Anarchy is out of control!

[batesmotel]

Did the chance for shock troops to charge out of control increase with the 1.02 patch? I just watched one of my chariots at the back of a column of three chariots charge through the two chariots in front of him to chase an enemy LF and saw one of the spurious Indian lance armed cavalry charge through one of my elephants to charge another enemy LF. It then spontaneously charged again into enemy pikes. And this is all in one turn!

This makes shock troops, at least irregular ones, much less usable than they are in the table top game. It essentially means it is unsafe to put any friendly troops between them and where any enemy might be at the end of the opposing player turn or else I can expect that the shock troops will probably burst through friends. I guess I should consider myself lucky that only the third chariot in the column charged spontaneously. If he second had gone too the lead chariot would have ended up fragmented.

In the TTG game, shock troops will only have a chance to charge out of control if the player does not voluntarily declare a charge with them. In the PC game, anarchy appears to occur before any voluntary movement and hence is completely out of your control. Is this really the effect that the designers wanted for the PC game?

Chris

[IainMcNeil]

The chance has not changed - you were just unlucky

The charge has to happen at the start tor we introduce another phase to the game we wanted to avoid as you would move and fight, end teh turn, then have anarchy moves and then fight again if they resulted in combat. It just fiots together much more neatly like this.

[batesmotel]

The chance has not changed - you were just unlucky

The charge has to happen at the start tor we introduce another phase to the game we wanted to avoid as you would move and fight, end teh turn, then have anarchy moves and then fight again if they resulted in combat. It just fiots together much more neatly like this.

It would seem like an anarchy check, at least for spontaneous charges, could be done when the player went to move that BG rather than needing to be in a separate phase. If the player selects the BG and attempts to execute a move that does not end up in combat I would think you would then do the anarchy check and have the unit charge instead of executing the move the player indicated. I expect that some of my "bad" luck is that the Indian shock troops are both undrilled so fail more readily and also have greater movement than many shock infantry so have more opportunities to lose control.

Chris

[IainMcNeil]

You could but it would be quite confusing. You move it one place, and sometimes the move gets cancelled and it moves somewhere else. I'm not convinced that is a good idea.

[batesmotel]

You could but it would be quite confusing. You move it one place, and sometimes the move gets cancelled and it moves somewhere else. I'm not convinced that is a good idea.

I think it would benefit from some explaining in the help to be completely clear but I don't think it would be that much more confusing than shocks units spontaneously doing something at the start of your move. The intention of the rule for the table top game is that shock troops won't necessarily sit around and do nothing when they could be fighting, not that they are total loonies who may go out of control as soon as any enemy is nearby. (They aren't in general supposed to act like uncontrollable berserkers.) We already have the anarchy effect that a disrupted non-shock BG may refuse to charge when you attempt to move it to do so, so I don't think having a unit charge the closest enemy within range rather than moving elsewhere where it doesn't end up in combat would be all that confusing.

Chris

[deadtorius]

On the TT shock troops who are in charge range and fail not to charge will charge during your first phase of your turn anyway, not a whole lot different than what you are seeing here. Uncontrolled charges take place before normal moves on the TT. In the PC game charges can happen at anytime during your turn, I would keep it the way it is as it seems to me to work the best. Personally I find the Indians tend to go anarchy more often than other troops, but that does not bother me.

[batesmotel]

On the TT shock troops who are in charge range and fail not to charge will charge during your first phase of your turn anyway, not a whole lot different than what you are seeing here. Uncontrolled charges take place before normal moves on the TT. In the PC game charges can happen at anytime during your turn, I would keep it the way it is as it seems to me to work the best. Personally I find the Indians tend to go anarchy more often than other troops, but that does not bother me.

The difference on the TT is that I have the option of choosing what the shock troops will charge rather than it being out of control as soon as enemy moves close enough to be charged. If I choose not to charge with them, then they may do it on their own initiative. More importantly on the PC is that fact that since the sequencing of movement is so important, maybe even more so than in DBx games, it seems to remove too much control over shock troops, especially undrilled ones. The case where I had the rear chariot in a column of three charge through the two in front of it shows the worst of this. I most likely would have charged with one or both of the chariots in front of it, but because of the sequencing, I had no chance to do this an instead had the front two chariots disrupted because the third one charged anarchically. Even if the only change was to flag that certain units must charge at the start of the turn but it left me the option to sequence my move so other troops would get out of the way, it would feel closer to the table top game in terms of the restricted control one has over shock troops close to the enemy.

Chris