Quote:
Originally Posted by sourdust
2) Chasing enemy raiders all over the place. A few times I've had a relatively powerful AI army intrude into my territory. It's strong enough to overrun PI, so I send a strong army chasing after it. Trouble it, they never ever seem to catch it before it moves on to another province - ie, the AI army always seems to move before my pursuing army. The result is a highly annoying cat-and-mouse game where I have to try to anticipate which territory he'll attack next, or alternatively just chase him around until he attacks a fortress, in which case he stays put long enough for me to nail him. As I read the rules, I should have a 50% of attacking him before he leaves a province, but that never seems to actually happen.
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This is probably the problem most often encountered by new players, since the idea of simultaneous movement is quite rare in TBS games. Not 100% sure why the problem is seen so often, as can't exactly see how the manual is unclear on this, but guess it must be somewhere given the number of new players that struggle with it.
Some advice for new players though, your best friend for understanding how things work in Dominions (besides the great forum community) is often page 71-72 of the manual. ie. The Turn Resolution Sequence. A lot of mysteries can be solved by having that close to hand. And on this particular movement question, the relevant part is...
(friendly movement)
happens before (other movement)
happens before (battles from movement take place).
So there is no concept of 'chasing' armies in Dominions, since you can never catch them because movement is simultaneous, and all movement is resolved before any battles occur. There is only really........
- Predicting movement. Which means basically correctly guessing where your enemy is moving to, or covering a lot of potential bases with your own forces.
- Stopping movement. By assassinating the commanders that are leading the armies, or moving specifically from the province the enemy army was moving to. (this latter scenario is what results in a percentage chance to attack the enemy army. You mention 50%, but it's different to that in practice since there is a chance of both armies missing each other. Plus other unconfirmed factors involved such as the size of the armies)
- Attacking before the movement phase using teleportation spells such as "Cloud Trapeze" or "Teleport" for commanders (ie. Thugs/SC's). Or "Astral Travel" for armies.