[merlinme]

Well, in the game which originally got me to raise this question, I'm really not convinced that the system was working as it says in the manual. I tried invading his province I'd say at least six times (in a single player game, so the game was fairly static. I was holding a chokepoint province which I was attempting to break out from.)

EVERY time it occurred in my province. This isn't impossible if it was 50/50 each time, but it seems rather unlikely.

One thought which occurs to me is that maybe it was because he was invading me from three different provinces? In which case, I assume I would have to move before ALL of them to fight the battle in his province, so in other words, 1/4 chance rather than 1/2. I would still have expected to move before him once in six attempts though.

The other thing that I found strange was that when I got tired of attacking the same province (his capital) and attacked one of his other provinces, my army successfully moved out first time. Which again, could just be chance, but it seems a bit strange. Basically, when we were contesting movement across the same province border, he won every single time. When I moved on a province where (I'm fairly sure) he wouldn't have been trying to attack me from, it worked first time. His army moved into the province I came from, but my army finally moved out and attacked another of his provinces. So basically I was able to work around the problem. It was strange though; it didn't feel like it was random at all.

It's a problem with turn based games to get a sensible move order, but I'm not sure I like the system as it stands. In particular, sending one militia unit from several different provinces in the hope of forcing a vastly superior army to stay where it is (while you raise reinforcements) seems rather a cheesy tactic.

I was hoping it didn't work like this; the manual implied that the size of the army mattered. Does anyone have any hard data on this?