Combat when you turn off Shattered Retreat is TERRIBLE

[jfoytek]

So I am all excited about getting the play that game the way I want, big smile on my face the moment I sent shattered retreat packing out the door!

AND THEN

I get in my first battle.... So far its normal I beat down the enemy he runs to the neighboring province I follow to finish him off, and he lived and ran away again, didnt think much on it yet, so I follow again and again I only killed like 9 guys and he ran again?!? WTF This is not the way combat was pre Conclave if a troops stack was on low moral it took major losses not NINE!!!! It took 900.... I hated Shattered retreat because it created whack a mole and prolonged wars and now you have found a way to make the combat without Shattered retreat EVEN MORE annoying!!!!

Seriously PDX what is up with this I am steam and red with anger right now envisioning some Developer over joyed knowing he has gotten to take a Jab at us folk that hated his Shattered Retreat mechanism!!! Seriously this feels like an intentional slap in the face!!!

 

[clockworkBabbag]

WTF This is not the way combat was pre Conclave

Yes it was. If you don't have units that are good in the pursuit phase, you're going to be doing essentially nothing against armies with no morale. If you want to do damage, you need to wait until their morale is up high enough for you to do damage before they break.

 

[Peruvian Puff Pepper]

Hopefully they fix this, it was very disappointing to see that it only disables the shatter, not the retreat. At least for now you can remain on top of them and repeatedly do another battle before they regain any morale. It's actually a great way to get warscore, although it seems unintentional. Although it has been a long time, I may be misremembering the way it used to be.

 

[jfoytek]

Yes it was. If you don't have units that are good in the pursuit phase, you're going to be doing essentially nothing against armies with no morale. If you want to do damage, you need to wait until their morale is up high enough for you to do damage before they break.

So your saying that because I am playing Tribal instead of my normal Catholic that the unit make up of my tribal army is crap compared to what I am use too and that Tribal armies always only killed 9 guys at a time over and over and over and over and over again, and this was normal before??? I can't dispute this because I didnt play tribal very often so maybe your correct on this.... But It never took me more then 3 or 4 attacks as a Catholic to wipe and army out EVER now if I would have continued it seriously would have took me like 50 attacks at the rate of casualties! And your claiming that was how it use to be?!?

 

[Skullever]

So your saying that because I am playing Tribal instead of my normal Catholic that the unit make up of my tribal army is crap compared to what I am use too and that Tribal armies always only killed 9 guys at a time over and over and over and over and over again, and this was normal before??? I can't dispute this because I didnt play tribal very often so maybe your correct on this.... But It never took me more then 3 or 4 attacks as a Catholic to wipe and army out EVER now if I would have continued it seriously would have took me like 50 attacks at the rate of casualties! And your claiming that was how it use to be?!?

Yes.

 

[Gamengervi]

"Nostalgia is a seductive liar," once said George Ball.

 

[jfoytek]

Yes.

Well okay then I will go test out a catholic army and double check this but it sorta makes sense from a mechanics point of view! Though I don't know how you people that played tribal kept from pulling your hair out its almost stupidly ridiculous how badly it drags out this minor war!

Further more on the topic of the starting settings!

I can't change Adventure's to Rare without disabling Iron man.... Annoying!
There is no decent choice for Raiding I was hoping for something that made raiding Historic as the historic setting is stupidly frequent!!!! Yet there is no appropriate selection....

And We can make Religious Conversion slower but not faster??? I don't know about you but I always found the annoying 20-60 years it would take a priest to accomplish nothing and die of old age to only have his replacement succeed 10 years down the road to be stupidly annoying especially when the Pope sends you a message every few years saying why are you taking so long to convert those provinces but our only choice is a setting that makes this even worse????

Other then that most of the settings are as I figured they would be decorations you don't and wont touch or change!

 

[clockworkBabbag]

Well okay then I will go test out a catholic army and double check this but it sorta makes sense from a mechanics point of view! Though I don't know how you people that played tribal kept from pulling your hair out its almost stupidly ridiculous how badly it drags out this minor war!

Because we recognized the very simple fact that you don't have to chase down an army that you just beat? Especially against tribals, who can essentially be insta-sieged and then you win.

It's almost like shattered retreat isn't actually a problem.

 

[RagingJaws]

Hopefully they fix this, it was very disappointing to see that it only disables the shatter, not the retreat. At least for now you can remain on top of them and repeatedly do another battle before they regain any morale. It's actually a great way to get warscore, although it seems unintentional. Although it has been a long time, I may be misremembering the way it used to be.

You are misremembering. I can't remember when phases were tweaked but it has been some time. Probably around the time of the archer nerf. Most battles cause more morale damage, as opposed to troop damage. The good news is that pingponging is still better than shattered retreat, as you can keep armies permanently low on morale and trickle up that warscore to max (75% for offensive wars)

Get yourself a few hunter-trait/Aggressive commanders, get yourself the flanking leadership trait, and pick the war focus for new education events towards commanders. With some luck, you'll be able to teach a few commanders how to flank. Bodies will be felled.

Going to restart a Mongol campaign and see how hard/easy the above steps are to replicate. Early experience with the War Focus seems to trigger education events quite often, which is awesome for martial games.

 

[Vokasak]

Yeah, no. The options are great.

Turning off shattered retreat renables ping-ponging but to people who have been playing since SoI, that's very familiar. And of course making adventurers rare is going to disable achievements. You're making the game easier. Making pagan reformations player only also disables achievements, because again you're making the game easier. If you want achievements, you have to play on bare minimum the default difficulty.

In short, the options are great, and thank you paradox for providing them. I used to make a personal mod for every patch to shorten dejure drift time to 50 years, and now that's a thing I'll just never have to do again! I used to have to manually fire the sunset invasion events because my 867 games rarely made it to the 1300s, and now I'll never have to do that again.

 

[Kumicho]

Am I the only person who doesn't mind Shattered Retreats when I'm *winning* the battles (but hate them when I'm losing them)? You beat the enemy stack, they run away, you siege holdings and like a beaten dog the (much smaller) stack comes right back to your army to destroy.

No, it's when I lose a battle and can't a) reengage immediately or b) disband them is when I get annoyed.

 

[Keinwyn]

Hi!
Quick update, we've decided to release the 2.5.1 patch immediately.

...

- Tweaked morale and defence to make units more likely to flee before they die.
- Pursuing units will no longer get flanking bonuses and will properly get a new tactic instead of starting with the last one.

I think these two changes in the conclave version had quite a substantial effect on casualties, leading to greater ping-pong. So yes, the OP is probably right.

 

[dragoon9105]

Yea without shattered retreat its definitely more Pingpongy than before. Since I often flip pre conclave becuase of a multiplayer game there was pingponging without SR before but usually each battle still takes about 20-30% from the loser even with low morale where now Armies break almost immediately before you get any casualties at all.

However, Shiftclick is your friend, Often you'll be bouncing an army between two provinces so just hold shift and click between them a bunch with your stack, You'll wipe em all out in a couple of months.

 

[jfoytek]

So I am not crazy!

And my other major issue is the settings for Raiders and Adventures~!

Adventure's rare should not disable Ironman - yes it makes it easier then the current game but it also makes it very similiar to the way the game use to be when you played it in Ironman mode!

Come on the frequency of Adventures are a bit out of control and the Iron man setting should be set to (Classic Adventure Setting you know Pre Horse lords)

And the Second issue is Viking Raids, I thought these settings would finally give us the ability to tone down the constant vikings landing on our shores every other month! Its so damned annoying but no there is NO REALISTIC option for Raiders! As the Historical Option is ANYTHING BUT historical.... Vikings did not raid every shorline in Western Europe Every single month!!!! Its just NOT realistic.....

 

[DàbiànLājīdàrén]

You were assuming that shattered retreat was the only that has changed with battles since Conclave, but there were probably morale changes as well. Also, nostalgia is a bitch.

 

[Balkri]

The last time i remember a full stack wipe in my CK2 champaings was before Conclave, but playing as a Persian ruler and using full light cavalry/horse archer retinue. Full damage in skirmish and pursue...

If for some reason your army is best suited to, lets say mele phase, even if you pursue and enemy with low morale, you can take more damange in the inevitable 2-3 days of skirmish before they broke lines again, and just manage to kill a few in the pursue.

And don't forget that sometimes the combat is a bit random, a bad tactic from one of your commanders can kill thousand of your own soldiers (like a "Charge" againts a "forse back" of an army with lots of pikemen)

 

[RelVleDy]

So I am not crazy!

No, you're definitely crazy.

 

[clockworkBabbag]

No, you're definitely crazy.

No, you don't get it.

One person agreeing with their biased mis-remembering is all they need to validate it, even in the face of everyone telling them that combat has always worked like this in general.

Duh.

 

[mrflibble]

It's ridiculous now. I have to tediously set like 10+ waypoints to chase routing armies back and forth between two provinces. I've disabled the battle pop-up notification to avoid being spammed. Disabling shattered retreat should be changed to make battles far more deadly.

Also: It results in having dozens of chances to capture enemies due to the repeated instantaneous victories over the 0 morale enemy army. I ransomed the same Duke 3 times in one war.

 

[Lemont Elwood]

All I have to say is that Shattered Retreat works perfectly fine for me. The armies go a few provinces over, making it possible to regroup and come back, but also to run them down and destroy them. The old system felt okay, but this feels okay too.

Actually, it's even better than EU4 retreats... I feel like the retreats in EU4 go a bit too far and are harder to run down to the presence of Forts.