Disable Retreat if spell was cast this turn.

[Hriibek]

Hello,

Title basically explains the point.

This change would be to prevent hit and run tactics and unnecessary attrition.

EDIT: This might be only for first two rounds, so that it allows for justified cases - like casting a spell before retreating from actuall battle that took at least two turns. (even just one turn ban might be enough to cover undesirable use cases)

[zenseii]

Hi, @Hriibek.

Casting a spell before retreating is most often a valid tactic and what you're asking is to make the AI play worse, and this is not something we will do. The AI should play as good as possible.
If I can give you some advice, then try to predict when the AI will retreat and make sure they don't get to. Often you can even predict this before entering a battle, especially if it's an enemy scout hero.

Also, the AI will be less inclined to retreat on lower difficulties due various factors, so you can consider this as an option.

[zenseii]

You are not the first player I've heard who is annoyed by the opponent casting a spell and retreating, however, this is usually because they don't understand all the reasons why you should retreat.

In fheroes2, the AI will retreat/surrender to preserve a hero with a decent level and/or who has good artifacts. The AI will not care to save a hero if they don't have anything of value compared to a fresh hero.

I will also address your edit:

EDIT: This might be only for first two rounds, so that it allows for justified cases - like casting a spell before retreating from actuall battle that took at least two turns. (even just one turn ban might be enough to cover undesirable use cases)

Implementing a restriction like this into the gameplay will seem very arbitrary for players (why can't you retreat the first/second round?), what is the difference between spending two rounds in which you only manage to take out two stacks of 1 sprite, and then they lightning bolt you for 100 damage, compared to them just doing that lightning bolt round 1 and running? How do you define what is a real/actual battle from this?

If you're worried about hit and run tactics when there's a hero next to a castle who can spam this several times, a tactic which the AI doesn't know how to do, then we already have put limits on (but not removed) this in fheroes2 by making sure the movement points aren't 100% recovered for a retreated hero, compared to the original Heroes 2 where the heroes do recover them.

[Hriibek]

I can predict when AI will try to retreat and can play around it and have no problem with AI playing as best as it could.
On the other hand I don't believe casting before retreating has any strategical value other than cheap cheesy exploits and only leads to unnecessary frustration.

If you can play around it and have no problem, then what causes the "unnecessary frustration"? And if there is a frustration, then it seems that your forces are suffering unexpected losses, and therefore there is a value.

It makes no sense to arbitrarily call various mechanics from the original game "cheap cheesy exploits" just because you don't like them, it's not in itself an argument to change or disable them.

I don't like AI heroes casting Lighting Bolt and then retreating. I can play around it, but it's simply annoying. AI usually has something like 4-6 heroes and even if they each kill "only" f.i. 1-3 Arch-magi/Liches, it hurts and you HAVE TO play around it and to put this simply as possible: It's not FUN.

[oleg-derevenetz]

I don't like AI heroes casting Lighting Bolt and then retreating. I can play around it, but it's simply annoying. AI usually has something like 4-6 heroes and even if they each kill "only" f.i. 1-3 Arch-magi/Liches, it hurts and you HAVE TO play around it and to put this simply as possible: It's not FUN.

Sorry, but it's a legitimate game mechanics. The fact that you personally don't like it and "it's not fun" for you is not a sufficient reason to remove it.

BTW, in some variants of tournament rules for HoMM3 (applied by agreement of the parties) there is a rule that an attacking hero has no right to retreat in the first combat round if he/she has cast any spell. But even this rule does not apply to the defending hero. It is the attacker's challenge to anticipate and prevent such a scenario. And in your case, the AI seems to control the defending heroes, because the AI usually does not attack on its own initiative an enemy hero, from whom it will have to retreat during the first or second turn.

[Branikolog]

Hello, @Hriibek !

I agree with @oleg-derevenetz , such behaviour should be optional among some sort of tournament rules (or just some custom rules for games when you want to try something unusual). But on default this behaviour is unclear and absolutely casual. Since current development team is focused on the original behaviour mostly, I believe such changes can be implemented only in future as a part of gameplay mutators.

Also, such changes require tons of discussions. Why only first 2 rounds? Why not 1 or 3? Do you suggest such behaviour for all spells, or only attacking? What about the defending/attacking hero state? Does it applied for both? Etc, etc, etc....

I do also agreed with others opinion, that it is the original part of gameplay. Enemy can hit&run you, but also can do same. It's not an abuse by any means: you spend gold for hiring a hero with sufficient Spell Power points. You should purchase him a book. Invest in mage guild. Provide with fast troops. It's not that easy and cheap so you cannot do this endless. I'm 100% sure, you've used such trick many times, so why AI couldn't do the same?

[Hriibek]

Hello @Branikolog,

As a matter of fact, I've never used the hero re-buy tactics :-)

My concern wasn't that much about this case, more like how annoying is to soak Lightin Bolt after Lighting bolt from AI secondary heroes.
But I understand that you want to keep the game as original as possible and I respect that.

Thank you for keeping this awesome game alive.

[LeHerosInconnu]

Hello everyone,

Casting a spell before fleeing or retreating is part of Heroes 2.
Not always in the case of hit-and-run "tactics", but for example, simply to inflict some damage when a weak secondary hero gets caught in a combat by an opposing hero.
And in fheroes2, the AI is much better at this than in the original game. :)
To counterbalance the hit-and-run tactic, which has never been satisfying for me (in my eyes, it's more a form of "cheating" to get around the game's system) or the "poor man's town portal" tactic, which consists of sending your hero to attack a troop of wandering creatues in order to make him flee, and then recruiting him in a castle to gain travel time and increased availability where the hero is needed, I've planned an option in my mod (#3252) which won't prevent the player from using these tactics, but which will give the hero a penalty when they are used; the player will therefore have to weigh up the pros and cons before using these tactics or other cases.

[Alucard648]

There are certain official maps that require hit-and-run tactic to beat, Alteris 2 for instance.

[Mr-Bajs]

Enemies that escape can be be a little annoying. But the AI shouldn't be more stupid than a regular player would do. And a human player would probaly flee.

Heroes 3 had an artifact Shackles that prevented the enemy from fleeing. Adding such an artifact would be nice, it doesn't break anything and it rewards the player with something with something useful. At the same time the player have to go through the effort and obtain it.