Artillery dodging hinders the AI far more than the player

Why is this?

It's simple: the AI units that try to dodge end up lagging far behind the rest of their army, and the AI army has to fight piecemeal as a result. It becomes much easier to then pick off units one-by-one before they can do much damage.

 

**Example 1:** [Skaven vs Wood Elves](https://i.imgur.com/mhWScUs.jpeg)

Here I target some of the Wood Elf archers with my catapults, and as you can see they end up pretty far behind. If they had simply approached, they'd be taking casualties a bit more quickly, but could likely get in range to actually threaten me.

This could have actually caused some issues in this battle, because my Jezzails are actually overloaded - having to deal with 3 Eagles, Orion, and 2 Glade Captains. But instead, by the time these archers got in range, the enemy army was absolutely decimated and they all fled.

One key aspect to note is that the units that try to dodge **are taking casualties**. They aren't able to avoid every shot, and the inaccuracy of certain types of artillery actually turns into a boon.

 

**Example 2:** [Empire vs Warriors of Chaos](https://i.imgur.com/lGeemHM.jpeg)

I target 4 separate Chosen with my 4 Hellstorms. They, again, lag behind.

One thing you might notice (it happened in the first example too, but it's more obvious in this case) is that there aren't just 4 units lagging behind - there are 6. This is because nearby units often try to dodge artillery shots as well, and get caught in a similar loop. You can see this effect most often in battles with lots of infantry, or bits of impassable terrain. I did not swap targets at all here.

Similar to the first example, by the time the Chosen were near the fight, they routed. The enemy lord was dead, most of the other units were fleeing or badly damaged, and army losses struck.

 

Overall, this really the worst of both worlds. AI performance isn't actually improved, and most players just end up annoyed that their artillery isn't getting in satisfying shots because the game is 'cheating'. It doesn't really make sense to keep this in the game, let alone continue to spend precious dev time on it.