In fact, the threshold at which a multi-entity unit survives is predictable. 
For the winning side of a battle, a  multi-entity unit will survive if its number of surviving entities is greater than or equal to 5 per cent of its full crew. 

For the losing side, the threshold is 20 per cent.

For multi-entity units, this is only related to the percentage of surviving entities remaining, not to remaining HP.

I like 3K system and I would like to have it in Warhammer. Eveb a "destroyed" unit should start to replenish.

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Steelclaw#6359 wrote:

I prefer things the way they are - hunting down every last model already has the potential to be very tedious.

IDK, the current system is what encourages the "hunt down every last model" strategy in the first place, only that it currently raises the death threshold. At the very least, the winner should have no penalty, and I think the loser should have a reduced or reworked penalty. I'd suggest they rework the loser's penalty by changing it from an execute threshold to a consistent % damage applied to every single unit across the army, and units cannot die this way (left with min 1 model or 1% hp), and on top of that the losing army cannot replenish on the following turn or maybe more turns if balance needs and maybe gets a debuff for vigour or melee stats or smth, again, if balance needs.

edit: "left with min 1 model or 1% hp" forgot to say that units already in this state fully die, in the rare case that does happen.

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SpaceTurtle97#8891 wrote:

I felt like a genius the first time I cheesed the hell out of the AI too, and that was the game working as intended too, it doesn't mean that the cheese existing was necessarily a good thing though. I guess just agree to disagree on abusing the map border being cheese.

"Your proposed strategy doesn't seem particularly powerful or problematic to me, either - it's slightly more immersion-breaking but you're not going to get huge amounts of damage in that way"

It's an example, and of course it doesn't do as much damage as optimally moving every unit to maximize damage, that's not the point. The point is that it's riskless, with zero counterplay. The more battles you do this and retreat and then fight normally, it will give you a notable advantage purely because of the limitations of the game being abused. If you tried to optimally move your units in remotely as many battles, you will eventually mess up and lose more than you gain. It's classic risk vs reward dilemma, but the zero risk option has disproportionate reward. Side note; saying "but it's not THAT problematic" is generally not great in the long run for most things... anyone should strive for improvement, not complacency.

Again, try to think of multiple examples so you don't make overly specific examples that are in vacuums. You "didn't retreat to reset ammo" but "to get more space", that's fine, but you still did get that ammo, and the state of everything else in the battle was reset too (like winds, which is heavily abusable, army power distribution, unit position, etc). There are a few counter examples that I could give for it not making sense from the realism perspective too. Like that cavalry aren't able to properly run down your units in these examples, where in reality they would simply effortlessly catch up to the retreating army and slaughter all of those running ranged units.

A Battle happening, and you retreat, then you get to fully regroup, fully reorganize your formation, and fully reset everything, then another battle starts - this is, on a fundamental level, completely different from your description of the second battle being like a continuation of the first.

"It's depleted units that the winner's army often struggles to actually finish off in a timely manner, and low-percentage units dying compensates for that well"

And why is it that you need to finish off units to begin with? Having a unit left with like 10 entities is a hindrance if anything due to how balance of power works. It's not like you're going to wipe the entire army by full killing every individual unit, so there is practically not much difference. You should be encouraged to get as many kills as possible on routing units, not target the low count units that will have opportunity cost of other kills just to reach some made-up, manufactured, threshold. If only 79% of your buddies died, would you want to fight for that army again?

When it comes to the low-count execute specifically, I think it should be more focused on our gameplay experience than things making realistic sense. With realism there's a thousand ways to justify something and a thousand to criticize it, but at the end of the day, it's just a pain in the ass to barely lose a unit, especially an elite unit, because they were 16/80 instead of 17/80 or 5/80 instead of 6/80 and now you have to spend multiple turns globally recruiting only to probably lose a unit again soon after.

Yeah, to be honest, retreating like that wouldn't even register for me as potential cheese - I can't think of any kind of map boundary-based tactic other than corner/edge-camping which I'd consider cheese.

It's not free, though?  You're presenting retreat-based strategies as lossless, and if they were, I think I'd agree with you, but you pay a cost in terms of getting kicked out of your stance and across the map, and having the game count it as a defeat (affecting traits, giving the enemy a chance to steal magic items, losing Blessing of the Lady as Bretonnia, and I swear retreating used to affect fatigue although I don't think it does now).  If those downsides didn't exist, I'd agree it would be pretty cheesy, but the downsides are real and not all of them are situational.  Also, at the end of the day, it's a military strategy game - albeit a very fantastical one - and there are real historical examples of battles lost as a result of an overzealous commander unwisely pursuing a fleeing enemy.  It seems only appropriate that you can apply those kinds of tactics.

Apologies, my intent was to present my point as "it's not particularly powerful, and it's not problematic at all" - I'm not trying to say that "it's kinda bad but not that bad" but that I genuinely don't see it as a problem.  The ambiguity was unintended.

I think it's fair to debate whether ammo and winds should reset between battles on the same turn, but regardless of that, you are trading longer-term benefits (stance, positioning, magic items, traits, etc.) for a short-term battle advantage.  It is an option which is not always possible, because the reset doesn't always benefit you more than the enemy (none of the resets you've mentioned always benefit the player more than their opponent).  That seems like a valid tactical option to me, not cheese.

The cavalry argument is also really only applicable to cases where you camp the edge rather than skirmishing - with a skirmish retreat, if the enemy had units fast enough to catch you, they would have done it before you reached the edge.  (The battle I'm remembering was years ago, but I believe it was no magic, shadow-walkers + spearmen vs dark elves, with the few enemy cavalry getting shot to pieces before they could close the gap.)  I do think the kind of scenario you're describing (enemy cav can catch you but their infantry can't) is one of the situations where the cracks in the game's system show, but that's not a problem specific to this strategy - it's just one of many unfortunate limitations of having map boundaries, and I don't see an easy fix there.

The point of finishing off units is to weaken the enemy army.  If depleted units were actually worthless, you wouldn't be arguing to keep them alive.  Preventing the enemy from having them in a follow-up fight (a unit which starts at 15% strength tends to be virtually impossible to break and has to be wiped out to the last man - ranged and artillery perform substantially worse against many such units than a single full-strength one), reducing the replenishment the enemy receives if they escape (since replenishment is per unit, more remaining units represents a greater capacity to recover quickly), and requiring time to be spent on freshly recruiting units - all of these are strategically beneficial, and good reasons to wipe out units entirely.

80% and 95% are absolutely manufactured thresholds, but it makes better gameplay for them to be predictable rather than having random chances based on how depleted the unit is.  I wouldn't hate it that way, but I find it plays better this way.

I absolutely get why you find it annoying to lose units - I do too - but there is a corresponding gameplay annoyance to making it work the other way, and I'm not sold on armywide damage/replen disabling as a compromise.  Perhaps the real solution is just to make units not suck at killing low-model-count enemies, but until such a time, I find things better as they stand.

Fair enough. I can see where you're coming from, even if I don't agree or 100% understand some of the opinions. No worries and thanks for the clarification too.

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Steelclaw#6359 wrote:
80% and 95% are absolutely manufactured thresholds, but it makes better gameplay for them to be predictable rather than having random chances based on how depleted the unit is.  I wouldn't hate it that way, but I find it plays better this way.​

I agree completely and the entire point of this thread was to try to get a more predictable system. From my perspective, what system is random is reversed from what you said; RNG controls countless factors within battles, most notably damage, so you could fight the same exact battle with the same basic inputs several times and the results will vary pretty heavily, so it becomes more unpredictable with these invisible thresholds that suddenly delete your unit, where if RNG was slightly better that unit would survive. So then any kind of conditional that is based on what occurs in battle are going to inherently have a randomness factor, which is why I'm advocating against that in favor of a non-conditional penalty. My initial example wasn't perfect, but it's just that, an example. CA can come up with stuff that's more creative and works better, and they can always adjust or revert it.

Steelclaw#6359 wrote:
It's not free, though?  You're presenting retreat-based strategies as lossless, and if they were, I think I'd agree with you, but you pay a cost in terms of getting kicked out of your stance and across the map, and having the game count it as a defeat (affecting traits, giving the enemy a chance to steal magic items, losing Blessing of the Lady as Bretonnia, and I swear retreating used to affect fatigue although I don't think it does now).  If those downsides didn't exist, I'd agree it would be pretty cheesy, but the downsides are real and not all of them are situational.  Also, at the end of the day, it's a military strategy game - albeit a very fantastical one - and there are real historical examples of battles lost as a result of an overzealous commander unwisely pursuing a fleeing enemy.  It seems only appropriate that you can apply those kinds of tactics.

IDK what downsides you're talking about that aren't situational. The ones that I said in my half-assed suggestion were examples of ones that aren't situational, and the only one that wasn't situational was the one you said wasn't in the game anymore. I'm really not invested in this "problematic strategy" discussion, it was just an example, not really something I personally see as an issue on it's own, so I'm leaving it here. The point I brought it up to begin with was just to try to push your example towards extreme abuse that is enabled by that same mechanic. We've been talking like it's an isolated example, but there are many other, some better, and some far worse, examples (like magic abuse being one of the worse offenders). Sorry I didn't get across that is the point I was trying to make.

Steelclaw#6359 wrote:
The cavalry argument is also really only applicable to cases where you camp the edge rather than skirmishing - with a skirmish retreat, if the enemy had units fast enough to catch you, they would have done it before you reached the edge

And the "they would've done it already" argument is only applicable in cases where the cavalry cannot possibly hope to flank, like in a choke point or underground. There's tons more strategy involved for cavalry than simply running at the enemy head on. Strategies to out-maneuver the enemy and, in this case, get behind them without ever even having the CHANCE to be shot at, even if they outspeed you. This is why flanking in real history is so important, whoever outflanked would usually just win. So if you use an army of primarily archers, then you aren't even competing for the flanks at that point so you should expect cavalry to be behind you before you can even reach their front lines. Again, it's mainly an issue of the medium, being that map borders make it impossible to actually do this, but the systems in place are meant to simulate all of this happening. Although, I still think prioritizing gameplay over realism is overall way more important, so I ultimately don't really care how realistic it is if it's more fun.

Steelclaw#6359 wrote:
The point of finishing off units is to weaken the enemy army.  If depleted units were actually worthless, you wouldn't be arguing to keep them alive.  Preventing the enemy from having them in a follow-up fight (a unit which starts at 15% strength tends to be virtually impossible to break and has to be wiped out to the last man - ranged and artillery perform substantially worse against many such units than a single full-strength one), reducing the replenishment the enemy receives if they escape (since replenishment is per unit, more remaining units represents a greater capacity to recover quickly), and requiring time to be spent on freshly recruiting units - all of these are strategically beneficial, and good reasons to wipe out units entirely

Depleted units aren't worthless, I never said that. I AM, however, saying that they are worthless in BATTLE, and can even be harmful. To be specific to the context of the suggestion I gave before, "depleted" units would literally mean units that are left with 1 remaining entity. IDK how you could ever get use out of actually fighting with that unit or why you would do that instead of instantly forcing it to retreat to live another day and replenish if you win. A lot of what you said in here is stuff I literally had solutions to earlier in my suggestion - "the losing army cannot replenish on the following turn- ...and maybe gets a debuff for vigour or melee stats or smth".

Steelclaw#6359 wrote:
but there is a corresponding gameplay annoyance to making it work the other way

Not entirely sure what you meant here, so I'm sorry if I'm making incorrect assumptions. 

If the threshold is removed in favor of a different system, then, like you said, it will work the other way too. The current system has units on both sides die, changing it would likewise have units on both sides live more often. It really doesn't affect tempo as much as you think it does, both sides gain tempo from not having to stop and recruit. This would be a change that, if anything, favors the side of the war that wins more battles. 

Maybe a compromise could be that they keep an execute threshold for the AI, but not human players. For me it really does just act as a quality of life and clarity change, and having some aspect of the game feel fresh after thousands of hours of playing would be nice too.

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SpaceTurtle97#8891 wrote:

Fair enough. I can see where you're coming from, even if I don't agree or 100% understand some of the opinions. No worries and thanks for the clarification too.

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I agree completely and the entire point of this thread was to try to get a more predictable system. From my perspective, what system is random is reversed from what you said; RNG controls countless factors within battles, most notably damage, so you could fight the same exact battle with the same basic inputs several times and the results will vary pretty heavily, so it becomes more unpredictable with these invisible thresholds that suddenly delete your unit, where if RNG was slightly better that unit would survive. So then any kind of conditional that is based on what occurs in battle are going to inherently have a randomness factor, which is why I'm advocating against that in favor of a non-conditional penalty. My initial example wasn't perfect, but it's just that, an example. CA can come up with stuff that's more creative and works better, and they can always adjust or revert it.

IDK what downsides you're talking about that aren't situational. The ones that I said in my half-assed suggestion were examples of ones that aren't situational, and the only one that wasn't situational was the one you said wasn't in the game anymore. I'm really not invested in this "problematic strategy" discussion, it was just an example, not really something I personally see as an issue on it's own, so I'm leaving it here. The point I brought it up to begin with was just to try to push your example towards extreme abuse that is enabled by that same mechanic. We've been talking like it's an isolated example, but there are many other, some better, and some far worse, examples (like magic abuse being one of the worse offenders). Sorry I didn't get across that is the point I was trying to make.

And the "they would've done it already" argument is only applicable in cases where the cavalry cannot possibly hope to flank, like in a choke point or underground. There's tons more strategy involved for cavalry than simply running at the enemy head on. Strategies to out-maneuver the enemy and, in this case, get behind them without ever even having the CHANCE to be shot at, even if they outspeed you. This is why flanking in real history is so important, whoever outflanked would usually just win. So if you use an army of primarily archers, then you aren't even competing for the flanks at that point so you should expect cavalry to be behind you before you can even reach their front lines. Again, it's mainly an issue of the medium, being that map borders make it impossible to actually do this, but the systems in place are meant to simulate all of this happening. Although, I still think prioritizing gameplay over realism is overall way more important, so I ultimately don't really care how realistic it is if it's more fun.

Depleted units aren't worthless, I never said that. I AM, however, saying that they are worthless in BATTLE, and can even be harmful. To be specific to the context of the suggestion I gave before, "depleted" units would literally mean units that are left with 1 remaining entity. IDK how you could ever get use out of actually fighting with that unit or why you would do that instead of instantly forcing it to retreat to live another day and replenish if you win. A lot of what you said in here is stuff I literally had solutions to earlier in my suggestion - "the losing army cannot replenish on the following turn- ...and maybe gets a debuff for vigour or melee stats or smth".

Not entirely sure what you meant here, so I'm sorry if I'm making incorrect assumptions. 

If the threshold is removed in favor of a different system, then, like you said, it will work the other way too. The current system has units on both sides die, changing it would likewise have units on both sides live more often. It really doesn't affect tempo as much as you think it does, both sides gain tempo from not having to stop and recruit. This would be a change that, if anything, favors the side of the war that wins more battles. 

Maybe a compromise could be that they keep an execute threshold for the AI, but not human players. For me it really does just act as a quality of life and clarity change, and having some aspect of the game feel fresh after thousands of hours of playing would be nice too.

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I'd say the current system is predictable, just not transparent. It would be nice if the game ever gave any indication of the 20% (loser)/5% (winner) thresholds, but lack of mechanical transparency is a really common issue in TW:WH, so this example never particularly jumped out at me - like the formula for armour damage reduction, once you I knew, I knew, and proceeded to share how it worked with other people whenever I got the chance. On the bright side, we are getting transparency changes on the UI for research and movement, so maybe there's hope for better transparency on post-battle mechanics too.

The downside I perceive as non-situational is being kicked out of your stance and across the map. I suppose it's possible that there's a situation where you'd like to run away before winning your fight, but I can't think of one off the top of my head. As an aside, I'd fully support re-adding march-stance-equivalent fatigue penalties for retreating. I may have also been getting overly defensive and fixated on my example - sorry about that!

That's fair on the cavalry point - it's so rare to see the AI use them competently that I tend not to even think about the fact that it could, theoretically, charge exposed archer groups from two opposite angles to force them to split fire between the two flanks. I'd still argue that it's functionally impossible to deny them the chance to shoot entirely (unless it's 2 cav units vs 1 archer unit) - it takes less time to turn an infantry squad than to circle a cavalry squad into position - but there are definitely some solid flanking strategies which would be possible with bigger maps and better AI.

My bad for jumping to conclusions on the "worthless" point. I don't know enough about the nitty-gritty of morale calculations to know how wiping out a unit that started at 1/90 compares to wiping out a unit of 90/90, so I can't compare on that point, but I do find that in AI hands (and with AI stat buffs), severely depleted (e.g. 8/90) units are able to make a nuisance of themselves by tying up units which urgently need to be somewhere else, or (more commonly) preventing archers or artillery from firing. A straight-up 1/90 would be very close to useless in how little time it could buy, so I'm happy enough to split the difference and agree that it is pretty much worthless in battle at that point.

I think I'd actually rather see temporary penalties go on leadership than melee stats (though vigour seems fine too). It makes more sense to me that having already been defeated once would cripple enemy morale, and if those low-model-count units weren't so darned hard to rout they'd be much less of a nuisance. I also wonder about the idea of not automatically healing all models in multi-entity units to full after combat, but I think that would be quite a high-impact balance change and I'd want to think about it pretty hard before endorsing it.

At the end of the day it's just a matter of perspective on whether spending extra time hunting down enemy units/armies or carefully babysitting/recruiting fresh units is the lesser evil. I would say the pace of the campaign is already too fast for my liking, though (I actually think a lot of ported mechanics from TW:WH1 and 2 don't work well as a result of how much faster everything happens), so giving tempo to both sides isn't necessarily a plus from my point of view.

I was considering suggesting abolishing execute threshold for the winner, but I feel that something would be lost with that, as well - it adds a reason to play battles you cannot win if your goal is to bloody the enemy by focusing down key units, and that's a lot more realistically feasible to do if you only need to kill 95% of the unit rather than 100%.

FWIW it definitely wouldn't ruin the game for me if you got exactly what you're asking for here, it just seems worth trying to elucidate what things of value I think would be lost by the change to see if it's possible to find a more ideal solution.

(also apologies for walls of text; this forum software and I have a relationship of mutual hate and I haven't quite figured out how to break up quotes on it yet)

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Steelclaw#6359 wrote:
(also apologies for walls of text; this forum software and I have a relationship of mutual hate and I haven't quite figured out how to break up quotes on it yet)

You can highlight individual text to bring up a reply box: 

That will bring up the comment field that you can then minimize to highlight more text to reply to. After which you can do this multiple times before returning to the top of the page where the comment box is minimized. 

Spread the word to prevent awful forum comment chains until CA figures out how to add spoilers.