defending with two armies on the same square

from Elemental Forums

If there are two armies on the same square, and that square is attacked, I think the defender should have the ability to choose which army fights in defense.

My story: I began casting the Spell of Making when my sovereign was sitting in a border outpost. Unwise, but I hadn't read carefully, and didn't realize he'd be immobilized. So I parked a big army on that same square. Two turns before victory, an AI came in with two fast hero units, they each had 3 movement, and were able to run up to the outpost and attack, before I could spot them. No 'enemy units in your territory' warning. When tactical opened, I found that my sovereign  had been pulled in to fight. So my big army had turned out to be useless. I lost. And that was that. But I feel like I should have been given a dialog box, where I could choose which army would fight the AI, the one that consisted solely of my sovereign, or the big bad army I'd build to defend him.

7,171 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Ideally they would combine, for 1 big tough fight instead of two little ones.  Too many little fights now anyway.

Not just talking about OP's special case -- rather have 1 big fight when I attack baddies.  Like when I attack a city and it has more defenders than you can have in one army.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

to the op, my guess would be the army did not have a free(empty) slot for your sov to merge into the army.

remembering that at the start armies can only have five unit(either hero/pet or troops), and after several research in both civ and military trees it builds to nine units.

harpo

 

Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Ideally, you shouldn't be able to have more units in one square than your max army size. Any stack should always be combined when going into battle.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

@harpo: I designed it that way. To give my sovereign the best protection, I built a full army, all slots taken, and parked it on top of him. I knew I had two armies there, but I naively assumed any attackers would have to fight the tough/defensive army, before having to fight the piddly, one-sovereign army.

 

@LNQ: So you think there should be a one-army-per-square limit? Hmm. That could be a good fix. But then what about settlements that cover more than one square?

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

One of the problems that I have assured many a person is the UI for units. In cities and on tiles we have a terrible, eye-burning interface. When I heard the hall of famers from GalCiv2 were coming over to the FE project I was sure we would at the very least get what we had for that game. Still we play with a far inferior system with far more bugs. There is still hope for the unit UI, but I guess I need to start bringing it to light.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Tim-Bur, reply 5
@LNQ: So you think there should be a one-army-per-square limit? Hmm. That could be a good fix. But then what about settlements that cover more than one square?
End of Tim-Bur's quote

 

It should absolutely be one army per square. Too many strange interactions with stacked armies the way they are now, and all the fixed that would make it ok include more popups and clicking. One army per square is clear, clean and understandable with little to no gamey-ness inherent.

 

Comparing the "many-to-one" relationship of units to tiles is very little like the "one-to-many" relationship of cities to tiles. I'm curious why you mentioned it.

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

the problems with more than one army per square are obvious, but the simplest fix is one army per square for EACH player/ai, so only allies can stack one army for each of the allies and as there is no info about as to HOW the kumquat engine chooses WHICH army to attack in attacking a square with army stacks we get this sort of problem.

harpo

 

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

@Malsqueek

I'm just generally discontent with the way units disappear into cities. But more specifically, suppose a city spans two tiles. To me, it would make sense that you could have two armies defending the city. One on each tile. So defensive ability scales with city size. At the moment, I'm not sure how it works. Can you have infinite units in a city? Or just 9?

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Tim-Bur, reply 9
Can you have infinite units in a city? Or just 9?
End of Tim-Bur's quote

 

I think that you are hard capped at 9 units in a city, plus the free "city defender" units.

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

I have fought battles against up to 18 units when attacking cities, then had another stack of five units on the city after the battle (that I won) and there was no visible units from the previous owner of the city near the city before the battle, and I remember some battles in wom where all the squares other than my units were the defenders,

but back to fe, I would assume the 18 was 5 'free' defenders and 13 units that were stationed there.

harpo