Simultaneous movement

[merlinme]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.