Choose your defender

[Rik Meleet]

What irritates me is that when I have several units in 1 tile and the AI attacks the wrong unit is defending. If I have 7 Veteran Knights and 1 Elite; I want to use the Elite knight for attacking and not for defending; but the AI usually takes the strongest unit; the Elite, which is sometimes killed.

It would be better if I get to choose wha unit defends instead of always choosing the strongest.

 

[Bacon King]

seems like a preety good idea too me

 

[Peebo]

yeah, i agree. but on the next turn you could always bring a veteran knight out and take revenge on the AI, maybe he'll turn elite.

 

[Pembroke]

Originally posted by Rik Meleet
I want to use the Elite knight for attacking and not for defending; but the AI usually takes the strongest unit; the Elite, which is sometimes killed. It would be better if I get to choose wha unit defends instead of always choosing the strongest.

OTOH if *I* was attacking your stack *I* would definitely want to target your elite knight to deny you the chance of getting a GL.

"The enemy is under no compulsion to comply to your wishes."

I think it works ok as it is. If you want to "spare" your elites you have to leave them unfortified thus making the veterans the strongest defenders and chosen for the battle. This makes even real world sense: unfortified troops are held in the reserve while the fortified ones are in the front ready to counter the charge.

The price for keeping your elites in the reserve is not having fortified them if all your veterans get themselves killed...

Nothing like trade-offs to spice the game.

 

[slothman]

A rational for sparing the elites could be that the non-elites are covering the elites and taking the damage themselves. An easy way could be to have a rule that says "spare elites" which instead of doing the usual order of elite -> veteran -> regular -> conscript it could be veteran -> regular -> conscript -> elite.

 

[Rik Meleet]

Originally posted by Pembroke


OTOH if *I* was attacking your stack *I* would definitely want to target your elite knight to deny you the chance of getting a GL.

"The enemy is under no compulsion to comply to your wishes."

But OTOH (3rd hand ? ) If I command an army consisting of several units, I can decide where to place them and the front units are the ones who get hit first. You should be relatively safe in the back. In that way even if you want to get to my elites I can prevent that by placing them in the back, behind a protective screen of other units.

 

[Nad]

OTOH (4th hand ) each tile represents a vast area and an attack could come from any direction, so I would still pick on the elite

I think I like the system as is as you always getting the strongest unit doing the defending; the flip side of having your elite defending is that he has more chance of winning the battle than a vet.

 

[The Last Conformist]

I think the current system is nice and simple and should be kept.

And it makes sense from the PoV of your local commander, who wants to defend as strongly as possible.

 

[marceagleye]

You can alleviate this by fortifying your veteran units and have the elite end its turn not fortified.

 

[BomberEscort]

Shift-D like in SMAC to set the primary defender would be nice and easy to implement...

 

[alpha wolf 64]

I use the non-fortified method. OTOF (i think we ran out of hands ) I tend to keep at least one defensive unit close to my attack formations.

 

[BomberEscort]

Originally posted by marceagleye
You can alleviate this by fortifying your veteran units and have the elite end its turn not fortified.

Seems to be a pain (a minor one, but still a pain)... Just bring back the primary defender option. Problem solved.