[Hellboy]

vfb said:

According to the manual (p68) it's based on both the relative sizes of the armies and the terrain. I don't know any of the details, like whether army size just determines whether the two armies just completely miss each other, or which terrain in which province causes earlier arrival.

Sombre, you are right, there is huge potential for abuse here if it's not handled properly. If you've got 100 slingers in your castle and you can prevent an invasion by sending them at a massive neighboring army 5 at a time each turn, well, that sounds abusive to me.

There's been other threads on this, but I simply don't trust the manual on this one. For example, the manual says it's possible to miss each other and I've just never, ever seen that happen in play (and I've heard veterans say the same thing).

I like to play T'ien Ch'i a lot in MP, and I encounter this circumstance often w/ the flying CMs. Often (and especially for a crucial attack) I will take an extra turn to move my CMs into the same province as my attacking army just to be 100% sure that they won't get caught in a separate attack (which would generally be sure death). On the same reasoning I would be all the more cautious with my pretender.

Sombre said:
That makes much more sense.

I must have been damn unlucky to get beaten to the punch by a handful of slingers then. I had like 200 units in my army.

That does make more sense, but I don't think that that is the way the game is implemented, and I don't think you were particularly unlucky w/r to the game mechanics, as implemented. I've just seen it happen so many times, that I've learned to avoid the risk.

One thing I noticed is that it really seems to me that any army leaving out of a fort is far more likely to get caught in the province with the fort, no matter how tiny the attacking force is.