Just got smoked in a combat that I *thought* wouldn't happen--was this a bug?

[undead dolphin hacker]

I had a small group of raiding harassers, led by my rainbow pretender, who managed to capture the enemy capitol and were causing chaos in it--I was Blood Hunting and Preaching like mad, generally just screwing up Unrest and such to harm the player while my ally mobilized his main forces.

Pretictably, the player starts moving all his armies toward the captiol province. Knowing I can't win, I order my raiding party to retreat into a province with only 5 or so enemy units, including a commander, in it. The blue line appeared and they were moving--this was a one-movement point action--there was no bold line between the provinces.

Much to my dismay, I get a message next turn saying my sieging forces were utterly defeated by a stronger enemy force! What the hell?! I told them to boogie on outta there! Did all of my armies' soliders spontaneously trip and thus lost their move for that turn, or what?

Note this happened the turn after we all patched--if it had happened in the middle of the game pre-patch or something, I would be a little more inclined to believe I missed some key rule about sieges... but we patched, and the NEXT TURN I get screwed over... makes me think it could be a bug?

(Just for the record, I was playing as Abysia, and was sieging Jotunheim).

[Demosthenes]

According to the manual, movement between friendly provinces occurs before movement into enemy territory. Could that be it?

If any of the units were teleported or Stygian Pathed or Forest Trod, Gateway the magic phase goes before the movement phase.

Also as Demo said, friendly movement is before enemy movement, so you could have just picked a bad province to go into.

[ February 18, 2004, 20:33: Message edited by: Zen ]

[geo981010]

UDH-
If you tried to move into an enemy province while an enemy tried to move from that province to where you were, the armies might collide such that one army gets pushed back and they battle at one of the two provinces. The chance of colliding is relative to the size of the two armies, and the smaller army is more likely to get pushed back.

And in my experince, you seem to be more likely to get pushed back in cases when you are sieging like that, but that might be just some random weirdness for me...

[pole_shift]

According to the manual, movement between friendly provinces occurs before movement into enemy territory. Could that be it?

No. The attacker (whomever's Capitol you were besieging) was moving into an enemy province (the one with the capitol but controlled by UDH = "undead dolphin hacker"). UDH was moving *his* army as well into an enemy controlled province. The question is: which movement happens first? I believe (but would like dev/veteran confirmation) that the order is randomly determined.

i.e. bad luck for UDH

[ February 18, 2004, 20:37: Message edited by: pole_shift ]

Originally posted by pole_shift:
No. The attacker (whomever's Capitol you were besieging) was moving into an enemy province (the one with the capitol but controlled by UDH = "undead dolphin hacker"). UDH was moving *his* army as well into an enemy controlled province. The question is: which movement happens first? I believe (but would like dev/veteran confirmation) that the order is randomly determined.

i.e. bad luck for UDH

The order is random when doing movement phases. And George's answer my be true (though I have never had a smaller Army get 'pushed' around by a large one. Only Large on Large, never Small vs Large). Also there is the question if a Sieged Province is considered under control of the Castle owner or the Sieger for purposes of movement.

[ February 18, 2004, 21:32: Message edited by: Zen ]