Raid

[HexNibbler]

Raid seems to be part of the negative sum games of war : you take a minimal benefit and the ennemy takes a big economic hit.

1) Raid (interception battle included) are processed before normal battles
Assuming coordinate raid with an attack (one group Raid, one groupe "Move" in)
-> successful raid will increase local unrest, which counts towards Chaotic powers for the normal battle processed in the same turn
-> unsuccessful raid will have no effect on PD armies (if the PD are damaged or destroyed, they will get free resplenishment for any other battles)
---> This mean that if the same PD force intercept 10 raiding forces and is destroyed 10 times, they will fight with full force each 10 battles and will still be fully formed for normal battle this turn
---> Each raid group has a chance to be intercepted separately : They never ever will fight together in an interception battle.
-> unsucessful raids involving ennemy army patrolling will keep casualties to that army. If the patorlling army lose 10 men, the next battle won't respawn those men.

2) Retreat from a raid for the attacking force equal death. Raid is all-in and interception are treated as if the raid army was victim of an assasination attempt.

3) Raiding from an ennemy province, including independants, to another province will trigger a battle in the province the raid starts from.
There will be no raid no matter the result of that battle.
A victory will take the province.
A defeat will rout the units.
It is as if you had selected "attack current province".

4) Raid removes "Hide" order :
-> if a sneaky unit in province A raid a neighbor province B and an army attacks province A, the sneak unit will be part of the battle.
-> province A is scouted and show no one. It contains a bandit group "hiding". If the bandit group raid ANY province, the scout will see the bandits as if they were not on "hide" but on "defend".
5) Raiding "into" a province doesn't provoke battles : if a unit in province A raid a neighbor province B and an army attack province B, the raid unit won't get into the fight.
-> This can be used while retreating from ennemy territory : raid your own province that is going to be taken back by the ennemy, the raid occurs and he gets a high unrest province without killing your raid force.

6) As for sneaky unit, independant provinces have patrol value of 0. This mean they won't ever intercept sneaky unit NOR raids.
You effectively can population kill indie province with raids without ever risking being intercepted.

7) Multiple raids by multiple armies on the same turn on the same province :
-> increases chances of successfully passing through the patrol. This is not a "probability' effect.
--> a PD of 20 will catch nearly all raid attempt by a single army and sometimes up to 2, rarely up to 3 simultaneous raids.
--> this mean that more attempt drastically improves the chances of effectively raising the unrest on that province but cannot be spammed.
--> 1 bandit leader + 5 bandits (all six have pillager(1)) causes 25 unrest on their raid. Which is a 20% decrease of income. (1/1.25=0.8)
---->this group costs 90 golds. This can be viewed as a way to trade gold to provoke unrest in ennemy provinces.

8) Hypothesis : Raid do not seem to be related to the "stealth" mechanism in any way.
--> It is more likely that the actual value used are Fear and Combat speed
----> Fear probably increase the unrest more
----> Combat speed might increase the chances of not being intercepted ?

Conclusions & theorycrafting.

- It could have had more strategic uses (i.e the PD could not be refreshed from one interception to another)
- the interception mechanics should be explained more clearly.
- the "win or die" of interception battle feels harsh considering the two previous points. If the impact of raids was deemed too powerful, an alternative would be a "neutral" result, where there is no raid (no wealthy villages found ?) but no interceptions.
- It is a tool of the war of attrition but certainly not a tool to boost your own income.

As it is right now Raid is a way to punish opponents that do not set up Provincial Defenses higher than 15.

I believe there's two way to look at it.

1) The case of mind games at the borders

-> If you don't increase PD, that province is going to be wasted in no time.
-> If you do increase PD, that province might be conquered and your gold investment immediately ruined.

5 bandits + 1 leader = 90 gold. That group can raise unrest +25 from 0.
PD 15= 120 gold. Isn't enough to reliably catch them.
PD 20= 210 golds. Is enough, but 90 gold more expensive with the risk of losing 210 easily.

Countering that is a mind game :

Decreasing unrest with natural "unrest decay" takes time, so the income penalty is more than 20% from the +25
Using patrol to decrease that unrest quickly would kill population.
Using a too weak patrol is taking the risk of a larger "raid" army to come into the province to both crush that patrol and prevent unrest reduction.

2) the extended case of an army that get "into" ennemy territory and conquer one province and can from that point move into many other ennemy provinces.
- Moving deep into ennemy territory is going further away from reinforcement and own PD support.
- If the army has many "pillagers" troops, it can raid many neighboring territories in one single turn while pillaging the conquered one.
- The only way to counter that is to raise PD on each neighboring provinces. Which is costly and risky because the army could very well march in the next turn and ruin that investment.
- The attacking forces isn't spread out to locally pillage and yet, can raise unrest and decrease income of neighboring provinces.
- a strong force isn't going to be concerned by being intercepted. One can even use many small groups to increase the odds of a sucessful raid and unrest increase.
- Then the army either retreat (I.E. the nation took advantage of the absence of a strong army nearby to hit to deal a heavy blow on economy)
- Or keep pushing (I.E. the army has beaten the main defending forces and can keep destroying the whole territory in a short amount of time to make sure its ennemy has a hard time to recover)

Thoughts ? Any experience with using Raid effectively ?

[ÆtherNomad]

Very good summary, thanks for your work! I can't really add any thought for now but I'm curious about the others' answers.

[mazirian72]

Came across this and thought it was so good that it was worth a bump.