If you hover over the Multi Attack selector when the box pops up during an attack it says, "Attack until either this number of units are lost or until the territory is captured."

So in this game after move 105 I wanted to do a "do or die" type attack.  It was 4 attackers versus 1 defender (abandon territory is enabled for this map).  So I selected 3 under multi attack pulldown (by the way, shouldn't this be 4 for an abandon territory map?).  The result?  I roll 3 dice vs 1 and lose one.  The attack stopped there.  This hurt because I only get 2 attacks per turn and I was expecting it to continuously attack until I had lost 3 or taken the territory.

1. Is this function broken?  Or if not, how is it intended to work?
2. How does this differ from the "A" (i.e. attack with all units) function?
3. Can we get a full "do or die" type option?

A, T, and Multi Attack all only attack until they can no longer attack with 3 units, so I don't think 4 should be in the box since if you get to 2 or 1 units then there is no longer multi-attack.

2. A will attack down until you have 2 or 1 units left, the Multi Attack will attack down until that specified number of units are lost.

3. I think that could "break" current maps, even Spies possibly, as I think a few designs have accounted for not being able to multi-attack with 1-2 units.  So a "do or die" would have to be introduced gently if added.  (Not sure there is a good reason for not doing the "do or die" but I think that's how WF did it so perhaps it's just kind of legacy, although I know we've had a discussion or two on it so maybe there is something out there on it.)

Back to 1. Hmmmmm... it does seem like you should have gotten at least one more attack (with 3 dice) since the most possibly you could lose on the next turn is 2 which would bring your total up to 3 (beyond that it should stop).  Had you lost 2 (if 2 were defending) on the first attack then I think it should stop (according to current setting) since the next attack you could possibly lose more than 3...still thinking though, I could be swayed if tom or someone comes up with something good here :p

Yertle wrote:

3. I think that could "break" current maps, even Spies possibly, as I think a few designs have accounted for not being able to multi-attack with 1-2 units.  So a "do or die" would have to be introduced gently if added.

Or I just keep saying this and it's not really a problem :

Yertle wrote:

Andernut wrote: What about an attack-all button to attack until you're out of men for maps like Enygma's Spy game. If you get 2 attacks and you're ready to commit to an attack it's frustrating that it attacks down until a 2v1 but to attack 2v1 requires you make a separate attack.

I want to be able to attack down to zero units if that's my committment for the continuous movement. This also comes into play on the Star Fish or Fish Wars map.

That's potential game changing logic with continuous attacks.  Continuous attacks have only been available when attacking with 3 troops (although on WF you couldn't continuous attack if you had only 3 to attack with, but here you can).  Since both Spy and Fish Wars uses limited attacks it could potentially "break" the map if it wasn't intended by the map designers. 

While I don't think I necessarily have a problem with it being changed, it should be does call for perhaps just a bit of caution.

From post 106/107 here: http://www.wargear.net/forum/showthread/174p4/BUGS_BUGS_BUGS_-_Old

May be another post or two out there on this as well, but I think this is the one that I was thinking of (although just glancing at a page or two after, not too much of a discussion).

i thought the drop down was a "Until this many are left" not "until this many units are lost", so if he picked 3, then would stop at 3.

Then you also have the can't multi-attack if there is less than 4 - which makes sense because you're no longer rolling 3 dice...

I had a similar problem with M-Engine design, so I'll throw in some of my insights here.

In the absence of a choice, I considered the ME default to be Attack With 3 Only.  The obvious other choices are

1. Attack with as little as 2
2. Attack with as little as 1

but there were even other considerations that test players asked for.

1. Attack until attack stack is larger or smaller than defense stack (assuming no heavy fog).
2. Attack with at least as many dice as there are defending dice. (I.e, attack with 1 only if there is 1 defender.
3. Attack with x amount but advance y amount if possible.
4. Advance as many as possible leaving behind y amount.
5. Requests similar to a, b, c, and d.

Obviously most of these options would clog up the order form and cause more confusion than necessary to be sure.  But 1 and 2 as options seemed important to me, especially because the M-engine has armies that are potentially allocated to defend and resources are just a bit tighter as a result.

weathertop wrote:

i thought the drop down was a "Until this many are left" not "until this many units are lost", so if he picked 3, then would stop at 3.

Then you also have the can't multi-attack if there is less than 4 - which makes sense because you're no longer rolling 3 dice...

The help text is wrong if you are right in how it works.  So if I had selected "1" with my 4 vs 1 attack it would have attacked until I only had 1 attacker left?  This would be more of a do or die type attack than the "A" button.

Conan wrote:

weathertop wrote:

i thought the drop down was a "Until this many are left" not "until this many units are lost", so if he picked 3, then would stop at 3.

Then you also have the can't multi-attack if there is less than 4 - which makes sense because you're no longer rolling 3 dice...

The help text is wrong if you are right in how it works.  So if I had selected "1" with my 4 vs 1 attack it would have attacked until I only had 1 attacker left?  This would be more of a do or die type attack than the "A" button.

Tooltip says until lost, which I think is right (and where the Help page gets it from), but I don't use that all that much.

My guess is that Abandon or something is breaking this...hopefully tom will be able to chip in.  Because you can do the Multi-Attack again until you lose only 1 or 2, which is wacky, I call BUG!!!

It is supposed to be 'Attack until either this number of units are lost', however when you get down to only having 2 or less units to attack with it automatically stops attacking. The rationale is that you probably don't want to attack with less than 3 units as your odds of success start dropping - you would not want to attack with 1 unit vs 2 defenders in most circumstances.

The same goes for when you use the 'A' button to attack so this behavior is consistent. Possibly the tooltip could be updated but it might start getting a bit of a mouthful to describe in detail the behavior above.

It's described in a bit of detail in the Help page: http://www.wargear.net/help/display/Playing%20a%20game%20-%20Turn%20Based

Although looks like it could be expanded to include the 1-2 unit thing.

tom, still if he had 4 units (abandon on), with Multi-Attack until 3 are lost and he's attacking a 1 and lost 1, shouldn't the system still auto-attack one more time since the most he could lose is 2 (although really only 1) which would equal the 3?   Still seems like a potential bug here IMO.

It was 4 attackers (abandon is on) versus 1 defender.  I selected attack until lose 3.  It rolled 3 dice vs 1 die.  Attacker lost 1 (now has 3 attackers).  Now more attacks.  If it didn't take into consideration abandonment then I can see why it stopped.

So if I had used the "A" button would it have attacked one more time?

FYI: For the attacker, 3v1 is always better than 3v2 (obviously) but even 2v1 is always better than 3v2.

I think the best way to explain it is there is a safety net to prevent you ever attacking with less than 3 units. When you select the Multi-Attack it is treating it as if those are the only units that you are committing to the attack - the remaining units on the territory are ignored. So in your case you selected to attack with 3 units, you lost 1 so only 2 units remained to attack with. The safety net kicks in to prevent you attacking with only these 2 units - it does not take account of the units remaining.

In your case if you had attacked with all 4 units (A) you would have made an extra attack. In the worst case scenario you would have lost 3 units / gone down to 1 unit remaining (this would be the result if it was 3 vs 2 and you lost 2 units leaving you with 1 unit).

I think I agree that this is probably not the desired behavior - it should take into account the units on the territory. I am a little concerned that this might functionally unbalance some of the existing boards if it is changed however.

tom wrote:

I think I agree that this is probably not the desired behavior - it should take into account the units on the territory.

By "territory" do you mean the Attacker's territory or the Defender's territory?

It seems to me that the Multi-Attack is wrong, it should account all of the Attacker's units and then stop when that amount is hit (or near hit like it currently does) or when down to 1, 2, or 3 units (depending on abandon setting).  That or the Multi-Attack just needs changed as I think this is different functionality than what the tooltip currently says ("this number to lose").

I meant Attacker's territory. I agree I it's not doing what it says on the tin... either the wording needs to change or the functionality needs to change - I think the latter.