who moves first?

[Twogun]

i just basically lost a game due to this...

two big armies were moving to a third province at the same time. the enemy army was coming out of a fortress. i sent a small group of elite fliers to siege the fortress, to trap them, so that i wouldn't have to fight them.

instead, my big army attacked a throne province and defeated the defenders. they exhausted their gems. the enemy army then attacked the throne province and defeated my army, because we had no gems and couldn't cast any battlefield wide spells.

only after ALL that happened did my elite fliers successfully besiege his castle.

i was under the impression that smaller faster groups moved first. how does the resolution actually decide who moves first?

[Silence]

I had made some tests about this some time ago, and thanks to these tests I could indeed avoid a nasty surprise as you did.

The first thing to know is that when an army moves out of a fortress, there's NOTHING you can do to stop it. You can either send flyers on top of the fortress or even teleport/cloud trapeze units on it, the army will still go out and complete its movement. So, if you want to trap an army in a fortress you have to do it in a previous turn !

The second thing to know is that movement order is random. In your situation, you can't know in advance who will attack the throne first, it can be you or the enemy army, it's a 50/50 situation.

Finally, just to complete the overview of movement, you can stop an enemy army from moving if it is NOT inside a fortress. To do that you have to send in units via magic means (teleport, cloud trapeze or other mass teleport spells), so that the battle is resolved before the normal movement phase. You must then win the battle, because if you lose the enemy survivors will complete their movement.

There's still one thing I'm not sure about, so any insight would be good. Suppose I have an army A moving on an enemy army B that has been ordered to move elsewhere. Will the enemy army *always* avoid my army and complete its movement, or can it randomly (due to random movement resolution) be intercepted by my army and engaged in battle ? My experience with AI tells me it can randomly be intercepted, and thus prevented from completing its movement. Anyone confirm this ?

[terve886]

The movement rules are a bit complicated, you can only intercept moving armies if both of the armies are moving to one another's location. Sending an army from different province than the one where the army you want to stop is heading will never prevent its movement.

Also, if the armies sent to intercept each other are small, they can just switch positions without meeting each other.

Furthermost, the most important part is: If the armies meet, the bigger army will force the smaller one to fight in the province it tried to move from. This is to prevent people from stopping armies of thousands of units by sending a single indie commander to stop them every turn.

[Twogun]

i thank you both. i had recieved the opposite info prior to my turn, but experience tells me you are correct.

ahhh, what a shame. had i known this, i still could have won the game quite easily!! now, i'll be hard pressed.

there's nothing quite so disastrous feeling as watching a dominions turn resolution and witnessing the ONE THING you were sure you prevented occuring!