Question on aborted attacks

[sansanjuan]

If the
Army in Province "A" is set to attack an army in province "B"

Army in Province "C" attacks province "A" first

Under what conditions would "A's" attack on "B" be aborted? Only the loss/retreat of the commander(s)? Sorry if this is in the manual. Seems in SP I've had large armies "pinned down" and had movement aborted by small attackers. Could be my imagination..
-SSJ

[Niarg]

I've had this happen when two armies met head on (A attacks B and B attacks A). The enemy moved first and attacked my province. I won that battle but then my troops refused to move on and take their land.

I have a feeling this is to do with the way that dominions resolves where the battles are. It tries to work out where everyone will be at the end of the turn and only then does it resolve battles, if your army is slow to move then it gets pinned down in it's own territory. Unfortunately I don't know what constitutes a "slow" army but I've got a nasty feeling that it has got something to do with the invisible unit IDs.

[thejeff]

It should not happen with the A->B and C->A scenario.

The A army should move into B and fight, while the C army moves into A and fights whatever was left behind.

The only way the A army won't move is the head-on scenario Niarg describes, or if A's commanders are killed before the movement phase, by assassins or ritual spells. (Any troops led by killed commanders will stay put.)

Is it possible troops from B are joining in the attack from C? That could put you into the head-on situation.

There has been discussion of a possible bug preventing movement from certain provinces, but it doesn't seem to be related to battles.

[sansanjuan]

Thanks for the replies. So it might be possible to repeatedly toss unitless "throw away" commanders at a very large attacking army and essentially hold them at bay in a province if you can consistently win initiative.
-SSJ

[Dedas]

Not really. As two armies can easily miss each other if one is as small as only one commander. I remember reading something about it somewhere, ah here it is:
http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=dom3&Number=488987&Forum=f 187