When to expect river battles?

[afrit]

HI there,

I apologize beforehand if this has been hashed before.

In my recent campaign as HRE, I was suprised several times by river battles (nasty if you're attacking lots of missiles/artillery http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/angry.gif)

SO I decided to figure out which provinces have river borders http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/idea.gif , using the province info window in the campaign mode. I came up with this table. To my surprise, some rivers look like one-way defenses. I got the river names from a geography atlas http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-book2.gif to help me memorize this. I am posting it as my contribution to the forum.

Rivers in Medieval TW map (grouped geographically, defending province listed first).

Defending From River

Mercia Wessex Thames
Wessex Mercia Thames

Normandy Flanders Seine (1-way)
Ile De France Flanders Seine (1-way)
Ile De France Burgundy Saone branch of Rhone
Burgundy Ile De France Saone branch of Rhone
Burgundy Toulouse Rhone (1-way)
Provence Toulouse Rhone
Toulouse Provence Rhone

Aragon Valencia Ebro
Valencia Aragon Ebro
Valencia COrdoba Jucar
Cordoba Valencia Jucar

Franconia Lorraine Rhine (1-way)
Franconia Bavaria Main
Bavaria Franconia Main
Bavaria Bohemia Danube?
Bohemia Bavaria Danube?
Saxony Brandenburg Elbe
Brandenburg Saxony Elbe
Brandenburg Pomerania Oder? (1-way)

Sliesia Poland Oder?
Poland Silesia Oder
Poland Carpathia Tisza (br of Danube) or upper Vistula?
Carpathia Poland Tisza (br of Danube) or upper Vistula?


Muscovy Volga-Bulgar Volga
Volga-Bulgar Muscovy Volga
Ryazan Khazar Don
Chernigov Khazar Don
Khazar Ryazan Don
Khazar Chernigov Don
Khazar Kiev Dniepr
Crimea Kiev Dniepr
Kiev Lithuania Prypiat (br. of Dniepr) (1-way)
Kiev Chernigov Dniepr (1-way)
Kiev Khazar Dniepr
Kiev Crimea Dniepr
Pereyaslavl : internal river?


Hungary Austria Danube
HUngary Serbia Sava (or Drava?) br of Danube
Moldavia Bulgaria Danube
Wallachia Bulgaria Danube
Bulgaria Moldavia Danube
Bulgaria Wallachia Danube


Provinces where armies meeting on them would expect rivers (don't know for sure what this means):
Pereyaslavl
Valencia

Looking at the whole table, some good river borders jump out:

Bulgaria, protected from North by Danube. Defensive border for Byz
Valencia: good border for Aragon or ALmohad against each other
Kiev: protected from east by Dniepr. Good border against the Golden Horde
Criema-Khazar: protected from West by Dniepr. Good border for Byz or Turk.
Brandenburg: protected from NOrth: good border against the Danes?
BUrgundy and Provence: protected from West by Rhone and Saone . Good border against French.

Finally, a question http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-help.gif

What happens if multiple armies attack a single province, with one attacking stack crossing over a river http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif? Would the battle be a river battle in all cases? or only if largest contingent is crossing over river? or only if general is crossing over river? . Anyone knows?


Comments, corrections welcome http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/medievalcheers.gif

[Blodrast]

Hi afrit,

check out this quite recent thread; all river battles are listed, by 2 different criteria:
all the rivers of the world (http://www.totalwar.org/cgi-bin/forum/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=15;t=18264)

[RedKnight]

Hiya afrit,

Hey that's very cool.... I always wondered just what the rivers are, that the game is talking about Thanks for looking this stuff up

Although it's a bit odd how some of them work one way, and others don't.

The map for a given battle is always determined by the border that the leader of the attack crossed. It doesn't matter if he's just a 1-man unit, and he also has 10 huge stacks crossing some other border. And, if there is more than one faction attacking, the highest-ranking leader's path determines the map. I once held Khazar and the Horde attacked from Crimea the same turn that Russians attacked from many points north. The Russian general outranked and came from Ryazan, so the sorry-ass Horde got dragged into the Ryazan/Khazar bridge battle... and there's no way I would've won if both these guys hadn't been coming across bridges. They were both even polite enough to come across the same bridge, of the two on the map. Mars was on my side that day

Welcome to the .org, dude Pull up a chair, set a spell. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/medievalcheers.gif

[ah_dut]

welcome to the org http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif