change that, it was waaaay too unbalanced.

That's right, I don't recall which patch though...Does anyone remember?

 

[alamo]

Armies can attack multiple times, so that may explain the sword retreat - it acts like miltiple moves.

 

[Wakboth]

Ah. Good point. I haven't paid alot of attention to it since back then.

Ok. So amend it to "if a retreat is possible, then the chance of retreat is based on the exp level of the unit".

The conditions underwhich a retreat is possible are still valid though. It has nothing to do with movement points. It can only happen when your unit is reduced to 1hp and the unit you are fighting is not itself a fast unit, and has more then 1hp.

Why this is important with armies is that all units in an army "retreat" when they get down to 1hp. However, they don't retreat a square. They "retreat" to the bottom of the stack in the army. The problem is that if all the units in an army have done this, then the army wont actually retreat when the army as a whole it very low on hp.

Again. I haven't done any real testing on this (obviously), but the observations I've made would seem to indidate that it's a matter of whether an army has taken previous damage or not. In a single fight, the army will cycle units out as they take damage. If you "win" the fight, that mean that those cycled out units still have more then 1hp. If you "lose" the fight, then they will have only 1hp left. An army that loses a lot of fights in a row may end up not retreating since when it cycles to that last unit, it's already at 1hp and cant retreat.

That shouldn't happen often, but I can see it as a potential explanation as to why sometimes armies will retreat and sometimes they don't. I still say the tactics to walk away from this is that you should avoid exposing an army that's already taken battle damage to combat. Also, an army made up of units that individually will get pounded by an enemy unit wont be that effective in the long run. Using an army for combat just because it's got more HP to lose before dying may work in many cases, but does increase the chance of losing that army completely if the RNG chooses to nail you.