rbodleyscott wrote:The program assumes that routers and pursuers are intent on the pursuit and hence have "tunnel vision" so ignore enemy ZOCs. The enemy take time to react as the routers and pursuers race past, so cannot intervene until their next turn. There are plenty of historical accounts of multiple units being swept away by a rout, and flank or rear attacks by pursuers is one of the ways this is simulated in the game.
The idea behind this is good, but the implementation is far too excessive. If my unit routs or evades from an enemy unit and has a second friendly unengaged unit facing the correct direction sitting in the hex next to it and with sufficient speed to make an interception realistic, that unit should have a very good chance of ZOC interdicting the enemy pursuit if that enemy unit would normally be classed as its priority target (or whatever that mechanic is called) at the point of charge impact before the whole chain of events started.
To give an example: the idea that a cavalry unit tasked with protecting a unit of musketeers would just sit by idly while an enemy cavalry unit approaches from long distance and charges through the musketeers into the friendly rear is just absurd and far more unrealistic and unhistorical than the alternative. One could even make a very strong argument that a shock cavalry unit should have a chance to counter-charge the enemy before their charge even hits the musketeers if the enemy charged from long distance. The only reason this unrealistic chain of events is possible is due to the limitations inherent to the IGoUGo turn-based system, and the ZOC mechanic is exactly designed to counter such limitations.
Routers attempt to initially rout as close as possible to directly away from the unit that finally broke them. Later in the rout they will change direction to avoid moving closer to other enemy units. The men are in a panic. They are not retreating in a specific direction under orders. The phrase "running around like headless chickens" springs to mind.
Which would not be a problem if my own army could at least somewhat realistically limit the movement of their pursuers with clever tactics and deployment. Right now, a cavalry unit on pursuit can cross through two or even three successive lines of cavalry units with absolutely no hindrance. I challenge you to find historical accounts of this happening with regularity. As it is now, a pursued rout is basically a dice roll. If you win the dice roll, the enemy unit ends up in a crappy position and is easily routed itself the next turn. If you lose the roll, you could find your entire army outflanked and have pretty much just lost the battle. The fact that there is nothing the player can do to influence this dice roll makes it a pretty bad gameplay mechanic.
It is true that the Seminara scenario is very hard for the first scenario in a set, but we wanted to keep the scenarios in chronological order. We did not do this for Edgehill because it was such a large battle.
I'm not sure this was a smart decision, if you ever hope to reach an audience outside of hardcore 16th century wargamers. Maybe some indication with each battle on its difficulty level and a tutorial popup for new players to explain this would improve accessibility of the title. Or just make the battles playable from both sides, so newcomers can at least learn the game first by winning with the advantaged side (which can already be quite challenging for new players).
In general though I find the difficulty of many of the scenarios have crossed the line from "challenging" to "frustrating and unfun". We are expected to win battles that were historically lost, against vastly superior forces, with some added ahistorical difficulty by the scenario designer. I find my victories depend more on endless repetition to get lucky dice rolls and exploits of AI limitations than actual good tactics and strategy. There are good reasons many of these battles were historically lost, but the game forces us to remake many of the historical mistakes that lead to defeat. It would already remove a lot of frustration on my part if the game at least did not force me each time into the same crappy deployment and troop selection that historically lost the battle.
but I feel moved to comment on this.
