Close Borders has to be bugged

[northernwater]

Here is the scenario. I move into another faction's territory and pillage. One of 3 things happens in seemingly random fashion.
1) My army is stuck and cannot move forward or backward with our declaring war.
2) My army just pops into my territory with no action taken on my part.
3) My army can move in one direction but not the other.

[Жора]

Are you playing as Forgotten? Defensive towers can detect your creatures. Some enemy units can do it too! Morgavr masterminds have the detect capacity, some heroes can detect invisibles as well. The game will not allow you to move in a tile where you will be seen when borders are closed. But you can be detected when an opponent moves his troops/build new towers nearby. Then you'll be teleported out. Bear in mind that unit who detects you can have higher vision radius than you! So you may not even know he's there when game forbids you to move.

[northernwater]

I'm the broken lords and my hero has Ghost Force, which makes my army invisible.

I see. This would explain the seemigly ramdom behavior. So it's not random. I'm seen from all directions. At least I understand now, but I have to admit that is non-sensical behavior for the game. I understand it allows game gimmicks like locking a player in position, but really it makes no sense other than being a gimmick.

[queenelise9830]

I think this "stealth through borders" thing is to let the Forgotten infiltrate cities that have closed borders against them, correct me if I'm wrong. It doesn't need to be ideal, after all the Forgotten's units have stealth right from the beginning, and ignoring any and all closed borders with 100% unfailing methods right from the get-go would be too overpowered. (Though I do admit, it would be a nice counter to Drakken influence-mongers...) Don't forget privateers, if you can research era 4 tech and you really need through enemy borders you can always send those. (Well, era 4 for most races, Clans get it at era 2 and their mercs get buffs from the start so they're ideal for this.) If all else fails, use both: send privateers in to pillage the problem watchtower, and then send stealthy armies in to do whatever else you need.

[northernwater]

The mercs are a good suggestion. I did not think of them as way to free the locked units.

[queenelise9830]

It's all right, this game takes awhile to learn. Happy to help. If you are ever in a 2v2 game or similar, that is where mercenaries shine the most, as when a player sells a unit it goes onto the merc market for other players. This means that if you have a firm alliance with another player and do not intend to backstab each other, they can sell units to the market for you to buy, and those units then become eligible for privateer status, while keeping the gear they were sold with. This even works for major-faction units, though obviously it loses all the surprise factor if someone sees a roaming army with major-faction units in it. Still, what it loses in surprise it can make up for in raw power. I can see certain factions' units being devastating with this... I won't go into detail here since this post is already too long, but I'll be posting a discussion about it soon.