My greatest frustration: Units getting stuck on enemies and ignoring orders

[Sorenzo]

The title kinda says it... If your units are engaged in melee, they'll often get stuck. I'm not complaining that individual soldiers can't escape if surrounded - no, rather, the problem is that having a couple of such soldiers surrounded will continually cancel any movement orders I give to the unit, as if my troops (of any type and race) simply refuse to leave one man/horse/dog-demon behind.

Please just let me make a movement order and be able to expect my units to keep trying to reach their destination, because it sucks to babysit my units by re-issuing the same retreat order every second while unpaused.

[Emilia Tempest]

That issue has been there ever since the release of game 2 which came out like, in 2017.
So, it is VERY doubtful that they fix anything about that. But you never know.. best to just post it on their forums as a bug and pray they fix it.

[dulany67]

Agree. If a few guys can not get out of melee, they should be abandoned.

[diogoqv83]

if guard mode is one, it will be pretty worst. They will just sleep in batlle.

[Chief Minister of Gaming]

I think it is okay as is, because it adds a bit of reality to it, or downside to coming away from an engagement

[IonizedMercury]

Do you think it should be easy and effortless to extricate from melee? Close combat should definitely have some stickiness to it so people actually get punished for bad force disposition and rewarded for choosing more optimal matchups.

Occasionally the game should simply reward skill and foresight as opposed to hand-hold the player.

[Arthur two sheds Jackson]

talking about getting stuck had valkia really get stucked she was fighting just fine then for some unknown reason she couldnt move or do anything and another time she was stuck inside a gate

[Rosh+]

Originally posted by IonizedMercury:

Do you think it should be easy and effortless to extricate from melee? Close combat should definitely have some stickiness to it so people actually get punished for bad force disposition and rewarded for choosing more optimal matchups.

Occasionally the game should simply reward skill and foresight as opposed to hand-hold the player.

You should be punished by losing the entities that are still trapped inside a unit if you choose to leave combat to do something like a cycle charge; However, if the majority of one of my units is off the walls in a siege, but one remaining straggler gets poked by a singular mostly dead, recently rallied entity from a unit that just retreated off the walls, the entirety of my unit that has come off the walls should not immediately remount the walls. It comes across as completely unintended, buggy behaviour, and it makes siege pathing bugs even more annoying than they otherwise would be.

If I have a lowmass, low hp, high-speed disruption unit with low hp entities(furies for instance), and the entire unit leaves combat with a now 75% dead unit of crossbowmen after disrupting them to go and harass another unit, and there's just one entity left in their unit, my entire unit of furies should not cancel their order to move towards or attack the new ranged unit and attack the old one. I would rather that the single trapped entity immediately die than continuously force my now almost entirely airborne unit back into ground combat where they will certainly die.

Nobody is arguing that you should be able to pull your entire infantry line out of the front line mosh-pit. People are upset and annoyed when they order a unit of Chaos Warhounds to occupy a completely unguarded point in a siege only to find that singular dog was clipped by a singular footman in a formerly routed unit, and when they go back to check on the dogs they're either mostly dead or the unit is wiped because the dogs ignored explicit orders to stand on the point in favor of a hopeless, unwinnable battle.

This problem is not exclusive to the units I mentioned. There should at least be a modifier key you can hold down in combination with a movement order that makes units ignore all combat in favor of moving to a position at the cost of being more vulnerable to charge damage or something similar to give such a mechanic some cost to use.

The discussed issue is very similar in level of frustration to a bug that traps flying units on walls in siege battles. I've had campaigns with Daniel where I'll lose an end-game siege battle because Daniel's trapped on the walls and I can't use any of his spells or Mortis Engine effects; Likewise I've unnecessarily lost units of Plague Toads at the start of Ku'gath's campaign because I've tried to retreat them off the battlefield during a siege because they're down to 4 entities, only to see that they've been wiped out because they were drawn into combat by a recently rallied unit of Saurus Warriors with less than 20 entities who happened to have been routing in the same direction, ignoring the explicit orders I gave them to leave the map.

There is no argument for skill here, but rather one against unnecessary micro.

[Cryten]

Originally posted by IonizedMercury:

Do you think it should be easy and effortless to extricate from melee? Close combat should definitely have some stickiness to it so people actually get punished for bad force disposition and rewarded for choosing more optimal matchups.

Occasionally the game should simply reward skill and foresight as opposed to hand-hold the player.

The problem isnt that the caught troops do not get away. the problem is the troops who got away turn around and re-engage the fight. Sadly it is a fundamental issue to the unit combat the game is designed for. It just does not let a group exist to far apart from its soldiers unless it is broken.

[Man of Culture]

I agree. Path finding in this franchise has always been a problem.

[SBA77]

Originally posted by Emilia Tempest:

That issue has been there ever since the release of game 2 which came out like, in 2017.
So, it is VERY doubtful that they fix anything about that. But you never know.. best to just post it on their forums as a bug and pray they fix it.

Or discord.

[Man of Culture]

Oh man while we're complaining about stuff I have a major gripe. Friggin rogue army with a level 2 lord is able to recruit a 15 giants and 4 trolls and each unit cost 49 gold. And there's two of them. Why? And their AI makes them so scummy.