What determines battle order?

[littlemute]

I was wondering, if I move to a province and other players move to the same province and it has independents, what determines who fights who first? Is there some command/initiative system?

Thanks!

[Norfleet]

If the province belongs to a third party, a randomly selected person fights that third party, and then defends against the other party.

This changes if the province in question is/was owned by one of the two parties: If you are moving to a friendly province, you will always move first. If you are moving to a province which was formerly friendly, but has now been occupied by the enemy, and the enemy is moving out of that province into another one of your provinces, you will move after he does, every time.

There's other really complex rules for what happens if more than one army attempts to move into a hostile province, perhaps while a hostile army from a province, either another, or the target attempts to move into a province occupied by one of the moving armies. In such cases, the game selects the most disadvantageous outcome for the player attempting the most elaborate manuever, and picks that.

[littlemute]

that makes sense except for one instance.

Say I move and army to a province where an enemy army resides and during the same turn he moves to the province my army resides in. From what you mentioned, my army would fight him off in my province if he once owned it, but what happens if the province only has one owner.

I was wonderng because I had a large army at an enemy's fort and I tried to move it away for a couple of turns, but it was always stopped by a smaller force that attacked to province. Even though I won the battle, I couldn't move my army.

I though this was strange.

[Endoperez]

The game does not keep book of the previous owners of provinces. Previous owners have no effect whatsoever in the game.

And for armies moving towards each other, the bigger army has a better change to push the enemy back to the province from which he left. It seems you just got unlucky. If both armies would be small, I think they could also miss each other and both would try to conquer the province previously defended by that other army.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Endoperez:
The game does not keep book of the previous owners of provinces. Previous owners have no effect whatsoever in the game.

If you REALLY believe that, try chasing any army that happens to be rampaging through your territory: You will never catch it unless you guess where it is going in advance: If it were ACTUALLY random, you'd catch it about half the time, since sometimes you would move first, sometimes he would move first, as both territories are "hostile" moves.

However, this never works. The behavior is clearly deterministic in favor of the raiding party. Obviously, this is done to promote this behavior. Whether this is good or bad is irrelevant: It simply is, and to believe that it's purely a "random" thing is being naive. Size of army, speed of army, all appear to be irrelevant: A groundpounder raiding force consistently can outrun even flying pursuers, both large, and tiny: You NEVER catch them.

[Esben Mose Hansen]

Just to back Norfleet up: This can also inferred by the armies-missing-each-other rules. If an army moves from A->B and another from B->A, then there is a chance that they will not meet each other. This infers that the moves happen simultanously, which explains the behaviour Norfleet observes. Well, except about it being purposely to promote a certain stategy

[Chazar]

After what has beeen said, I guess that the game does all movements pseudo-simultaneously within each of the categories:
- magical movement
- friendly movement
- hostile movement
After all moves in a Category are done, opposing sides located in the same province result in a battle (more or less random order if more than two opposing sides are there).

The lone exception would then be (hostile) movement from A->B and B->A, where a chance for meeting exists...

This sounds quite plausible to me as well, as logging previous owners and hideously calculating the worst outcome for everyone seems difficult to implement to me (but I am only a theoretical computer scientist from university and not a bastard programmer from hell, so I might well be wrong on programming issues... )


...so nevertheless if the principle stated above is true, one might have an alternative to stop a raiding army:

Say a raider is in province A and will move to and attack our lovely proince B. But this is unknown to us, the good guy, since there are plenty of lovely provinces adjacent to A. But we managed to sourround the foul raider in province A by our scouts, all set to move-attack province A and our big huge army, located in C, also attacks province A.

Now that scout which was located in B, the enemies infernally selected secret target, meets the raider on the borderline, steps out of the woods and stops the heathens! (i.e. we got lucky and the armies met.) Now (again by random chance) the fight may take place either in B (killing the lone ranger), or it could happen in province A.

The question is: Would our huge army from C be already present to help our brave scout coming from B fighting in A?

According to what I've said it would be so. This is also in accordance with the observation that all friendly troops always fight together in once province. I've got to test this...stay tuned!!!

[Edit: clarified some parts]

[ June 08, 2004, 13:58: Message edited by: Chazar ]

[Vynd]

It seems like Ebsen has explained the behavior that Norfleet describes, without resorting to the game keeping track of "previous owner." You can't catch a moving enemy army in the province it starts the turn in, because your attempt to move into whatever province they are in is simultaneous with them leaving for a different enemy province.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by Norfleet:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Endoperez:
The game does not keep book of the previous owners of provinces. Previous owners have no effect whatsoever in the game.

If you REALLY believe that, try chasing any army that happens to be rampaging through your territory: You will never catch it unless you guess where it is going in advance: If it were ACTUALLY random, you'd catch it about half the time, since sometimes you would move first, sometimes he would move first, as both territories are "hostile" moves.

---

I believe Endperez meant Once nation A takes control of a province, whether it was previously controlled by nation B of nation C has zero effect on moves or battles to come. Then he's 100% correct. All standard moves are resolved before standard battles, thus province ownership only plays a role when 2 enemy armies move towards the same province. I guess you just misinterpreted what he said.

[Chazar]

Originally posted by Vynd:
You can't catch a moving enemy army in the province it starts the turn in, because your attempt to move into whatever province they are in is simultaneous with them leaving for a different enemy province.

Except if you attack from the province the enemy moves to...