Attacker & Defender

[Malagant]

I know there's been some discussion about this, but I can't seem to get consistent results that make sense.

e.g I'm France. I have an Army of 3 Inf, 2 Art, 2 Cav sitting in a French territory with no orders to move. There are 2 Mil in the city garrison. The Spanish move a very large army in to said territory. I choose Detailed Battle. I notice part way through the fight that my army's morale is slowly decreasing, though we're taking no losses. I ended up routing off the field while trying to round up all the disordered Spaniards. I had taken very few losses, and would have easily won the fight, but for whatever reason it had labeled me the attacker. This was clear in the battle results which showed the Attacker had lost only a few hundred, and the Defender had lost many thousand.

This is not an isolated case, I see this condition happen quite often.

How exactly does the game decide who is the attacker? Is there some bug associated with this?

It would not be so bad if it were clearly identified during the fight who is attacking & defending.

Furthermore, if the tactical A/I knew it was the defender, it would be nice if it would behave as such, perhaps taking up a strong position coordinated with it's Forts and make me attack, instead of it being the defender and still rushing blindly forward piecemeal [X(]

As it stands, whether I'm strategically attacking or defending, in a tactical battle I can always set up a defensive battle line and let the A/I come to me. I've not yet seen it force me to take aggressive action.


Getting myself off on a tangent, sometimes it seems the relative starting placement of opposing armies does not correspond with their relative placements on the strategic map.

e.g. An enemy army is in a territory southwest of me. They move northeast to attack me. When the Detailed Battle started, I set up facing southwest...only to have the enemy show up behind me, coming from the northeast.



West-Civ, this game is GREAT, and it's wonderful to see you guys soliciting feedback and acting on it. I wish all game makers were as receptive to feedback and open to discussion as you!!

[Mynok]

As unwelcome as it may be coming from me, I agree with all of your observations and have wondered myself how it worked.

[Ralegh]

The game uses probability assessment to get a battle to occur and select its timing, interacting with the initiative system for strategic movement, and things like terrain, weather and roads.

You are right that this often means the "attacker" is the person with forces already in the area, and the "defender" is the person who just moved into the area, which is often counterintuitive. (It isn't counterintuitive if the person moving into the area was attempting to avoid combat, IMHO.)

While I think the developers agree that it is somewaht counterintuitive, I don't think we have their agreement that there is a bug here, or that it should be changed. I think that is because the issue isn't important in COG 1.0 since both attacker and defender are treated equally AFAIK. Enhancements proposed to detailed battle (making the attacker lose morale at a faster rate, and encouraging a defending AI to take defensive tactics) may make this issue more prominent in the second patch.

[Malagant]

Ralegh, how about making it readily apparent to both sides during hexwar which is the attacker and defender? A simple text A or D at the top where it tells the time of day would suffice for me!

[jchastain]

ORIGINAL: Ralegh

The game uses probability assessment to get a battle to occur and select its timing, interacting with the initiative system for strategic movement, and things like terrain, weather and roads.

You are right that this often means the "attacker" is the person with forces already in the area, and the "defender" is the person who just moved into the area, which is often counterintuitive. (It isn't counterintuitive if the person moving into the area was attempting to avoid combat, IMHO.)

While I think the developers agree that it is somewaht counterintuitive, I don't think we have their agreement that there is a bug here, or that it should be changed. I think that is because the issue isn't important in COG 1.0 since both attacker and defender are treated equally AFAIK. Enhancements proposed to detailed battle (making the attacker lose morale at a faster rate, and encouraging a defending AI to take defensive tactics) may make this issue more prominent in the second patch.

For whatever it is worth, I agree that it seems a bit overly random at present. While the person first occupying the province might not always be the defender, I would expect them to be the vast majority of the time unless the other side is attempting to avoid combat.