Two armies attacking the same province

[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.

[curtadams]

Graeme Dice said:
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.

I don't see how you come up with that. If you allow the enemy to seize the province before breaking the siege the next turn you:

lose 2 turns of troop recruitment (one turn will be wiped by the invader, one turn you won't control the provicne)
lose 1 turn of commander recruitment
lose 1 turn of province income
Allow your opponent 1 turn of province income (2 if he cranks the tax)
lose all your PD
lose one turn of army activity
lose the backing of your PD during the battle
risk tax or pillage damage to your province
lose travel through the province - and castles tend to be in important locations
lose the ability to reinforce your sieged army, while he can bring up reinforcements and have them join in the siege.

The only benefit is one more turn of summoning/forging. The only time you'd be better off breaking is if you're facing an army so strong that all your nearby armies, backed by your PD, will lose to his army, but you *can* beat him next turn with what you magic up in that castle the next turn. That's a pretty unusual situation. Unless you're holding back gems (generally a bad idea) I don't see how that's going to happen.

[Graeme Dice]

curtadams said:
lose 2 turns of troop recruitment (one turn will be wiped by the invad
lose 1 turn of commander recruitment
lose 1 turn of province income
Allow your opponent 1 turn of province income (2 if he cranks the tax)

And gain the enormous benefit of tying your opponents army down for at least a turn so that you can destroy it instead of having to chase his army around and never be able to catch it. After all, because of the movement rules, it's impossible to catch an army that constantly moves to new provinces every turn unless you can bring in a second force that's sufficient to destroy it.

lose all your PD

I don't really mind losing the one gold that I spent to get a scouting commander. After all, now I don't have to worry about the province defense being killed and causing my pretender to autorout. The Dom3 morale system is still just as broken in this regard as the Dom2 system.

risk tax or pillage damage to your province

Tax damage to population is inconsequential for a single turn of 200% taxes. Pillage is only a problem if your opponent doesn't want to actually win the game, and would rather throw away his future income to try and kill you now.

lose travel through the province - and castles tend to be in important locations

His army is right there waiting to be attacked. You don't want to travel through that province, and most popular maps don't let you move more than one province anyways thanks to terrain happy mapmakers.

lose the ability to reinforce your sieged army, while he can bring up reinforcements and have them join in the siege.

Armies that move into a province and armies that break siege from inside of the castle attack in the same combat.

The only benefit is one more turn of summoning/forging.

That and the ability to make your opponent sit still for a turn so that you can get around the silly movement rules in dominions that keep armies from ever contacting each other unless they both attempt to move into the same province.

The only time you'd be better off breaking is if you're facing an army so strong that all your nearby armies, backed by your PD, will lose to his army, but you *can* beat him next turn with what you magic up in that castle the next turn. That's a pretty unusual situation. Unless you're holding back gems (generally a bad idea) I don't see how that's going to happen.

Why don't you tell me how you plan to force your opponent to attack the castle in the same turn that you've moved your forces there? It's also not at all uncommon to be able to summon sufficient troops in one turn at an important castle. Especially when holding back gems to wait for the strongest summons possible is the default strategy. If you've wasted your earth gems on cave drakes, I'll be quite happy to destroy them with clockwork horrors.