Oh boy alot of questions

[Sindai]

Originally posted by Jam3:
3) The whole simultaneous movement thing is throwing me a little. It basically seems that the defender can NEVER get the advantage since a) you dont' know where an enemy army is moving AND b) enemy armies seem to almost never sit still. This is probably the worst part of the entire design system

It's actually reasonably easy to herd the AI around, since they can be counted on to only attack provinces they think they have a reasonably good chance of actually taking. If you have the cash, you just need to crank up the defense in all of the adjacent provinces except one, then have your armies move into that one province in order to ambush the AI. The AI also values its capital a lot. So much so that it will launch attacks even if hopelessly outnumbered by the besieging army. This is a very handy way of forcing the AI into a fight on your terms.

This also makes building up multiple large armies and lines of heavily defended provinces important, as well as milking chokepoints (if you have them) for all they're worth.