How is movement determined?

[IndyPendant]

I seem to remember reading in the manual that if two nations each move into enemy provinces, the order that they do so is determined randomly. Thus, if one army is moving *into* an enemy province, while another army is moving *out of* that province, into a province that is its enemy...then the first army has a chance of attacking the second army before it moves.

Am I correct? And if not, how come in SP games, the AI keeps attacking my armies with tiny forces, halting its movement into their provinces? Happens all. the. time. in SP games.

Yet I've been chasing my opponent all over the map, through my territories, in a SP game for like 5 turns now, and haven't caught him yet.

How can I stop him?

[Reverend Zombie]

I've heard that move order is actually determined by nation number, so if his number is before yours, he'll always catch you, you'll never catch him.

[Ubercat]

Reverend Zombie said:
I've heard that move order is actually determined by nation number, so if his number is before yours, he'll always catch you, you'll never catch him.

That's rotten. Something like map movement order should be randomized on a turn by turn basis, or else dependant on the movement speed of the troops in each army. The dev's made an absolutely brilliant game. I hope they fix this so such a nasty exploit is closed down.

[Ironhawk]

You are talking about two things in one statement. Your first question was about opposed moves. The second was about unopposed moves.

In an opposed move (army 1 moves from A->B while army 2 moves from B->A) the battle will occur randomly in province A or B.

In an unopposed move ( army 1 moves from A->B while army 2 moves from B->C) you will never have a battle. Not ever. In order to "catch" an army you must work out in your head where you predict they will move and then move there before them (so you would move to prov C, not B) to head them off.

[atul]

However, I believe, nation numbers do matter in some cases. If army 1 moves from A->C (indy province) and army 2 moves from B->C, then the nation with a lower number fights the indies first, and should they win, meet the other army as defenders. I think it's quite consistently as I described in cases where two nations attack simultaneously same (hostile to both) province.

[lch]

IndyPendant said:
how come in SP games, the AI keeps attacking my armies with tiny forces, halting its movement into their provinces? Happens all. the. time. in SP games.

The AI is quite good in SP games at raiding and running away from your main force. You have to keep an equally well defended border of provinces to him and slowly bulldoze forward towards him, or lay a trap and hope that he falls for it (remember, friendly movement happens before hostile movement, so you can send all your armies as defenders to a previously undefended province of yours and maybe intercept him)

[IndyPendant]

Hrm. Maybe I need to clarify.

There are two, seemingly mutually exclusive, situations I am dealing with here:

1) In single-player games, I will move to attack an enemy province with an army, then end my turn. Next turn, I discover that the A.I. has sent a small force to harry my much larger army, and that battle seems to have negated my own movement order for my army. This doesn't always happen, but it does happen with annoying regularity.

2) In one of my MP games, I have been chasing an enemy army all over my own territories, and every time I move into a territory he has conquered, he moves out of it into another one of my territories, conquering *that* one. Once, we even exchanged places!

Now. From the responses to this post so far, it seems that if my army moves into a province an enemy army occupies, and *that* army at the same time attacks one of my provinces, then I will never, ever catch it. I have to anticipate its movement to catch that army.

But if that's the case, then scenario 1) in SP games is impossible. The AI army could not cut off my army's movement into its territory by attacking me, since our move orders would then resolve at the same time (because we are each moving into 'enemy' territory), and we would simply exchange places.

(And the AI's attacks do not involve stealth units, in case that's one theory--i.e. stealth in, then "Attack Current Province".)

Does the AI get special treatment this way? If so, that seems decidedly unfair for MP games...

[lch]

IndyPendant said:
2) In one of my MP games, I have been chasing an enemy army all over my own territories, and every time I move into a territory he has conquered, he moves out of it into another one of my territories, conquering *that* one. Once, we even exchanged places!

True, and the manual mentions that, too. It specifically says that there are three types of movements:
1) Movement into friendly provinces. Will happen first.
2) Movement into enemy provinces. Will result in a fight. If A attacks B and B attacks C, then both movements will happen at the same time and the resulting fights will not feature the units that moved away.
3) Movements of armies against each other (A to B, B to A). A variety of things can happen, it's outlined in the manual.

[Ironhawk]

No need to clarify - I answered both your scenarios in my above post.

[Fate]

If you look in the manual, movement and battles are two distinct things. There seem to be three situations flying around now, and I will answer them according to the manual.

1) Army 1 moves from province A -> B and Army 2 moves from B -> C. They will never meet, because movement is before battles.

2) Army 1 moves from A -> (indy)C and Army 2 moves from B -> C. The battles should be in random order, according to the manual.

3) Army 1 moves from A -> B, and Army 2 moves from B -> A. The armies have a random chance of meeting based on their sizes. If they meet they randomly fight in either A or B (50/50 chance).