Warning: If you're intercepted, you have to win

[GM1940]

Curious campaign map feature: if you move towards the enemy and are intercepted, the ensuing battle puts the onus of victory on you, not the enemy, which is curious since one would expect you could at least halt where you are and establish that as your armies position.

Courland DoWed me as Sweden, and I moved one of my two armies to the bridge over the river frontier - the Daugava I guess - without first merging it with the army sitting in Riga. Whoops. They intercepted me - I wasn't precisely sure where - and my mobile army was worse than what was sitting in Riga.

So I decided I'd be cautious, rather than unecessarily fight a battle with half my army. I sat back in a defensive position and used my demi-cannon to blow up a house the Courlanders occupied but otherwise didn't do much. Waited out the 1 hour battle clock - which is a real joy with a maximum 4x time compression - and got "crushing defeat." At least it didn't impose any nonsense casualties on me, but it did drive my forces all the way back to the town far northeast of Riga. Absurd.

I appreciate the rationale for an intercept feature, and one that's worth using, but putting the onus of victory on the interceptee seems to make interception rather overpowered! It essentially "imposes" a battle which is defensive for the interceptor! That isn't normally something you can do in TW. The interceptee does have the option to retreat right at the getgo but that's more or less the same result as if they wait out the battle clock taking no casualties; either way I assume the general risks getting negative traits.

[pevergreen]

Its an ambush, you have to fight through it.

The troops ambusing certainly have the advantage, they can kill men then retreat...

I think its normal.

[A Very Super Market]

Isn't it the same in the other games?

Ambushes require you to defeat them, otherwise you are "defeated" and run away.

[GM1940]

I don't think we're talking about something akin to the ambush mechanic from previous TW games. This interception is, as I understand it from what I experienced and from page 16 of the manual, something that is available to any army when its zone of control (the dull green which surrounds a unit) is impinged; and the way it seems to work now is that if you impinge that zone of control and the defender chooses to "intercept," the onus of victory is on the "attacked" "impinger."

I guess it could work fine this way in gameplay terms, it's just counterintuitive enough that I really didn't expect my army to fly backwards a long distance after simply 'being halted' by the enemy; if interception almost always happens, then essentially you are 'attacking' any time you enter enemy ZOC; in other words, the ZOC is what you attack as much as the enemy?

Perhaps this facilitates defense of outlying territory.

[Gaiseric]

I agree with you GM1940, it should be the other way around. The enemy is attacking you so it should be on the offensive not defensive. It makes sense this way too when you think about it. You enter the enemys' zone of control, and they have the option to ignore you or chase you away.

[GM1940]

I'm thinking the motive here was to make "entering the zone of control" equivalent to attacking the army, and to beef up the value of interception by giving it the best victory onus. When I moved on the Courlanders with my whole force there was no interception.

[JaM]

actually it works OK - imagine this - same zone of controll are there for forts too, so if this behaviour would be reversed, then you will be forced to sally out and fight even if you have only few unit inside. Instead now you can just stay in and enemy will had to attack you, or withdraw...

[Dayve]

But you're entering the enemy's zone of control whilst trying to march through their land, and they are standing in your way.

Why should they not be the ones defending again?

[JaM]

because they intercepted you, and not otherwise

[Martok]

This actually makes sense to me. If you move into an army's zone of control, it probably means you're in territory owned by that army's faction, not the other way around. It would then follow that all an intercepting army has to do is park themselves in your path, thereby forcing you to attack them. (Which is what you would have to eventually do anyway -- odds are you're invading someone's territory if you trigger an enemy army's zone of control, so you'd have probably ended up fighting them regardless.)

Forgive me for saying so, but I actually like how this sounds. It appears to give the strategic advantage to the defending faction, which in turn makes it harder for nations to conquer the map at such a ridiculous rate (which has long been a problem in prior TW games). It also reflects -- albeit very abstractly -- that a defending army is probably going to know the local terrain better than the attacker. :yes:



because they intercepted you, and not otherwise
Right, but odds are they intercepted your army in the first place so as to defend/prevent you from taking one of their towns/cities. So they're still "defending".

[Dayve]

This post was in response to Jam's previous comment, Martok seems to have beaten me to it and said exactly the same thing i did however.

But you're the one marching toward your objective whilst acting against the army blocking yours and their nation. They want to stop you, and so they line up their soldiers to block your path.

If you refuse to attack then they have gained a victory because the goal was to stop you, which they are succeeding at. They can stand in your way until both armies grow old and die and be victorious without ever firing a shot, because their job is to halt your advance.

[GM1940]

I would be fine if the result of a draw were a draw, or even the depletion of the "invading" (not "intercepting") army's movement points. But as it is it's a (potentially crushing) defeat that sends your army reeling 50 miles back into your own territory, depleting all its movement if it's attacked again, and presumably awarding negative traits.

That seems like a pretty excessive penalty considering all the interceptor has to do is keep their force alive to accomplish it, after they chose to seek battle. This should administer a check to the opponent, if the victory onus is not on the interceptor. Or the victory onus could be on the interceptor, and the consequences could be as severe as they are for the interceptee (defeat, full retreat.)

[Martok]

A fair point, I think. Perhaps the losing army should suffer less of a penalty?

[RJV]

I had a small unit intercepted in RtI campaign. I'd clicked on 'replenish' in my main army, not really knowing what it did, and the nearest unit was a garrison of 23 men in a village i'd just taken. They were intercepted halfway to the army by a couple of hundred enemies.

I Killed off quite a few, then hit withdraw, and they fell back nicely into the village which, as it turned out, was just what i would have wanted.

Personally i think that an intercepted army should suffer by not being able to choose a nice deployment, reflecting the ambush scenario, but that should be it. No onus on either side to be the winner, and whichever side is classed as the loser should remain where they are on the map, with any remaining movement points reduced but not artificially eliminated.

Cheers,

Rob.