Suggestion: Armies should be able to retreat (and how to prevent issues like whackamole)

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Walderschmidt has Ara: History Untold

Oct 1, 2024 @ 7:24am

Suggestion: Armies should be able to retreat (and how to prevent issues like whackamole)

As of right now, only scouts can retreat from battles in game. I didn't even know this until I discovered it by accident, because it wasn't mentioned anywhere obvious.

I think armies should be able to retreat. Players should be able to run from a bad fight if they misjudge it, misclick into it, or suddenly start losing with the advent of reinforcements. Secondly, right now it looks like there will be an upgrade mechanic in the near future. That's all well and good but if armies can't retreat, then almost all combat is a gamble. With RNG as part of the equation in unit longevity, upgrade soldiers is much less useful and harder to take advantage of.

I understand that other players have concerns about playing whackamole, if the armies of opponents are able to constantly retreat from fights without penalty. That's a valid concern but there are many ways to skin this cat. For example, in Humankind, armies are allowed to retreat from a fight (before combat initiates) though they cannot pick the route along which the army retreats. However, if the army is attacked the very next turn, the army is unable to retreat from combat and has to stand and fight. Sometimes players will attack an army with one force, watch it retreat, and then attack it with another force in the same turn sealing its fate.

I think Ara could implement the retreat mechanic with these stipulations to give players more flexibility without accidentally encouraging whackamole gameplay:
Armies can retreat after the first round of combat has taken place
Armies with Paragons can retreat before combat is initiated
After retreating from combat once, an army is exhausted and needs to rest a turn before it can retreat from another engagement.

I think there's more that can be done to make the retreat mechanic more nuanced by tying in Paragons or barraging/bombarding/strafing, but I want to keep this suggestion simple for now, because I truly think this mechanic would be integral to warfare in Ara History Untold.

What do you guys think?

Last edited by Walderschmidt; Oct 1, 2024 @ 7:27am

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Originally posted by Ara: History Untold:

Hi there!

Some similar thoughts have been posted in the Wishlist Thread here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2021880/discussions/0/4852155556170133768/

Feel free to post there if you have not already. We're listening!
Thanks for posting!

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Showing 1-12 of 12 comments

AlienGeek

Oct 1, 2024 @ 7:34am

I like 1 & 3

Walderschmidt has Ara: History Untold

Oct 1, 2024 @ 7:38am

Originally posted by AlienGeek:
I like 1 & 3

I admit the paragon one is not as important. Might have to save that for a later post, if they implement the retreat at all.

archonsod

Oct 1, 2024 @ 8:48am

Originally posted by Walderschmidt:
I think armies should be able to retreat. Players should be able to run from a bad fight if they misjudge it, misclick into it, or suddenly start losing with the advent of reinforcements.

Or they can just chuck in reinforcements of their own.

The problem fundamentally comes down to players picking bad fights. Given how difficult it can be to pin an army down in the first place rather than have them able to simply run away again it makes sense to encourage the player to keep a reserve handy (to be fair you end up with much the same thing either way, given even if a retreating army exhausts you'd presumably need an army in position to run them down anyway).

Walderschmidt has Ara: History Untold

Oct 1, 2024 @ 9:51am

Originally posted by archonsod:
Originally posted by Walderschmidt:
I think armies should be able to retreat. Players should be able to run from a bad fight if they misjudge it, misclick into it, or suddenly start losing with the advent of reinforcements.
Or they can just chuck in reinforcements of their own.

The problem fundamentally comes down to players picking bad fights. Given how difficult it can be to pin an army down in the first place rather than have them able to simply run away again it makes sense to encourage the player to keep a reserve handy (to be fair you end up with much the same thing either way, given even if a retreating army exhausts you'd presumably need an army in position to run them down anyway).

I have more thoughts on this topic, but I left them out because I think the three points I suggested would form a strong foundation upon which to build more nuance and meaningful depth into the combat portion of the game.

Monaldinio has Ara: History Untold

Oct 13, 2024 @ 4:14am

Am I correct in assuming that withdrawing an army is not yet possible in Ara v 1.04? In my current game I attacked an enemy city for the first time since I started playing Ara. Unfortunately, I underestimated the enemy's strength. Unfortunately, I could not find a way to end the fight or withdraw my battalion. In the end I lost the entire battalion.

Does that mean it is not yet possible to withdraw armies?

So warfare makes little sense. That's too bad. I actually assumed that such a self-evident feature would be fixed quickly.

Under these circumstances I unfortunately have to interrupt the game until the withdrawal of armies is possible, otherwise I'll be extremely annoyed.

Last edited by Monaldinio; Oct 13, 2024 @ 4:17am

Filo90

Oct 13, 2024 @ 4:47am

Originally posted by Monaldinio:
Am I correct in assuming that withdrawing an army is not yet possible in Ara v 1.04? In my current game I attacked an enemy city for the first time since I started playing Ara. Unfortunately, I underestimated the enemy's strength. Unfortunately, I could not find a way to end the fight or withdraw my battalion. In the end I lost the entire battalion.

Does that mean it is not yet possible to withdraw armies?

So warfare makes little sense. That's too bad. I actually assumed that such a self-evident feature would be fixed quickly.

Under these circumstances I unfortunately have to interrupt the game until the withdrawal of armies is possible, otherwise I'll be extremely annoyed.

how can you think they add such a feature in a couple weeks? it has to be thought and appropriately implemented to feel balanced for gameplay, it's not like simply change a parameter 0 to 1 lol....

Monaldinio has Ara: History Untold

Oct 13, 2024 @ 5:54am

IT is simple, just move the unit to another area, like in civ...or any other civ Game.

skunkno1

Oct 13, 2024 @ 9:40am

I like the way Endless Space 2 does it. You can retreat but your units lose health and will die after the 2nd or 3rd attempt.

Last edited by skunkno1; Oct 13, 2024 @ 9:42am

willgamer47 has Ara: History Untold

Oct 13, 2024 @ 10:26am

Especially in ancient history (Act 1), I don't recall many times when armies successfully retreated.

So if no retreat is fairly historically accurate, any change would have to dig deeper into the details of unit speed, engagement distance, commanders, and RNG to account for weather, etc.....

竹筆

Oct 13, 2024 @ 11:48pm

For a lot of history, battles were basically never fought to the last man standing. One side breaking and retreating was the normal way for a battle to end, because losing troops was extremely expensive and a formal victory was usually enough anyway. That said, routing troops would definitely lose men as well, so I'd like a retreat mechanic that reflects that.

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