Stopping fatigued Regts attacking

[Gunner24]

I meant to post this weeks ago, but in the future will it be possible to STOP the AI attacking with units that are very badly fatigued, we often see them attacking now when the fatugue value is over 90 !.

It would seem more reasonable for units in that state to be forced to pull back into a "reserve" position to recover.

[Hook]

I meant to post this weeks ago, but in the future will it be possible to STOP the AI attacking with units that are very badly fatigued, we often see them attacking now when the fatugue value is over 90 !.

It would seem more reasonable for units in that state to be forced to pull back into a "reserve" position to recover.

If your unit is over 90% fatigued, and still attacks (and you understand that a unit will not attack unless it thinks it can win), then what kind of shape is the enemy unit in?

Given the way the AI works, those 90% fatigue guys probably won't be attacking any fresh troops, only troops that are in pretty bad shape already.  This is probably what you want them to do.  If they're going against stronger troops, it's likely that they will indeed do exactly what you say... pull back to a reserve position.

Hook

[Gunner24]

When you put it that way it sounds obvious, with FOW it is often not clear what condition the unit being attacked is in, but I will watch out for this in future.

[Hook]

When you put it that way it sounds obvious, with FOW it is often not clear what condition the unit being attacked is in, but I will watch out for this in future.

Actually, that's an interesting question.  A unit will not attack unless it thinks it can win, but if YOU can't see the other side's unit stats, what about your unit that's doing the attack?  If THEY can't see it either, how do they know they have a chance of winning?

I see a few possibilities:

1)  Your unit on the field has full information whether it's passed to you as the CinC or not.

2)  Your unit on the field only sees something like the strength and maybe the unit quality and makes its decision from that.

3)  Fatigue doesn't make that much difference in the basic calculations, although it may make more difference in advanced calculations.

4)  Fatigue isn't measured the way you think it is.  In this case, 90% fatigue might mean "90% of the way to being fatigued" and has no effect until it reaches 100%.  This is my first assumption when I see something like a high fatigue unit doing an attack.  This is not unreasonable, actually, but it's not necessarily intuitive.

5)  The effects of fatigue aren't the effects you expect.  You don't get to retire from battle just because you're tired, for example. 

My best guess is that the units know if they have a chance of winning and will attack, fatigue from both sides factors into this calculation, and once enough units decide they can't win the corps commander will go into a status that causes him to retreat... which is pretty much exactly what you want.  If units were pulled out of battle simply because they appeared tired, people would complain that they couldn't get their corps commanders to attack.

I will agree that there are cases depending on how the calculations are made where you'd want a unit with higher fatigue to go into a defensive reserve mode;  for example, if fatigue was important to the calculations and your unit didn't know the fatigue of the opposing unit.  I'm assuming that if they don't know, they find out quickly enough and stop attacking.

Hook

[Gunner24]

Wow, some very interesting points there.....I was thinking that 100% would mean the Regt was totaly in-capable of fighting, but perhaps that assumption is wrong.

90% of the way to being fatigued

That would be a good way of measuring it.

After looking at page 95 in ther manual it leaves me with the impression I had before, the worse the figure, the worse the units preformance, but I do agree, it is open to question - maybe JMM can explain/confirm

[Hook]

I was thinking that 100% would mean the Regt was totaly in-capable of fighting, but perhaps that assumption is wrong.

I've seen cavalry regiments at or near 100% still chasing routing enemy cavalry regiments that were also at that fatigue point. 

There are a lot of factors besides "fatigue" and "morale" that can be generally described by the term "combat stress".  Morale measures the factors that can change quickly, while fatigue measures factors that change slowly. 

Examples of the latter include the fact that the muzzles of the muskets will foul making loading more difficult.  Or the barrels overheating.  Or wear and tear on the equipment, such as flints needing to be replaced or ramrods breaking or otherwise becoming unusable.  Or even minor wounds that don't take a soldier out of battle, but need to be addressed.

As for morale, having the leader close by doesn't necessarily raise the actual morale of the troops, but they know they're being watched and will try harder to make a good impression on the leader.  And a high morale will make even exhausted troops fight above their apparent ability. 

If you have both low morale and high fatigue, and the troops still hang in there, then the enemy must be in even worse shape... or at least the troops involved think so. 

I hope all this helps answer the question people have about giving an order to an individual regiment to attack, but nothing happens.  They simply don't think they can win. 

Hook

[Gunner24]

I hope all this helps answer the question people have about giving an order to an individual regiment to attack, but nothing happens.  They simply don't think they can win.

 
This all helps, another thing, sometimes they won't attack because that's the way things are set in the doctrine.