Attack order

[ghoul31]

If you attack an enemy province, and at the same time, he attacks you, which province will the fight take place in? Is it totally random?

[Psycho]

In my experience it is random.

[WraithLord]

I think there's some kind of order between nations. I noticed for some consecutive turns that nation A always got to to move before nation B. Then at some point this has changed and nation B always got to move before A.
I think. according to what I saw, that the random element is between turns.

[thejeff]

There is also a chance that the armies will miss each other and fights take place in each province. It's rare. More common with at least one small army, a thug for example. Or when trying to use a suicide commander to delay the attack.

[Illuminated One]

It depends on the province numbers. The battle is resolved always in the province with the higher number. Just open up your mp game go through all the battles and look at the numbers...

[WraithLord]

Illuminated One, that's a most useful insight. I'll check it later but I don't really doubt your claim :)

Thanks!

[WraithLord]

Illuminated One, if nation A had an army in P1 and B an army in P2 and both were given orders to move to independent or nation C province P3. Is the order of attacks deterministic?- Does your high province # rule still apply?

[Psycho]

Illuminated One, if nation A had an army in P1 and B an army in P2 and both were given orders to move to independent or nation C province P3. Is the order of attacks deterministic?- Does your high province # rule still apply?

In this case the nation with the lower nation id attacks first. Or at least that used to be the case. Maybe now it is randomized the same way as casting order - 50% in ascending order, 50% in descending order.

[thejeff]

Not quite.

In each turn, battles take place in order by province number either high to low or low to high. Apparently determined randomly. The first two turns I checked were in opposite order.
This mechanism is used in a lot of places. Ritual casting order is probably the other most obvious one.

It's possible that where the battle takes place in the case of armies crossing each other is determined by a similar mechanism, but I don't think that's been shown, and I don't have a case sitting around to check. It could also be based on nation id order.
All movement occurs before any movement caused battles occur, so the order battles happen in is not necessarily related to the order movement happens in.

The order of battles when 2 armies attack a 3rd nation's province is unlikely to be related to province number. More likely nation id order (or reversed nation id order). From observation, the battles will occur in the order least advantageous to me. How they play out when I'm not concerned is unknown. And irrelevant.

[Aeshi]

Pretty sure the movement speed of the army comes into it somewhere

[Illuminated One]

Thejeff, you are right, the reverse order (low before high) is also possible, then I'd guess it's a 50% chance (but I looked at 14 turns before I found it). I really get the feeling that that rng doesn't like being tested...

[Lingchih]

Heh, the rng doesn't like being tested because it's so horribly sucky.