Simultaneous movement

merlinme · #1 February 9th, 2007, 02:30 PM

Could somebody explain to me please exactly how movement is worked out when two enemy sides are trying to move into different provinces?

To give the exact example:

Turn one: I attempt to move into my enemy's province. He attempts to move into mine. We fight a battle in my province. I win.
Turn two: following losses from the battle, I decide I should stay where I am and recruit/ summon some reinforcements. He invades my province with a smallish army, kills my province defence, and besieges my fort (without being able to damage the walls).
Turn three: I break the siege and crush his army.
Turn four: I attempt to move into his province; he attempts to move into mine, and we fight a battle in my province. I win, but it's starting to feel like turn one all over again... Am I ever going to be able to break out of my province?

If I remember the manual correctly, is movement in a random order? And in fact I think it said that, depending on the size of the armies involved, you could even miss each other completely and end up swapping provinces.

What does this mean in practice?

1) If we both have large armies and attack each other, is it 50/50 which province we fight in?
2) If he sends any army, even one unit to attack me, does he have a 50/50 chance of stopping my army moving?
3) If I break a siege, does that always occur before he moves away? Or could he in theory get away, start raiding other provinces and generally being a nuisance?

Thanks in advance for any light you can shed on this.

merlin

Ironhawk · #2 February 9th, 2007, 03:07 PM

If two armies contest each other's movement, the battle will happen randomly in one province or the other. There are rumors that army size effects which province this occurs in but they have not been proved.

General_Jah · #3 February 9th, 2007, 03:39 PM

Thanks for the post Merlin!!!

I just started playing and would like to know as well! So far the movement system with armies has caused me much frustration!

Micah · #4 February 9th, 2007, 04:17 PM

Break siege will happen after your opponent moves if he's moving into his own territory...I'm not sure bout if hes attacking another province.

A related question I have is if armies will meet up if they don't move directly into each other...will an army one spot behind a raiding party have a chance to catch it each turn, or will they never meet since they're both going in the same direction into hostile territory?

Ironhawk · #5 February 9th, 2007, 05:55 PM

You will never catch the raiding party from behind, no.

You would need to have a force moving from a friendly province to the next friendly province you expect the raiding party to go in order to catch them.

Fate · #6 February 9th, 2007, 07:26 PM

Movement is always before battles UNLESS they happen to catch each other. Big armies (like the manual says) are the only ones with a realistic chance of accomplishing this, but yes, one guy could stop your invasion that way (don't count on it for defense). Then there is a 50/50 chance between the two territories.

There are a variety of ways you can stop an invading army. (1) out guess it and engage the army in battle. (2) surround the invading army with your own armies (if you significantly outnumber them). Or (3) raise PD around them, hopefully wearing them down. If you are dealing with some super-army which can beat PD without a scratch, then you need to use armies (most armies will have some weakness, the exploitation of which will eventually bring them down).

A final possibility is flooding the countryside with assassins/seducers or calling assassination spells all over the place. Assassinations take place before movement, so offing the commander might stop the army and allow you to kill it.

However, as in many games, a good deal of strategy involves fighting on enemy territory and trashing their land so they can't -or won't- trash yours (LA R'lyeh and Ermor not included).

Ironhawk · #7 February 9th, 2007, 08:18 PM

Yeah assassination spells are a great way to paralyze an army that is not prepared for it. If you are facing a large army that has only a couple of high leadership commanders, killing one will make all the troops under it's command stop moving for that turn. This tactic is a particularly vicious thing to do on the eve of a major enemy attack.

merlinme · #8 February 12th, 2007, 10:34 AM

Well, in the game which originally got me to raise this question, I'm really not convinced that the system was working as it says in the manual. I tried invading his province I'd say at least six times (in a single player game, so the game was fairly static. I was holding a chokepoint province which I was attempting to break out from.)

EVERY time it occurred in my province. This isn't impossible if it was 50/50 each time, but it seems rather unlikely.

One thought which occurs to me is that maybe it was because he was invading me from three different provinces? In which case, I assume I would have to move before ALL of them to fight the battle in his province, so in other words, 1/4 chance rather than 1/2. I would still have expected to move before him once in six attempts though.

The other thing that I found strange was that when I got tired of attacking the same province (his capital) and attacked one of his other provinces, my army successfully moved out first time. Which again, could just be chance, but it seems a bit strange. Basically, when we were contesting movement across the same province border, he won every single time. When I moved on a province where (I'm fairly sure) he wouldn't have been trying to attack me from, it worked first time. His army moved into the province I came from, but my army finally moved out and attacked another of his provinces. So basically I was able to work around the problem. It was strange though; it didn't feel like it was random at all.

It's a problem with turn based games to get a sensible move order, but I'm not sure I like the system as it stands. In particular, sending one militia unit from several different provinces in the hope of forcing a vastly superior army to stay where it is (while you raise reinforcements) seems rather a cheesy tactic.

I was hoping it didn't work like this; the manual implied that the size of the army mattered. Does anyone have any hard data on this?

thejeff · #9 February 12th, 2007, 11:27 AM

You definitely don't have to move before all the invading armies. I know I've seen cases where one of my invading armies made it and one was stopped by an attack.

merlinme · #10 February 12th, 2007, 11:44 AM

Yes, but if we have friendly armies A and B, all in the same province, and enemy armies C, D and E, in different provinces (all moving into your province), and army A moves into hostile province C while army B moves into hostile province D; then if the move order is A, C, D, E, B, then army B would fight a defensive battle, while army A would move away.

At least I think that's what you meant, that one of your armies invaded but one stayed still?

What I'm curious about is if you only have one army, do you have to move before _all_ armies attempting to move into your province? So if someone moves six armies into your province, do you only have a 1/6 chance of moving out of the province?

For ultimate cheesiness, you could script your 6 armies to Retreat, so you'd stop someone's much bigger force attacking you, and you wouldn't even necessarily take any casualties.