Why can retreating HQs take territory?

[incognitus]

I have observed this numerous times now and it is quite annoying. Lone enemy HQ sit on a province which is completely surrounded by occupied (by me) territory. I attack, defeat the HQ and instead of being destroyed, it retreats into one of the surrounding occupied provinces and takes it back.
The only way to defeat this HQs and stop them from taking territories, is to completely surround them with units so they have nowhere to run or to make sure you first reach and occupy the province they are fleeing from and then reach and block the province they are fleeing to before they get there. If you reach their destination before you have conquered the province they are fleeing from, they will lose the battle and simple flee somewhere else.
Granted, with strat movements it is quite possible to accomplish this, but effectively these lone HQs will keep an entire Corps busy for a day or so.

Do you have these issues as well?

 

[marxianTJ]

Yes this is a well known, but persistent bug

 

[Wraith11B]

Basically the mechanic is that if you're not actively holding territory, it's open to whomever can take it; I didn't think it was a bug because normal divisions can do it as well. Just think that each of those provinces are about 50 km2, so if you don't have any troops there it's a big gap.

 

[incognitus]

Basically the mechanic is that if you're not actively holding territory, it's open to whomever can take it; I didn't think it was a bug because normal divisions can do it as well. Just think that each of those provinces are about 50 km2, so if you don't have any troops there it's a big gap.

I don't argue that it doesn't make sense. The problem is, that usually (i.e. in the vast majority of cases) enemy units in an isolated province that get attacked and lose the battle are annihilated. And I mean isolated as in all surrounding provinces are occupied or owned and held by their enemies or inaccessible terrain, whatever. Usually this works without having troops in the surrounding provinces. Since there seems to be no method to this happening, I think it is a bug.

 

[Phili]

I get this when France falls. If there are any Belgian HQ's in France they'll retreat onto vacant provinces until I surround it and then sit in the province even when it's occupied by my units refusing to die.
In this case my solution is to kill all Belgian units before I take Paris and save the game just after Paris is taken but before midnight when France is conquered so that I can go back and get any missed Belgians.

 

[marxianTJ]

A normal infantry division for example will generally not behave as a rogue HQ in these scenarios because if it has no friendly territory to retreat to it will typically be destroyed the instant it loses its combat. HQs however will just retreat to any open tiles - I'm willing to hedge this on being a bug regarding HQs that don't have width and maybe other non-width having formations would do the same.

If all divisions behaved as HQs do, rebels and partisans would be absolutely disgusting to deal with because they would just run all over until you surrounded them lol. They don't thankfully, they're destroyed the moment they lose their battle if they have no friendly territory to retreat to.

 

[Wraith11B]

That makes me wonder if it might just be a good idea to give HQs a .25 thing of width, but I have a suspicion such things are hardcoded.

 

[incognitus]

The real solution would be to make sure all AI HQs have some unit with width attached to them...

Edit: Because that would help the AI in using their HQs, after all apparently sometimes the AI will even attack with HQs

 

[Kovax]

The 0 width thing seems to be the cause. An infantry unit that loses a battle has zero ORG, and is destroyed if it cannot retreat. A HQ does not lose ORG because it cannot fight, and therefore arrives as a fully functional military unit, except that it cannot fight because of its zero width. Unfortunately, making HQs and other support units have width would lead to them being actively moved to the front and chewed up at triple the rate of "line" units with 3000 men, meaning that they'd get destroyed while the battle was still in its early stages. There's no simple answer that can be done without causing other problems, other than possibly adding combat units to every HQ.