Q: Is Friendly Fire an issue?

[RadicalTurnip]

I believe you can also set your archers to "hold and attack" and the two rounds they're holding, they'll fire (I believe, I don't have the game in front of me to test) and then run forward to engage. Of course, this means your archers are trying to engage the enemy, which is *no fun* unless they're decent troops as well. If you can be sure that they're going to be stuck behind your front-line guys when they engage, they'll run as far forward as they can, and then start firing again. FF is reduced a lot when the archers are only firing a few squares ahead of them. Again, this is a very niche use.

Has anyone had them set on "guard commander" and then retreated the commander after a few turns? I believe the archers would stay on the field (assuming you had extra commanders to command them), but they may run forward to engage, I'm not certain. Anyway, this may be a nice way to time archers better as the commander can move forward to rejoin the army much faster than a bunch of scattered bowsmen.

[thejeff]

Archers on "Guard Commander" don't fire.

I've had archers left without orders fire until the lines closed and then move up to just behind the lines and start shooting again, but not reliably enough to recommend it.
You'll see indy archers do this fairly often.

[jfp3]

Nice ideas Turnip, will give a test or 3.

[Gandalf Parker]

Setting archers to the sides might also help. Especially if they are set to fire at units which also tend to be set to the sides (flanks) of the battlefield).

But Kristoffer (one of the developers) had very definite ideas about the effectiveness of telling your archers to fire over the top of their own units to hit units they cant see. I guess thats one of the drawbacks for having a teacher of mytho-religio history designing the game.

Also, a note on some of the previous posts. There is supposed to be a difference in the game between the ideas of rout, flee, and retreat. They are not meant to be interchangeable in the conversation. As I understand it, Retreat is the one that stops to try and make a decent choice.

[thejeff]

What do you mean by a decent choice?

I don't know if I've ever used Fire & Flee, the only place "flee" is used that I can think of.
The only difference I've seen is that Rout gets a defense penalty and the others don't.

And firing over the tops of your front line has plenty of historical precedent. There's much less for firing into melee once the lines have engaged, which is the current Dominions standard.

[Gandalf Parker]

Quoting Kristoffer:
"Shooting beyond the closest target is also something that is not very historic. Target closest should be the default for archers, but would worsen the single-unit-squad decoy tactics."
/Quote

As far as continuation, the games version of history seems to be that commanders get multiple orders, and squads tend to get one which they follow blindly until they cannot. We are lucky to get some combos such as "hold and" or "fire & flee" for squads. A better disciplined plan of actions apparently requires a commander.

[jfp3]

I wonder if it would be such a "leap" to just have a simple boolean "on/off" for Friendly Fire. This topic must have been covered at length long, long ago :-)

[Gandalf Parker]

It was. Thats why it is the way it is. In fact it was covered on and off for about a year before Dom3 was released.

[jfp3]

Well now you've got me curious. What could be a reason not to have "FF on/off" as an option? I mean, aren't Mac users the only ones who don't want "more options"? :-)

>>Hoping real hard right about now that Gandalf isn't a Mac user<<

[Gandalf Parker]

I use everything.
But apparently the developers felt that this was game-realistic and decided to leave it in the way it is.