Avoiding Battle

[Ludendorf]

Say two armies have the same movement speed, and one is pursuing the other. One is two provinces away. The other only has to move one province to escape, but the move cost to that province is four (due to a river crossing). The two provinces the first army has to move into cost two. Will the retreating army get caught, will it escape, or is it down to luck?

[lostangelonline]

I also want to know what the formula/calculation is for moving to another region (especially if it takes 1 or 2 moves to go 2 regions away), in order to avoid battle. The map shows this info for my selected army, but not for the selected enemy army.

PS: it is not moves=ceil((sum(provinceMovementCost)+riverCrossings)/armyMovement), as for my selected army, it is not always true for any region

[Ludendorf]

(Sweats slightly)

Kind of need to know this before my army gets lunched on.

[Nijis]

Bump - I'm very eager to know this as well.

[choppinlt]

Ludendorf, both armies are moving 4 MP's correct? It is my understanding it is strictly luck at that point, a 50/50 shot they will escape. Happy escaping!

[Ludendorf]

Ludendorf, both armies are moving 4 MP's correct? It is my understanding it is strictly luck at that point, a 50/50 shot they will escape. Happy escaping!

I'm committed at this point, but yes. I heard somewhere else that the escaping army always escapes, but having never tested it myself... yeah, I've rolled the dice. And that's assuming I've understood everything correctly. Thank you for your response.

[Swuul]

Ludendorf, both armies are moving 4 MP's correct? It is my understanding it is strictly luck at that point, a 50/50 shot they will escape. Happy escaping!

Possibility for combat is checked after movement for the round (EDIT: aka "impulse") is complete. Ie the army always escapes in this case.

[ledo]

There was an extensive discussion on this. I think pocus clarified that the movement cost only determines total movement for the turn it does not affect the speed of each region movement during the turn. I.e. the turn is broken up into a number of impulses with one region moved per impulse by all units at the same time. The number of regions moved/impulses a unit participates is the only thing the movement cost determines. As an example a 5 and 5 cost movement and a 6 and 4 cost movement would be completely the same for both total distance moved and when they would start and complete their move into both the first and second regions. In your above example I'm pretty sure you will escape.

[loki100]

its not quite that - I think.

Every unit expends 1 MP, some clearly do not move to a new region as they have not expended enough to actually move;
every units expends a second MP. again some might move a region, some might not depending on the move cost

so on

at some stage, some stacks have no remaining MP so obv stay static but others continue expending 1 MP (&maybe/maybe not actually moving a region)

till everyone has expended all their MP.

as to the OP, I think they get away, ie at the 4th move impulse they leave the region just as the other army arrives. But I could well be wrong about this and/or there maybe a random element

[Ludendorf]

I know that if you're in a province with a road, and trying to move out into the same type of province without a road, then all else being equal, the enemy army will catch you. I've tested that fairly extensively at this point.

[ledo]

https://www.slitherine.com/forum/viewto ... 34&t=94188

In the above there was a comment by ChoppinIt:

Hi Pocus, what makes the issue double frustrating is that it’s happening in my MP game. So there’s no file to send.

I can confirm my interpretation because the enemy force is human controlled and we were both scratching our heads.

And just to confirm, there’s never a speed difference between armies and/or fleets, correct? In other words they all move at the same speed just some forces can march further during the turn, correct?

To which Pocus replied:

A battle should not halt movement, I searched in the code and there is no such thing. What can stop movement is being repulsed by an army in opposed direction, being repulsed by local patrols, disembarking, losing intercept target.

Yes about 'movement speed', it works as you said, to improve synchronization.

This seems to imply that there is no "speed difference" as ChoppinIt put it, but just a max distance difference. Meaning that all units move at the same time regardless of the movement cost of a region.

[choppinlt]

As you can see from Ledo's post I was having a related conversation with Pocus. I will try to find the conversation, but as I recall (and that is always dangerous ) we discussed some of the finer details. In short I seem to recall his talking how each turn (or impulse) the faction order of movement was randomized. So if Side A is leaving the region on impulse 4 and Side B arrives on impulse 4 there is a 50/50 shot of being caught based on the order of movement. However I will freely admit that my recollection could be completely wrong...

[choppinlt]

OK I found the conversation in this thread: https://www.slitherine.com/forum/viewto ... 74#p806448 This was in relation to Intercept Orders but the explanation covers what we are talking about. You all can go and read the whole thread for context, but here is Pocus's response:

It's random, to not favor a faction over another, when each army moves one bit, then it is done in a random order. Then once everybody has moved one impulse, then battles check are done.

It means that if your enemy moves before you, then he might disappear for a moment, and this can abort pursuit. Or the contrary, if you move before him, then you maintain sight and then a battle can happen.

Based on his response, since the battle checks are done after each impulse it would appear that the evader always escapes in Ludendorf's case...but if you read the whole thread i referenced above you can see that I got no final confirmation on this.

[Ludendorf]

Just got a reply from Pocus on Steam confirming that yes, in this situation my unit will escape. I sadly couldn't confirm this in practice as my opponent (who would surely have gone after my army) missed his turn in multiplayer. But yes, it seems you will be able to dodge out the way.

The key to countering an opponent using this strategy by the way is to build walls in your most valuable provinces. At worst, your opponent will have to maim his armies launching immediate assaults upon solid walls. At best, you'll stop a raider dead in his tracks in front of a large wall. Protect anything that is producing a decent income or some critical resource with the strongest defensive structure you have ASAP. Personally, I prefer to spring for walls as soon as they become available in all of my provinces. No one is marching through my lands without bleeding for it.

[lostangelonline]

Slightly related: in the provinces movement cost map mode, what does the *(near the movement cost number) mean? Ex: "2*" (I am still trying to find the formula to find if an enemy army cam move or not to a specific province 2-provinces-away, and this might be what I am missing)

[Pocus]

That's the discount from roads