Mutual attacks - where do they fight?
 

Thanks for helping me clear up the following:

If two armies attack each other - they (presumably) can't fight in the middle, but rather on the land of one, or on the land of the other - so how is this decided?

If one of the armies is a flying only army, does this affect things? Does the flying army engage the other attacking army, or does it fly over and attack the province where the other army came from, leaving the other army to attack your province? And: what if the flying army is flying over an attacking enemy army - onto a province beyond the attacking enemy army, does it ignore the attacking enemy and fly straight over onto its destination?

Finally, it seems that ocassionaly it is possible to send very small armies against a much bigger army - and so block them (stopping them from attacking you by attacking them instead) - has anyone else experienced this?

Re: Mutual attacks - where do they fight?
 

The armies in question tend to end up fighting whereever is least useful for you. If you're sending two armies from two provinces to attack one province, you will always wind up with two battles: One where the enemy attacks one of your armies, and one where your other army, missing the first army, attacks the enemy province alone. There's other such examples. I'm pretty sure the game is programmed to detect such things and attempt to penalize you.

Re: Mutual attacks - where do they fight?
 

I wish Norfleet were kidding, but it's ALL TRUE! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

Makes avoiding getting retreat killed on drive-bys slightly tricky. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif


Rabe the Passive Aggressive Tactical Weenie

Re: Mutual attacks - where do they fight?
 

Ahh, and here I thought Norfleet was joking http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Thanks then.

But what about the main question: where do two (normal) armies meet if they attack each other? (ignoring extraneous armies moving in to converge on the battle)

Re: Mutual attacks - where do they fight?
 

It's random unless there are extraneous armies. There may be a slight bias either for or against nation order, but I forget exactly which way, since the reinforcing armies check tends to take precedence.

Re: Mutual attacks - where do they fight?
 

Last time I heard the devs weigh in on this was for Dom 1, but I don't think this has changed since.

IIRC armies with reciprical moves have a possibility to either bypass each other, or have one "push" the other back. The larger the armies, the more likely they'll meet, and larger armies are more likely to push.

Re: Mutual attacks - where do they fight?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I doubt that "always": Since I love Caelum, I usually start my attacks from various provinces. Sometimes it works, and sometime it doesnt. The good thing is that if one of your flying armies catches the enemy before he leaves the province, always all of your armies join the battle. If the enemy is moved first, he will only battle against the army residing in the province he attacks.

I guess thats due to the random evaluation of movement: Whichever army is moved first decides where the battle takes place.

One important thing to remember is that movement within friendly provinces is evaluated always before anything else, so defending a province from multiple points always works, regardless whether other armies attack the defenders starting provinces!

[ May 10, 2004, 12:41: Message edited by: Chazar ]

Re: Mutual attacks - where do they fight?
 

Hmmm...the best way for this to work would be for the fastest strategic army to hit first. Not only does this seem appropriate, but it also means you could do mean things like paralyse a big slow army with raiding attacks from quicker armies.

Re: Mutual attacks - where do they fight?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">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.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I don't believe it's truly random. As a programmer myself, I've come to firmly distrust anything that somebody says is "random". If it's random, it's invariably a cover for an amusing, but sadistic behavior that uses the alleged randomness as a screen.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I am aware of this.

Re: Mutual attacks - where do they fight?
 

If only strategic movement would matter, heavy infantry with only one movement would be useless. Defender would just make one commander in every province bordering enemy's army, and attack with them all. As they are faster than the army, they stop the big army to its place...

It could be nice to have strat. move as one of the modifiers.

Re: Mutual attacks - where do they fight?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">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?

Re: Mutual attacks - where do they fight?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">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.

Re: Mutual attacks - where do they fight?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">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.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">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 ]

Re: Mutual attacks - where do they fight?
 

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.

Re: Mutual attacks - where do they fight?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">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...

Re: Mutual attacks - where do they fight?
 

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)

Re: Mutual attacks - where do they fight?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">They _have_ responded, and confirmed that it works exactly as described in the manual.

Re: Mutual attacks - where do they fight?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Why would behaviour as ahistorical as this be good for gameplay?

Re: Mutual attacks - where do they fight?
 

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.

Re: Mutual attacks - where do they fight?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">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.

Re: Mutual attacks - where do they fight?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">So it's been officially denied, then? That more or less proves it, then.

Re: Mutual attacks - where do they fight?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yes it is!

I would see this in game as the big army being unable to form into march column without little bits being hit by hit and run attacks, supply columns being hit by raiders, so the main army must spend most of its time foraging, rather than marching, and must provide patrols to guard each foraging party, or have them go missing...

The net result of which is that it is difficult to move a strategically slow army when under constant attack from reasonably large and strategically fast armies.

Re: Mutual attacks - where do they fight?
 

Er, but you can already do that by throwing small attacks - if it turns out that your attacks get resolved first, then the battle will take place at the enemy location, and the enemy won't move. Numbers are probably what tips the odds, so if you draft a mob of cheap militia or something and have it attack the enemy main force with Fire and Flee or something, and enough commanders to keep gathering the rabble and re-attacking, you have a good chance of delaying or temporarily stopping a superior enemy force.

Seems like the current mechanic allows this tactic, yet doesn't make it automatic, and favors the larger force. Sounds about right.

PvK

Re: Mutual attacks - where do they fight?
 

Actually, there's no guarantee the army will fail to move. I've had armies which get attacked, in their province of origin, crush the enemy, and then move to attack the target.

Re: Mutual attacks - where do they fight?
 

But it does sometimes prevent movement even without taking serious losses, right?

Could the criteria be that if a squad routs or a leader is killed from a moving group, then the group stays put, or something?

PvK

[ May 13, 2004, 06:39: Message edited by: PvK ]

Re: Mutual attacks - where do they fight?
 

If it does work to allow that then that's brilliant.

If you have to cause routs to prevent movement then that isn't so good.

Does anyone know how this actually works?