Thanks for the interest! I'll address a few points brought up, but first I'll go over a kind of general design philosophy. The general concept that I'm going for is a more 'top down' design strategy typical of tabletop or digital tabletop wargames like field of glory, hail Caesar, and DBA, but in real time and with the spectacle of thousands of troops. So, I take the perspective of always asking if a mechanic adds to the suite of tactical options available to the general/player and leads to an, on the whole, more interesting and accurate battle, rather than bottom up design where the whole experience emerges from lots of small, low level pieces being put together. To give a specific example, although it may be the case that ranged weapons would do more damage into the flank or rear of an enemy (debatable because the men who aren't in combat could largely turn to face their shields towards the direction of fire, but putting that aside), adding such a damage boost into the game motivates unrealistic and ahistorical use of skirmishers as a flanking force, rather than as a force sent out in front of the army to screen, scout, engage other skirmishers, disrupt the enemy line and so on before retiring to the flanks after the main battle has been joined. Just keep that in mind as that's basically the first question I ask when coming to a design decision, ie does it contribute to the holistic outcome of a battle, rather than does it, in isolation, seem correct. Also, units are routed by dropping cohesion levels from various effects (close combat, shooting, seeing other units routing, being flanked, etc...) and casualties have very little gameplay effect, but are more a consequence and a visual of combat outcomes which are resolved with a POA type system typical of table top games.
-there are line shift modes you can select with ui buttons, where by default units shift back and forth with victory and defeat, but they can elect to pushback more if they win (maybe should be at some cost), and if they are disciplined they can elect to hold position or even intentionally fallback, and if cavalry they can elect to always recoil from combat (which cavalry will also do on their own typically after a few rounds of combat with non light infantry, although I still need to rework the numbers on that, I have recently totally overhauled all of the combat resolution, cohesion and POA systems).
-there are impact and extended melee POA distinctions, and POA loss with terrain disorder etc...still a lot to work out in that regard, and I'm not sure what all terrain elements or more levels of disorder I will or should add, but the point is it's more complicated than just cavalry should or should not charge. Some should (Lancers in the open), some throw javelins before charging in and then likely recoiling, some are actually good in extended melee (Cataphracts), and some only skirmish. Right now I have light horse, cavalry, and heavy cavalry unit types that can have lancer, javelin, handweapon etc...capability and Cataphract subtype etc...but still working on types.
I will probably introduce a limited unit quality system, where some units can be upgraded to veteran with an upgrade token (maybe you'd have ~3 of these), or downgraded to raw in exchange for an upgrade token, where the difference is really just in their ability to absorb morale shocks/pass cohesion checks. However, there won't be that much of a concept of elite or mob type units exactly. Armor I've also got in with a simple 3 tier system of unarmored, protected and armored, largely effecting ranged defense and melee (not impact) POA.
AI is fairly basic for now, just a script that sort of sends them forward in different sections/times/distances, except that they follow the same rules as the player with anarchy charges, priority shooting, zone of control etc...ie most attack commands are not commanded and move orders come through couriers and units cannot just walk by enemies and so on. So they are right now at least ok at moving forward, picking targets, attacking/shooting, and picking new targets if idle after awhile, but that's sort of it for now.
Skirmishers do evade, and impetuous enemies receiving fire do uncontrollably charge if they can. Units also uncontrollably pursue after victory, which can lead them into getting in more charges against other units (ie one unit of flanking cav can actually wrap up a whole flank on its own, or a unit goaded into charging by shooting skirmishers will, if those skirmishers fall back through a non-light unit, then attack that non-light unit).
Unit variety is a low priority right now, as I'm more at a stage of hashing out the base gameplay mechanics, and for awhile will probably just have at most one of each type once I even get to that stage (types being something like foot skirmishers, light horse, heavy infantry of at least the handweapon, spear, pike, and two hander capabilities, medium foot, bowmen, lancers, horse archers, cavalry, and a few others, with some sub types like warband and cataphracts, or maybe those should be their own category, still working that out).
No victory points, but you'll win by routing some percentage of enemy units, perhaps offset by how many of your own units are also routed.
Sorry you can't find the executable. If you download the .rar and extract into its own folder, just run the unityselectiontest.exe.
Yes, combat is about disrupting enemies and getting them to rout off the field (typically with most of them still alive). They do take further casualties while routing if they have a pursuer, and if they are routing and detect they cannot escape as they are surrounded they are dispersed, or just if they are routing for long enough, then they also disperse, which visually right now just shows them all run off in different directions and then dying. They can also rout/pursue off the map, into an area in which they can be selected but to which they cannot be given move commands, if that makes sense, ie you can only send them back.
Ideally, you would disrupt an enemy first, perhaps with shooting, and then charge with the heavy cavalry to break them, but it's situational. I'll probably try to introduce a concept of non-open but not disordering terrain, like low walls or small streams or gulleys or fences, which are typically used to negate mounted charge POA but otherwise don't cause formation disruption. There's no 'cycle charging' exactly in this, as you cannot give orders to a unit that is engaged in combat. However, cavalry often disengage/recoil from non light infantry when they are not at advantage in melee, and can be put into a mode where they will always try to do so if they can.
I'll push a new update soon with the cohesion/POA additions, and a total overhaul to the combat coordination and appearance. It will likely introduce some new bugs, but on the whole be much better.
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