No benefit from chasing down shattered enemies... right?

[Sorenzo]

In previous TW games, you'd have a 1-to-1 ratio of units captured while routing/shattered an the numbers of captives post-battle, so chasing enemies down gave extra money.
In Shogun, you could see your units gain experience when they killed fleeing enemies.

In Warhammer, it seems like your units gain no experience from post-victory kills, and the post-battle "captives" number don't seem to be directly related to post-victory kills.

Has anyone tested or figured out for sure if the post-battle captives number changes based on how many shattered enemies you killed post-victory?

I'm used to chasing down enemies and I keep wondering if it's pointless or not.

And of course, I am aware that there are strategic benefits (or, sometimes, downsides) to chasing shattered units, depending on whether you want to fight them later or not.

[Aleera]

As far as my anecdotal evidence goes.

Killing shattered unit's does infact give experience. I've seen hounds gain a chevron from killing models of ironbreakers that were shattered after army losses.

I think it's tied to if the army will be wiped out after a loss.

Also, killing of the General of the army results in more exp as far as I know, so just letting the general shatter and not actually kill it will give less exp.

[Man of Culture]

You get Xp for everything you do in the battle so mopping up units is good to do. It also makes the follow up fight, if there is one, much easier. I usually kill as much as I can during the main fight so I can just auto-resolve the follow up and clear the army from the campaign map.

[pascal.difolco]

I've heard in Legend vids that level of victory in WH3 is determined by threshold of % enemy losses, so unless the battle is a settlement battle it can be worth chasing routed units

[Chief Minister of Gaming]

Originally posted by Sorenzo:

In previous TW games, you'd have a 1-to-1 ratio of units captured while routing/shattered an the numbers of captives post-battle, so chasing enemies down gave extra money.
In Shogun, you could see your units gain experience when they killed fleeing enemies.

In Warhammer, it seems like your units gain no experience from post-victory kills, and the post-battle "captives" number don't seem to be directly related to post-victory kills.

Has anyone tested or figured out for sure if the post-battle captives number changes based on how many shattered enemies you killed post-victory?

I'm used to chasing down enemies and I keep wondering if it's pointless or not.

And of course, I am aware that there are strategic benefits (or, sometimes, downsides) to chasing shattered units, depending on whether you want to fight them later or not.

Million reasons to chase down. Do you want win or not on greater difficulty.

Don't need to chase, if you got movement to mop up after battle move, but that mop up is also movement points, lalalala..

[SomeGuy1]

do note that a shattered unit can still survive the battle if it escapes. it only gets wiped out if below a certain total health threshold (and the threshold is higher for the losing side than the winning one. as in, units get wiped out despite having more remaining health). so yes, finishing it off is very useful. you don't have to fight it again later.
also note that an army that loses twice in a turn, or one that gets attacked while in march stance and loses, or (I think) gets attacked after retreating and loses, gets wiped out regardless of what survives.

[Lunos]

If the enemy army will survive and you have to fight them again then definitely chase them down and kill as many as you can. If the army is trapped in a city, in forced march stance or you are fighting it for the 2nd time then I just end the battle since they will all die. I believe someone said if the enemy army survives you get xp from chasing down routing units but if the army is going to be killed you don't. Never tested it myself though.

[Captain Baldy]

I wasn't sure when the OP made his initial comment so I said nothing but I'm playing right now and I've had several battles since my first read. I did not chase down the enemy on the last rout and it seemed to me that the rewards in experience were not as high. I'm very glad about that as I had balanced my armies to be able to chase down routers to complete annihilation if possible which means keeping a close eye on my fast movers. It always felt right to sweep them mercilessly from the field.

Playing VH/VH
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2977468636

[KoboldUtopian]

In addition to the obvious benefit of further weakening the army for later fights, MercyTheMad demonstrated that you only get captives by killing routing units. So that determines your replenishment/money/labor.

https://youtu.be/mzI0PYe8Fzo

[Ashley]

I only do if if I know if there's going to be a follow up fight. Have to get enough causalities to wipe them out. And while in close fights if you win the 1st doesn't mean you can win the 2nd time if you pull off a very close win.

Could be useful if you want to stack experience on a certain unit

[capybaras are cool]

you have to fight way more than you need to if you dont clean up enemy units after the battle is won. its pretty much mandatory on the highest difficulty.

[GeoG85]

I only chase shattered enemies if they're stupid. Some units, their leadership will break, then they move 5 seconds away from you, aaaaand now they're coming back with a full charge. Wether it's mopping up the battlefield for a little more experience, ehhh, it can hold value. But you can also go onto the next battle as well.

[A.Pot]

Your troops actually get exp per kill so you still can get something out of it.

[KoboldUtopian]

Originally posted by GeoG85:

I only chase shattered enemies if they're stupid. Some units, their leadership will break, then they move 5 seconds away from you, aaaaand now they're coming back with a full charge. Wether it's mopping up the battlefield for a little more experience, ehhh, it can hold value. But you can also go onto the next battle as well.

They won't rally if you're close and you get free kills while you're running them down. All the more reason to chase them down.

[Jukelo]

I tried that recently in my Grimgor campaign against a small garrison in a field battle (so I could consistently kill everybody), and found that killing routing units would give me significantly more gold than when I let them go. It didn't have an impact on replenishments when taking the Eat the captives option, although that could be that it was a small garrison and the impact wasn't noticeable.

On the question of XP, I still haven't figured how it works. I've had units gaining xp when killing routing units, and sometimes not. Some have posited that it has to do with whether the battle has been won or whether the enemy army would be destroyed regardless (ambush, forced march, siege etc...), but I've had inconsistent results on that front no matter the combination of factors.

[Sorenzo]

The thing is, you can check your units' current numbers of experience points. And you can see it increasing during the battle, but I don't see it increasing when you kill shattered units post-victory. I'm watching the kill counter increase but NOT the experience bar.

Unfortunately a lot of people are responding to a lot of what I explicitly didn't ask for, I *ONLY* want to know if killing shattered units increases the post-battle captives number, because it doesn't seem to be directly related like it was in previous TW games. (e.i. I can chase down units with 200 men total but get less than 200 post-battle captives.)