Weird Affliction

[vfb]

I'll accept the chest wound, and of course the never-healing wound, but can anyone explain how my Wrym is limping? I'm trying to develop a mental picture of a gigantic two-headed serpent ... limping.

He seemed to get the limp without even getting hit by anything, he was just charging across the battlefield. Next thing you know, I bet he's going to get an ingrown toenail.

[Edi]

Permanently sprained slithering muscles?

[Sombre]

In a sort of unrelated note I just got my god not only killed, but struck with 4 afflictions through no fault of my own. A had a large army attacking my enemy on the border of my lands and I decided my god would fly over to join in the attack and reduce my losses. Unfortunately my enemy attacked me with about 15 cruddy slingers and militia led by some low cost commander that turn, which caused my large and powerful army to stay put in my province instead of attacking. Meanwhile my god flew over into the province on his own and got his face kicked off by a medium sized army they'd moved in to protect it.

Highly annoying. I'm now wondering if in MP people regularly attack with say, a single scout, just to cause a 50% chance of preventing the opponent attacking you on your border.

[Nick_K]

It's not supposed to be 50%. IIRC it's based on the relative sizes of the armies

[Sombre]

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.

[TirAsleen]

low hp and stats pretender?

[vfb]

Nick_K said:
It's not supposed to be 50%. IIRC it's based on the relative sizes of the armies

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.

[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.

[Gandalf Parker]

vfb said:
I'll accept the chest wound, and of course the never-healing wound, but can anyone explain how my Wrym is limping? I'm trying to develop a mental picture of a gigantic two-headed serpent ... limping.

He seemed to get the limp without even getting hit by anything, he was just charging across the battlefield. Next thing you know, I bet he's going to get an ingrown toenail.

Ive done wildlife managment (you would be amazed at the huge variety of jobs Ive done). And Ive actually seen injured serpents that had a version of a limp instead of a smooth glide. But I doubt thats the reason that its an affliction that can hit the Wyrm.

Building an array to completely handle all the possible quirks of afflictions and units might be impossible (the computer version of the word which really means that its possible but more trouble than its worth). As it is, over time, Ive seen many fixes to how many eyes, how many heads, how many hands, etc etc that units have and whether or not they can get an affliction but its an area that will probably never be completely handled IMHO

You can always bring it up to Kristoffer. Thats actually the kindof thematic thing that he seems to like to clean up.

Gandalf Parker

[Taqwus]

Heh. I think I've seen (in the string table) references to 'lost a tentacle' and 'lost a pincer', too. 'Lost a head' is somewhat rare, for obvious reasons...

Speaking of abusive, if you've ever played Europa Universalis, the AI would actually sometimes exploit the 'interrupt move' issue: since crossing a province boundary took time, and any attack on the moving stack would completely erase all accumulated progress on the move no matter how trivial the fight, it would delay you with tiny attacks. Infuriating, completely nonsensical, and probably deliberate.