Routing Value (or something like that)

Field of Glory II is a turn-based tactical game set during the Rise of Rome from 280 BC to 25 BC.
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lapdog666
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Routing Value (or something like that)

Post by lapdog666 »

enemy thureos were routed
my light javelinmen were routed

check the % in the upper left corner
it seems that thureos are worth 5%?
And it seems that my javelinmen are worth 3%?

in last battle my Light javelin Cavalry was worth 3% when routed

am i missing something


https://imgur.com/a/FwoYS8n
rbodleyscott
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Re: Routing Value (or something like that)

Post by rbodleyscott »

Rout % are not based on the number of units but on the UnitSize of the routed units, with the value of mounted units and elephants being multiplied by 1.5.

The engine only deals with integer values, so rounds down fractions. What is actually calculated is the % of your army Unrouted, which is then deducted from 100% to get the % routed. The rounding down thus effectively becomes rounding up.

Obviously the value of each unit will also depend on the size of the army. The Spanish army is larger than the Roman army, so a single light unit is a lower % of the army. Probably not a whole 1% difference, but that is the effect of the rounding.

However, the rounding only applies to the final %, not to each individual unit, so the rounding will never affect the total rout % by more than 1%.

So the figures you quote are what I would expect.
Richard Bodley Scott

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lapdog666
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Re: Routing Value (or something like that)

Post by lapdog666 »

i get it now
Froz
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Re: Routing Value (or something like that)

Post by Froz »

I'm sorry if this is offtopic and perhaps already explained somewhere.
But I always keep wondering, why does it only count routs and not casualties? There are some situations where one side remaining units are very battered and the other side has big part of army routed, but the rest are fresh as new. If the battle continued, the currently losing (in routs) side might actually win.
Also the current system means a single unit recovering from rout can change result even if it is not able to affect the battle in any way. It's quite irritating when enemy gets a streak of recoveries at the edge of map...
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Re: Routing Value (or something like that)

Post by rbodleyscott »

Froz wrote: Thu Mar 07, 2019 11:52 am I'm sorry if this is offtopic and perhaps already explained somewhere.
But I always keep wondering, why does it only count routs and not casualties? There are some situations where one side remaining units are very battered and the other side has big part of army routed, but the rest are fresh as new. If the battle continued, the currently losing (in routs) side might actually win.
Also the current system means a single unit recovering from rout can change result even if it is not able to affect the battle in any way. It's quite irritating when enemy gets a streak of recoveries at the edge of map...
The whole victory conditions system is based on routing the enemy army and not on casualties. This is what decided a battle historically, not casualties. Once one army panicked and broke, however, it would then usually suffer massively more casualties in the pursuit.

When the FOG2 battle ends, the other army is assumed to have broken and fled, however fresh its unengaged units might have been. This reflects historical reality - Armies of this period did not generally conduct fighting retreats.

The option to continue fighting after the battle is won is a bolt-on that was put there at the request of the publisher for those who like that sort of thing. It is not part of the original game design, and does not reflect our analysis of the history.

Who might have won if one army hadn't broken when it did is irrelevant to the course of history, so isn't taken account of in the game's victory conditions.
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lapdog666
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Re: Routing Value (or something like that)

Post by lapdog666 »

rbodleyscott wrote: Thu Mar 07, 2019 12:04 pm
Froz wrote: Thu Mar 07, 2019 11:52 am I'm sorry if this is offtopic and perhaps already explained somewhere.
But I always keep wondering, why does it only count routs and not casualties? There are some situations where one side remaining units are very battered and the other side has big part of army routed, but the rest are fresh as new. If the battle continued, the currently losing (in routs) side might actually win.
Also the current system means a single unit recovering from rout can change result even if it is not able to affect the battle in any way. It's quite irritating when enemy gets a streak of recoveries at the edge of map...
The whole victory conditions system is based on routing the enemy army and not on casualties. This is what decided a battle historically, not casualties. Once one army panicked and broke, however, it would then usually suffer massively more casualties in the pursuit.

When the FOG2 battle ends, the other army is assumed to have broken and fled, however fresh its unengaged units might have been. This reflects historical reality - Armies of this period did not generally conduct fighting retreats.

The option to continue fighting after the battle is won is a bolt-on that was put there at the request of the publisher for those who like that sort of thing. It is not part of the original game design, and does not reflect our analysis of the history.

Who might have won if one army hadn't broken when it did is irrelevant to the course of history, so isn't taken account of in the game's victory conditions.


i noticed that on the last turn of the battle , the losing side suffers additional Killed casualties if i am not mistaken (in the casualties tab). is that there to represent chasing after* the battle is won,or some sort of calculation
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Re: Routing Value (or something like that)

Post by rbodleyscott »

lapdog666 wrote: Thu Mar 07, 2019 12:32 pmi noticed that on the last turn of the battle , the losing side suffers additional Killed casualties if i am not mistaken (in the casualties tab). is that there to represent chasing after* the battle is won?
Yes
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Re: Routing Value (or something like that)

Post by Froz »

rbodleyscott wrote: Thu Mar 07, 2019 12:04 pm
Froz wrote: Thu Mar 07, 2019 11:52 am I'm sorry if this is offtopic and perhaps already explained somewhere.
But I always keep wondering, why does it only count routs and not casualties? There are some situations where one side remaining units are very battered and the other side has big part of army routed, but the rest are fresh as new. If the battle continued, the currently losing (in routs) side might actually win.
Also the current system means a single unit recovering from rout can change result even if it is not able to affect the battle in any way. It's quite irritating when enemy gets a streak of recoveries at the edge of map...
The whole victory conditions system is based on routing the enemy army and not on casualties. This is what decided a battle historically, not casualties. Once one army panicked and broke, however, it would then usually suffer massively more casualties in the pursuit.

When the FOG2 battle ends, the other army is assumed to have broken and fled, however fresh its unengaged units might have been. This reflects historical reality - Armies of this period did not generally conduct fighting retreats.

The option to continue fighting after the battle is won is a bolt-on that was put there at the request of the publisher for those who like that sort of thing. It is not part of the original game design, and does not reflect our analysis of the history.

Who might have won if one army hadn't broken when it did is irrelevant to the course of history, so isn't taken account of in the game's victory conditions.
Thanks for reply. I have a bit of deja vu, I hope I have not bothered you with this topic already in the past :/.

I just want to specify that it's not the "continue battle" option I was talking about. And I understand the idea that generally speaking battles ended when one side routed. It's just that the way this system is implemented in the game creates unrealistic scenarios, especially in even battles (so it's not that 25% difference rule).

Specifically, I understand that friends routing were damaging on morale and if soldiers noticed that a big part of their army was routed, they would rout too. I simply question how the soldiers of losing side decide the battle is over and they should run. Here's an extreme example of what I mean:

Side 0:
55% routed
20% casualties
15% fragmented
10% in fighting shape.

Side 1:
60% routed
10% casualties
30% in fighting shape. Soldiers of side 1 decide to flee.

I'm not sure if the numbers above are exactly realistic, but I had battles more or less like that in game. If I was the winning side, it felt like cheating. If I was losing side, it was frustrating.

So, what I don't get it is that killed soldiers do not matter for their army morale and soldiers that run away for several turns, but stopped running are immediately counted like perfectly intact units.

Of course I understand that it is a game and it needs to have some kind of system and I guess all systems would have some unrealistic edge cases. Still, I feel like a bit different measurement would make a bit more sense.

If the game instead tracked and scored:
- soldiers killed
- soldiers running away
- soldiers in fragmented state

Let's say killed and running away soldiers would have the same value while fragmented would have half of that. What's important is that it counts individual soldiers, not whole units. Cavalry could still be multiplied by 1.5 of course.

It would be much more fluent and the moments of "oh no, they rallied at the edge of map, so the battle is lost/not over yet" would be rare. If routed unit would get back to fragmented state (or fragmented would get back to higher order), this would only change score based on their current number of man, and only by half.

I understand this would be a huge change and would also require adjusting the victory conditions and testing them extensively. I also cannot even begin to comprehend effects on multiplayer and tournaments. So, this is more of a thought experiment on game design than a realistic proposition I guess. Still, I would be happy to hear your thoughts on this.
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Re: Routing Value (or something like that)

Post by melm »

I can feel the same pain.
Another annoying situation is that when you are battling with an army with large unitsize unit, especially pikemen, several rallied fragmented pikemen will end the game, although, giving one turn or two, my light horse could rout the fragemented pikemen with ease(as long as it doesn't have successive rally)
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Re: Routing Value (or something like that)

Post by MVP7 »

Maybe the rallied broken units could only be "un-counted" once they are back to disordered?

In single-player the conclusion of the battle mainly feels premature when the enemy hits 40% routed with me having just barely the 25% lead but battle could swing either way within a turn or two. I guess that's partly due to the points advantage that the AI gets which means that 25% lead can mean that the enemy has almost as many non-broken units remaining on the field as the player has.
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Re: Routing Value (or something like that)

Post by rbodleyscott »

Froz wrote: Thu Mar 07, 2019 10:28 pmOf course I understand that it is a game and it needs to have some kind of system and I guess all systems would have some unrealistic edge cases. Still, I feel like a bit different measurement would make a bit more sense.

If the game instead tracked and scored:
- soldiers killed
- soldiers running away
- soldiers in fragmented state
In the heat of battle, it was much easier for men to become aware of fleeing friends than of casualties outside of their own unit.

The tabletop rules track routed units and also fragmented units (at half the value).

However, if we changed to that system, all the breakpoints would need to be adjusted otherwise battles would end sooner, which we don't want. All of the epic battle scenarios have breakpoints hard-coded in their scripts.

In short, changing it would be too much work for too little return.
In single-player the conclusion of the battle mainly feels premature when the enemy hits 40% routed with me having just barely the 25% lead but battle could swing either way within a turn or two.
It may seem that way, but historically armies probably collapsed before even 40% of their men were routed. Most other games allow the fighting to go on way past the point at which a real army would have fled.
I understand the idea that generally speaking battles ended when one side routed. It's just that the way this system is implemented in the game creates unrealistic scenarios, especially in even battles (so it's not that 25% difference rule).
No matter how close the battle was until that point, one side eventually cracked, and when it did the other side slaughtered the fleeing enemy. That is just how it was historically, there were no prizes for "almost" winning, and the game reflects that.

The game already allows armies to fight on longer if the battle is closely fought than if it is very one-sided.
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