Surprise Round??? WTF???

[fenrismaximus]

Can someone please explain to me what the deal is with surprise round??? Why does the enemy get a basically free move on you??? I lose two guys sometimes before I even get a chance to do anything...and why do they constantly get free shots and I don't???

[Cryptomancer]

The point of the surprise round is to allow you to position your Hird before the battle begins. I generally try to place my Hird as far from the enemy as possible to neutralize their first move advantage. I also place my sword and board users in front and archers in back with polearm wielders in the middle.

The enemy never gets free shots. They can shoot twice with Quick Shot, they can get attacks of opportunity, and they can proc Recklessness (which I've never seen). There's also Ranging Shot which is a free action. Besides the enemy hero characters, enemy NPCs have all the same abilities that you have access to.

[Malarky]

Uh no.

The enemy nearly always seems to get the first attack round. This makes no sense to me -- If I'm the one attacking, unexpectedly, I should have the ability to draw first blood. I agree with original poster -- WTF?!?

[Cryptomancer]

You're free to complain about it (and FWIW I largely agree with you) but I'm just telling you how I deal with it.

[Beau re Gard]

Yeah I don't really understand the surprise round either.

"Hi, surprise, we're going to kill you!" <- Can move but not attack!

"Hi, we're surprised!" <- Enemy hits us first!

???

The logic is flawed. From other CRPGs to DnD I never seen surprise rounds work like this.

[fenrismaximus]

Crypto...I hear what you are saying...but I have literally lost 2-3 people in the first round because the enemy gets the first shot...especially "if" I cannot retreat far enough away...to make it worse it seems like their archers rarely if ever miss which makes that surprise round all the more scary...

[Eggmayonaise]

I think the only real problem with surprise rounds is that they don't come up when they should. If your enemy initiates combat then I guess it makes sense for them to have the first actual attack round, and giving you the ability to position your hirdmen before that attack round is just a balancing feature.

However, when you're the one actually starting fights, it's a little ridiculous to let the enemy team have the first attack. Even dialogue options that have you initiate combat before the enemy can result in a surprise round, after which the enemy has the first attack move (looking at you, random Pict tribe with the cure for the Helsott) This is especially painful when the enemy team outnumbers yours. Even with a well-equipped and high level hird it's possible to lose one or even two of your fighters before you're able to attack, which just cripples you even more.

[Gnk*]

Surprise round is a nice addition in my opinion. In fact, as suggested by Cryptomancer, use your board and sword/axe defenders in front of archers and protect the group. If you can retreat more, just put yourself away from the enemies and get cover.

In fact sometimes the surprise should be in our way but i never found it a big problem as soon as you get experienced in combat mechanics.

[Duluth]

It is just a way to make some fights harder. It becomes frustrating when you lose people right away before you get a chance to really act. I think it isn't really the surprise round that is bad but the ranging shot the archers all use. If you hide your flimsy people behind shield users they just get shot anyway thanks to ranging shot.

[Buttbutt]

Problem is some of the fights, you begin too close to the enemy or have little cover so even if you move as far as possible, they're still taking free shots at you. Sucks more later in the game when enemies have fire arrows.

But yea, I agree, if I'm attacking a enemy that don't expect me, like a church or a farm, I should have advantage.

[The Konrad]

While I don't like the implementation,
I suppose "suprise round" means you have been suprised and the enemy gets half a bonus round, instead of you going first.

[Paikia]

Yeah, it's really frustrating, especially since it doesn't make sense. It really feels to me like instead of finding smart, tactical ways to make the battles challenging and the AI smarter, the developers chose something like this, which is very easy to implement and doesn't require too much planning. Might as well force all the player's characters to fight with one hand tied behind their backs.

[Paikia]

Here it goes again. I realized I screwed up my previous playthrough (made some stupid mistakes), so I started from scratch, this time doing much better. As soon as I got to that fight in Ribe (inside that dude's house), though, the "Surprise Round" got me busted. Hell, my lead character realized something was wrong and that a fight's about to start. How come the enemy gets a free round in such circumstances? No matter where I place my characters (and believe me, I tried quite a few options), I keep losing at least one character during that "Bonus" round, and having at least a couple more seriously wounded. WTF!?

[Jonas]

Originally posted by Paikia:

Hell, my lead character realized something was wrong and that a fight's about to start. How come the enemy gets a free round in such circumstances?

Because it's still a group of assassins waiting to kill you? Suspicions or not, they very specifically prepared an ambush for you, it's one of the most unambiguous places in the game where the enemy should go first both in game balance terms and in narrative terms (which, by the way, we don't necessarily need both of those to be true - if the fight is substantially more tactically interesting if the enemies go first, we sometimes let them even if it makes less narrative sense - gameplay trumps plot).

[Paikia]

Originally posted by Jonas:

Because it's still a group of assassins waiting to kill you? Suspicions or not, they very specifically prepared an ambush for you, it's one of the most unambiguous places in the game where the enemy should go first both in game balance terms and in narrative terms (which, by the way, we don't necessarily need both of those to be true - if the fight is substantially more tactically interesting if the enemies go first, we sometimes let them even if it makes less narrative sense - gameplay trumps plot).

Even if I agreed about the plot, crippling the player so drastically so early in the game hardly makes the fight feel more intresting to me. In fact, all it feels like to me, is a cheap, forced way to make an already difficult battle even more difficult.

With all the bugs and crashes at first, and now this annoyance, this game's starting to look more and more like a disappointment, compared to Conquistador.

[Jonas]

You can just lower the difficulty, you know. Besides, there's quite a lot of cover in that area - put your squishies behind the table and protect them with the shield guys, then you should easily be able to get everyone through the first round. Just think tactically :)