Mutual attacks - where do they fight?

[Jasper]

This works fine if you're attacking from a province that is not being attacked in turn. If you launch from several provinces, including one that is being attacked, the enemy will attack first.

This has not been my experience. I have indeed launched attacks from several provinces and pushed back my opponent -- even though he was in turn invading one of the provinces from which I attacked.

Furthermore it's a logical paradox, as there is no way to differentiate "attacker" from "defender" when two armies in adjacent provinces try to swap provinces.

I'm curious why you are so certain it works as you describe? Did one of the developers say it worked that way?

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Endoperez:
If only strategic movement would matter, heavy infantry with only one movement would be useless.

I don't think it would be a good thing to make slow heavy infantry useless, and it certainly wouldn't be a good thing to be able to stop an advance by a superior force by throwing single commanders at it.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Jasper:
This has not been my experience. I have indeed launched attacks from several provinces and pushed back my opponent -- even though he was in turn invading one of the provinces from which I attacked.

Furthermore it's a logical paradox, as there is no way to differentiate "attacker" from "defender" when two armies in adjacent provinces try to swap provinces.

As you describe, it is indeed difficult to determine who to designate the "attacker" when such an event occurs. If your opponent wasn't trying to do the same thing as well, the code probably misinterpreted the move and didn't remember to try and screw you over.

I'm curious why you are so certain it works as you describe? Did one of the developers say it worked that way?

I haven't really gotten any kind of official response one way or another. If they actually RESPONDED, that would more or less confirm that this is definitely the case. However, I've conducted a lot of observations, and this happens way too often to merely be entirely "random". It more closely matches the signature of sadism masquerading as randomness.

[ May 10, 2004, 22:36: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

[Tris]

You couldn't stop the big force by throwing individual commanders at it. Given that the armies have a chance of meeting based on size you'd need at least a certain size of army to have a decent chance of meeting the big army.

This would mean to quickly move large armies against such skirmishers you would need faster strategic units to intercept the skirmish bands, and push them back ahead of the main army.

The main army would be unable to break camp and march significant distances, as they would be forced to deploy for battle against the hit and fade attacks, unless you had countered those attacks with a light force of your own.

[Chazar]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
This works fine if you're attacking from a province that is not being attacked in turn. If you launch from several provinces, including one that is being attacked, the enemy will attack first.

I have these situations over and over again, and I conducted my own testing. Sometimes things work out, sometimes things don't. As Jasper pointed out, the program cannot distinguish between attacker and defender in such situations, especially in a case of plenty mutual attacks occur along a long borderline.

In addition, the program evaluates all movement orders sequentially, and although I am aware that "random" has a different meaning in the world of computers, even the pseudo-random numbers used tell us that we cannot influence these things by other means and have a hard time predicting what whill happen (Can you predict the outcome of every battle? There are only pseudo-random numbers used for the dice-rolls as well).

I am also happy with the situation, and although I despise heavy infantery, I would not like to see this done in a deterministic way based on strategic movement (sure there is no such thing as non-determinism in computers widly available right now, but this is a different topic and I am sure you know what I mean).

Difficult terrain, bad Weather, a commander with puny bladder,etc. may all delay a marching army a little bit, so I am truly happy with the random element in this bit. It means that I've got to prepare my Army Setup for different situation - and I need to anticipate my enemy's strategies much more...

Oh, by the way: I am only playing against human opponents, so it might be that movement against the computer might be handled entirely different to compensate for the AI's lack of strategic thinking, which may explain our different perception...

[Firebreath]

Thanks for the replies.

Tris, that's an interesting idea; to have a mid sized LI army on 'fire and flee' (or just flee), to hold up a larger army, attached to a random variable so you're never guaranteed to succeed. Light cavalry should have a 'bonus' for this, which would? effectively solve the problem of LI and light cav being useless. The only way for the big enemy army to increase their chances of geting past would be to bring their own LI...Would play havoc on solo play with the AI only building LI though...
(wrong thread for this...oh well)

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
I haven't really gotten any kind of official response one way or another. If they actually RESPONDED, that would more or less confirm that this is definitely the case.

They _have_ responded, and confirmed that it works exactly as described in the manual.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Tris:
The main army would be unable to break camp and march significant distances, as they would be forced to deploy for battle against the hit and fade attacks, unless you had countered those attacks with a light force of your own.

Why would behaviour as ahistorical as this be good for gameplay?

[Tris]

I'm unaware of any historical precedent for a conflict in which commanders felt they were able to have one main force, without patrols and pickets, and got away with it.

As for gameplay, I don't know if this would improve it. I believe it would make strategic movement and planning of campaigns more involved, and nations with strong LI but weak HI would feel very different to those in the reverse scenario.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Tris:
I'm unaware of any historical precedent for a conflict in which commanders felt they were able to have one main force, without patrols and pickets, and got away with it.

That isn't what you are suggesting. What the initial person suggested was that heavy infantry with a move of 1 should be made _useless_. This is hardly conducive to good gameplay, and it's hardly historical for harrassing attacks to wipe out a force with both superior numbers and better equipment. It's also not particularly good for a faster and completely inferior force to indefinitely pin down a slower and overwhelmingly superior force. Being able to harrass your opponent doesn't matter at all if you can't defeat them on the field.