Shattered retreat is only partially disabled

[Rostan]

Heya,

I am using most of the settings in the game, with the big exception of "Shattered retreat". However, while the option to take out shattered retreat is in the game and works in as much as armies do not teleport 1000 km after a defeat, it does not take out the weird system of losses that appeared once shattered retreat was introduced. I.e. I have to defeat an army 7-8 times to get it to disband, possibly even more. While no longer chasing them across Europe, it still feels a bit like whack-a-mole.

 

[thevmag]

Wasn't that always the case? I remember several wars long before Shattered Retreat wherein catching retreating armies only took out 3-14 men at a time. I think a lot of it comes down to how deadly you are in the pursuit phase: otherwise, you'll just break their morale and make them route with minimal losses.

 

[Malagrae]

That's the way it was before Shattered Retreat. You fight the army, their morale fails, they run away. You chase them, re-engage, their morale fails in a matter of a few days, they run away again. Repeat 3-20 times ping-ponging from one province to another. Only real fix was to have heaps of Light Cavalry to do damage in Pursuit phase.

Shattered Retreat was the fix for this problem, it lets the fleeing army get far enough away from the victor that they can actually sensibly engage in a fight before they are forced into a fight again.

 

[n00bypl4y3r]

No, he is right. They actually did make armies take less casualties in battle with the introduction of shattered retreat, which results in more battles.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/dev-diary-9-its-just-a-flesh-wound.892427/

The equation for how losses were calculated has also been changed. Before, it was based on the troops getting damaged by almost exponential amounts. This could, in some cases, cause really ridiculous damage like 2 million casualties, when it was armies of thousands fighting each other. This has been changed, and the associated values tweaked severely to prevent the crazy casualties yet still ensure that enough soldiers die in battles.

 

[thevmag]

Doesn't change the fact that retreating armies, morale already minimal, would take barely a dozen losses tops before retreating again. Is that quote speaking of damage calculations in general? Cause, dropping 10k troops on 200 foemen with only 1% morale to begin with doesn't give much time for any losses to calculate.

 

[n00bypl4y3r]

That's not really how I remember it. Stack wiping was rather easy, especially with heavily cavalry based armies. Before retinues were nerfed, a 14,000 Kataphract Byzantine army could easily stack wipe a similar sized army in one-two battles. Especially if you had an organizer general, because a retreating army actually attacking was bound to get mauled, if not completely destroyed.

But hey, you can test this for yourself. It's still possible to rollback the game to these earlier versions. I'm about to test this in 2.0.4, that's pretty old. And I know for a fact that if you attacked 200 troops with 10,000 even in this version you would stack wipe them, even if the 200 had minimal moral. A ton of casualties are generated in the pursuit phase.

 

[Bernard95]

While it's true that you still had to play whack-a-mole with armies back in the day (especially really far back in the day when the AI knew exactly when to issue its orders), you could still kill a decent number of troops in one shot. You would hit them like 2-3 times and the army would be dead versus what we have now where it could easily take double or triple that to finish a stack off. Seems like even though you disabled shattered retreat, Paradox didn't think to rebalance the casualties accordingly.

 

[thevmag]

That's not really how I remember it. Stack wiping was rather easy, especially with heavily cavalry based armies. Before retinues were nerfed, a 14,000 Kataphract Byzantine army could easily stack wipe a similar sized army in one-two battles. Especially if you had an organizer general, because a retreating army actually attacking was bound to get mauled, if not completely destroyed.

There you go. You have your troop composition maxed out for slaughtering fleeing armies Not exactly the typical scenario.

But hey, you can test this for yourself. It's still possible to rollback the game to these earlier versions. I'm about to test this in 2.0.4, that's pretty old. And I know for a fact that if you attacked 200 troops with 10,000 even in this version you would stack wipe them, even if the 200 had minimal moral. A ton of casualties are generated in the pursuit phase.

I was just about to suggest the very same. This time though, try it with general levies or other retinue compositions.

 

[n00bypl4y3r]

I was just about to suggest the very same. This time though, try it with general levies or other retinue compositions.

I mean, with 1,300 hours in the game since around the time The Republic was released it's not like I never used levies.

 

[n00bypl4y3r]

For the purpose of this test, I'll be playing England in 1066 and immediately attacking the Norwegians. For nostalgia

The layout

Casualties

And now, current patch
For people that don't see the difference

Initial setup

The battle

We can see here a considerable difference in casualties. Had I taken screenshots of the battle, you could see that it was actually rather close, with only one general left on both sides. The losers in this fight, me, lost around 3000 troops. The losers in the first fight, the Norwegians, lost around 6000 troops.

But really, don't take my word for it. I already provided the dev diary explaining that they toned down battle casualties when they added shattered retreat.

 

[thevmag]

Not really the issue described, though. At 3244 hours, chasing down broken, smaller armies to squeeze out that last bit of warscore was nowhere near uncommon. 15k v 9k or 7k v 11k are still pretty big fights, and doesn't quite describe having to chase the broke army down and getting only paltry casualties out of it.

Experiment incomplete. Cut them down, then ride after them, until no man remains.

 

[n00bypl4y3r]

Experiment incomplete. Cut them down, then ride after them, until no man remains.

I really could not be bothered to do it again. When I attacked the Norwegians a second time in the first set I did another 2000 casualties before being attacked by the Normans, which promptly ended that run. I already provided the dev post saying they cut down on casualties in battles, if that isn't good enough for you I don't know what is.

And I'm not saying ping ponging didn't happen, because it certainly did. But stack wiping also happened with more frequency than today as well.

 

[thevmag]

Sounds like a poor test then The initial test of "here's two armies, let's throw them at each other and see what happens" is fine. What it lacks is the followup, which would have actually addressed OP's concerns: chasing that defeated army, and seeing if he really does need to spend months chasing after it: whether this is a not-completely-disabled Shattered Retreat, or if what he's experiencing has always been the norm.

"Lol here's a fight. Bam, casualties" doesn't even cover it.

 

[n00bypl4y3r]

Sounds like a poor test then The initial test of "here's two armies, let's throw them at each other and see what happens" is fine. What it lacks is the followup, which would have actually addressed OP's concerns: chasing that defeated army, and seeing if he really does need to spend months chasing after it: whether this is a not-completely-disabled Shattered Retreat, or if what he's experiencing has always been the norm.

"Lol here's a fight. Bam, casualties" doesn't even cover it.

Because I wasn't addressing OP's concerns, I was only addressing the fact that the devs have changed how casualties are determined. Indirectly, if less troops die there are more battles that need to be fought to finish off an army.

I really don't care what you think about the test. Go do it yourself. You can't debate that the devs said that casualties have been changed, however.

 

[Shebaloso]

Yeah, it the Casualty rate DEFINITELY changed along with the shattered retreat patch. Battles would deal far more morale damage so the number of casualties could be reduced and allow the defeated to get back on his feet. The devs have categorically said that.

Shame though. I was so happy that they finally would allow me to play without shattered retreat again only to find out i would be killing 17 soldiers each skirmish while pursuing.

 

[Rostan]

Yeah, it the Casualty rate DEFINITELY changed along with the shattered retreat patch. Battles would deal far more morale damage so the number of casualties could be reduced and allow the defeated to get back on his feet. The devs have categorically said that.

Shame though. I was so happy that they finally would allow me to play without shattered retreat again only to find out i would be killing 17 soldiers each skirmish while pursuing.

Thank you. That was my initial point: removing shattered retreat without the former casualty calculation system just means that you play whack-a-mole on a smaller geographical area.

 

[Kljunas]

It probably wouldn't be too hard for the devs to add an option to the rule which would increase casualty rate.

 

[King Anund]

Even though in battles now there are more causalties they give more warscore than they gave before. The system was introduced so that the defeder could have some opportunity of resistance even after losing a battle. Normally in medieval battles the losing army was not anihilated.

 

[Dracko81]

Less bloody battles is not shattered retreat. It is a separate mechanic. Shattered retreat is off it is set to off.

 

[robez]

Use the mod "Decisive Battles" from steam workshop,i do it and the battles are excactly like before conclave came out.
Decisive Battles