Can 2 armies merge and attack one region in the same turn?

[juanval]

I'd like to ask you the next question:

Let's supose we have and 2 armies, one in region A and another army in region B. For going to region C (enemy) from A I must pass through region B.

If the army from region A arrives in one turn to region C, Can I give orders in a way that the army from A goes to region B and merges with the second army and then the 2 merged armies attack region C in the same turn?

I've seen that youtubers send the 2 armies (from region A and B) to region C, and the army from region B arrives and attacks first, without waiting for the army from region A.

[loki100]

No - as a short answer.

best way to think about the movement phase is that every units expends 1 MP, then every one unit expends another MP and so on. So if you target an army, the target (friendly or enemy) may move as well.

There is a subtle advantage to this.

Assume there are no roads etc, each region has a fixed entry cost. Armies in different regions, ordered into the same one will arrive at the same time.

But in general, the sort of complex co-ordination you are looking for isn't feasible (or all that realistic?), but you can try out different movement paths and see if you can align the arrival that way.

What happens in the movement phase is that armies with the highest MP (say all cavalry units) simply carry on moving after infantry armies have expended their move capacity. So they are not 'faster' merely able to move longer.

[jimwinsor]

Two different armies coming from different directions were frequently unable to coordinate attacks in the American Civil War. I have to imagine armies 2000 years earlier would be much worse at it than that.

[juanval]

Thanks for the replies. My only concern now is that AI will be smart enough to raise/merge/move its armies in an efficient way to defend from our attacks and make us suffer when it decides to attack.

[HeinzHarald]

I'd like to ask you the next question:

Let's supose we have and 2 armies, one in region A and another army in region B. For going to region C (enemy) from A I must pass through region B.

If the army from region A arrives in one turn to region C, Can I give orders in a way that the army from A goes to region B and merges with the second army and then the 2 merged armies attack region C in the same turn?

I've seen that youtubers send the 2 armies (from region A and B) to region C, and the army from region B arrives and attacks first, without waiting for the army from region A.

As far as I understand it only works if A and B are both next to C.

[Pocus]

Hi HeinzHarald.

Sorry took me a day to find the minutes necessary for the test. Here you see that (left screen) Exercitus I (who is a bit shy and hide partially behind the message notification roundel) is being targeted by the army in Latium, in a triangular way. The trick is to plan your moves so that one catch the other. And catching they did, as the end result (right screen) shows the 2 Roman armies fighting together the evil Senones.

[juanval]

Those maneuvers are good to use vs human oponents but not very realistic. I wouldn't like to be superior to AI due to those movements. I hope AI has enough intelligence to merge and move their armies in an efficient way.

[SpeedyCM]

Why were they not realistic? History is full of situations where separate forces merge before coming to battle an enemy force.
In those two screenshots both sides pretty much performed their respective best options, for the Romans each of their two armies had only slightly greater combat power than the Senones force so to make the fightmuch more in their favour they combined before attacking.
As for the Senones they waited while they raised more troops and stayed on the defensive.

No one is superior to the AI from the movements displayed in the screenshots, they are superior because they are the Romans against the Senones.

[juanval]

I doubt an AI will be able to make those maneuvers.

In war games AI is in general weak. For this reason I like a lot the automatic system FoGE has, where player has no advantages against AI.

In one week we'll see how AI works in the campaign map...

[loki100]

as a combat opponent, the AI is perfectly ok. I've had my capital taken by a surprise raid in my last test game (twice!). It builds reasonable stacks for its main armies and its not bad at army-navy co-operation.

But while any playing of this game will see plenty of warfare, its worth stressing this is not an operational/campaign game. its a long term grand strategy game.

This is where the difficulty levels really shine. Crudely keeping things together in the early game is either easy (say you are one of the larger Greek based powers) or tricky (a small tribe with a tendency to civil wars). Get into the situation where your state is reasonably stable and all the issues around loyalty-decadence and how to control your slaves become very important. As does removing long term dissent in new regions as you move outside the areas of your own cultural group. Now as you go up the difficulty scale the AI gets more bonuses in those areas.

So you are struggling to hold your Empire together and the AI prospers. It means that you can always get a challenging game - and you can change the difficulty level at any time (in a SP game).

If you use FoG2 for your tactical games and you are good at FoG2 you will unbalance the military side of the game. If this is the case, then make sure you play on an even harder level in Empires to compensate.

[juanval]

Thanks loki. Your information is very appreciated.

[Pocus]

My demonstration was to show it was possible to merge two armies before they attack together, this was not about the AI, but we can talk about it if you want!

[HeinzHarald]

Hi HeinzHarald.

Sorry took me a day to find the minutes necessary for the test. Here you see that (left screen) Exercitus I (who is a bit shy and hide partially behind the message notification roundel) is being targeted by the army in Latium, in a triangular way. The trick is to plan your moves so that one catch the other. And catching they did, as the end result (right screen) shows the 2 Roman armies fighting together the evil Senones.

Interesting. Will two armies fight as one when entering an enemy region on the exact same day, but from neighboring regions? Or must they always meet up first to fight as one army?

[Pocus]

The former, if you pay the same cost from A to C and from B to C, then both armies join up 100% of the time.

Watch out for two things:
blue arrow for the first army but green arrow for the second. It means one is crossing a river, so is slowed down.
roads. You have to check the tooltip or the map, if one can use a road and not the other. Same as for river.