Two armies attacking the same province

[FAJ]

When two of your armies move into the same province, do they combine forces to attack, or do you do two attacks, one after the other?

[Sheap]

If both armies are from the attacking side they combine. If one is from the defending side, and the other from the attacking side, the defender's armies combine. If both armies and the defender are all from different nations, one army will attack the defender, then the other army will attack whoever is left from the results of that battle. It is therefore an obvious advantage to go last but there is no way to control (or, really, even predict) which nation will go in which order.

[KissBlade]

Sheap said:
If both armies are from the attacking side they combine.

Not necessarily =)

[Endoperez]

KissBlade said:

Not necessarily =)

If two forces under same nation's control both get to the target province, they combine.

One or even both might get killed before that, or some commanders might die of more or less natural causes leaving their troops without orders, etc etc. Also, if the enemy moves against one of your forces, if his army moves before yours, there will be two fights: enemy army against one of your armies, and your army against the defenders of the province the enemy army has already left.

If you press 'y' when you have selected a province several of your armies are moving into, you can give orders and select the placement of all the forces moving there. It's currently slightly bugged in that you can't change the orders of units already in the selected province (like stealthy forces).

[Sheap]

Yes, there are some things that can prevent movement of one of the armies by removing the commander. Assassinations, random events, remote summons, "ritual artillery," horror attacks, transportation spells, HP loss from disease/etc, and weird spells like winged monkeys all go before army movement, and there is a separate battle phase to resolve anything that happens from this sort of thing. If one of these should remove a commander either by death or magical relocation, all the troops he is leading will be transferred to the province garrison and will not carry out whatever marching orders you gave them that turn. This can be a major disaster.

[Forrest]

You missed my favoritest reason of all. In nations with stealth a third of your army will not fight because it moved in stealth mode by error. Of course it is the H Inf.

Here is a good one. You just captured a castle so when you move in a defending army it does not defend but hides inside while your 8 mages take on the enemy to their deaths.

Of course when you are giving move orders to 20 commanders you will miss someone in the confusion. Usualy longbow or H Inf.

No it does not always work even when it should.

[NTJedi]

Forrest said:
Here is a good one. You just captured a castle so when you move in a defending army it does not defend but hides inside while your 8 mages take on the enemy to their deaths.

If you want a moving army to defend the castle it's moving towards it needs the action of "Move and Patrol", if it's just "Move" they will move to the inside of the castle.

[Forrest]

Live and learn.

Of course it usualy is my errors that do me in.

Thanks.

[curtadams]

Even when you know about tricks like "move and patrol" it's easy to forget them in the heat of the moment. A couple of changes that would really reduce the chance of a game being destroyed by a simple mistake after hours or days of play:

1) Units moving as a stack move together. If one can't make it, none do. It's a real waste to have to inspect the entire stack's orders after issuing a 2-province move or sea crossing, and that kind of auditing isn't my idea of fun even when I remember.

2) Likewise units in a group should only sneak if the entire group sneaks. This is particularly acute with nations that have lots of sneakies. It's painfully easy once you mix in a few independents to have only half your army show up and get crushed. (Handy tip: stick a non-sneaky troop under every commander. You need to watch for them dying though!)

3) Move and patrol should be default for castles (and maybe everything). Newbies shouldn't have to lose a game or two before realizing that racing your army to defend your castled province doesn't do a lick of good unless you countermand the order to defend the province with a special "defend the province" order which isn't called "defend". [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Cold.gif[/img] Oh yeah, and see #1 to make sure everybody gets there.

[Graeme Dice]

curtadams said:
3) Move and patrol should be default for castles (and maybe everything).

Please don't change this. I never want to fight a battle outside a castle. You will almost always be better off breaking siege the next turn.