It's classical era. I have 6 units in my entire empire. A stack of 4 and a stack of 2. I declare war on Brown AI. Orange and Purple AIs also declare war on Brown AI, none of us are allied with anybody. It's a pile on against brown. Purple AI besieges Brown's capital. I had a stack of 4 units WITHIN MY OWN BORDERS, but within the reinforcement range of the battle so here's what happens.

My turn comes, I can't move my units because they're in a battle. Except they're not actually participating the battle, I am not Allied with either Purple or Orange, I can't attack in said battle. And it's not even a battle, it's a siege and the AI is waiting to build up rams. My stack of 4 is at the edge of the reinforcement range, the last tile that it reaches, and because of that, they are unable to move. Half my entire army was unable to move for 7 turns. SEVEN TURNS!

Okay, that was annoying, but not the end of the world, surely? Right? Well here's the thing, Purple LOST the siege and immediately Orange also starts a siege locking my stack of 4 units for 7 additional turns. What the actual hot diggity dam I am pissed.

But here's the worse part, it seems to do this EVEN WHEN REINFORCEMENT ISN'T EVEN RESEARCHED. I tried to do maneuvers like this in the nomadic tribe era and it STILL HAPPENS. I have no idea how or why the movement is consumed on my units when they literally don't have the ability to reinforce each other. I just want to kill off tribals to keep them from claiming lands I intend to use. I already have to use 2 scouts per 1 scout of the AI's because I play on high difficulty settings, but I can't even use 2 stacks of 2 scouts each to kill off 1 scout of theirs without them retreating away because of the movement getting consumed on both stacks.

Yeah, the way battlefields ar drawn is totally wonky at the moment. You can have your city stop producing by a nearby AI vs AI siege.

I could see a potential fix to this issue by allowing units to optionally "retreat" if they're caught in a third party war zone. Better than being stuck for turns upon turns.

Thats why we should get option to participate in combat on one side or dont participate at all, but devs says its not possible to do combat system more than 1v1 at the moment, ( i mean 1v2, 2v2, 3v1, 3v3 etc. )

Ciabat wrote:

Thats why we should get option to participate in combat on one side or dont participate at all, but devs says its not possible to do combat system more than 1v1 at the moment, ( i mean 1v2, 2v2, 3v1, 3v3 etc. )

Honestly I'd be happy if we could just not participate.

So if I understand this correctly, there can be only one battle going on at the same time per, i guess, territory? With max 2 players participating, and units belonging to other players locked prevented from doing anything until the battle ends?

So in theory, you could lock a large player A army into place, by just having a neverending battle between players B and C in the same area? 

Laliloluhla wrote:

I could see a potential fix to this issue by allowing units to optionally "retreat" if they're caught in a third party war zone. Better than being stuck for turns upon turns.

I think we definetely need an option to retreat from combat regardless.

Mausklickmoerder wrote:

Laliloluhla wrote:

I could see a potential fix to this issue by allowing units to optionally "retreat" if they're caught in a third party war zone. Better than being stuck for turns upon turns.

I think we definetely need an option to retreat from combat regardless.

Am I not understanding what you're saying? As I'm 100% sure we have a retreat button already for both attacker and defender.

This, and other issues would be fixed by allowing players to decide which units to involve in battle. I get that it may be technically challenging to allow units to walk through a battlefield without interacting with it, but it is often frustrating that battles cause all nearby armies to lose their turn. Not everyone within a 50 mile radius should have to waste a turn chasing away a single scout!

Changlini wrote:Am I not understanding what you're saying? As I'm 100% sure we have a retreat button already for both attacker and defender.

What he is saying is that as the Player, he is not the Attacker ~and~ he is not the defender.
The Player is a bystander caught at the bare edge of the battle area.
He has no interaction with the battle at all. He can't join the battle. He can't run away from the battle.
He is stuck watching, with no way to regain control of his own units.
That's what he's upset about ..... and rightly so.

This "feature" is bugging the hell out of me now in live. My army is stuck in this siege, and I'm involved with neither party whatsoever. I desperately want to move this army to engage my actual enemy which is traipsing about my homeland - but I can't! This is a wtf moment for me.

At first I didn't realize this thread is 4 months old already. Was there any news on this, anywhere? OR are we really stuck with this..

Fuyuan wrote:

At first I didn't realize this thread is 4 months old already. Was there any news on this, anywhere? OR are we really stuck with this..

I was literally thinking the same thing. I can't believe that this is likely the intended way this is supposed to function. What a joke.

No you probably could not do that.

I was just browsing this forum and I saw this thread. I had similar situation - one of the AIs attacked a free city and by doing so locked my main army that was really needed elsewhere. I couldn't believe this, I clearly thought this had to be a major bug. I finally loaded an autosave to get back to the turn before this happened and blocked path of AI's army to prevent it from besieging this free city.

The most chilling thing here is Waykot's response. The response makes it like it's a well-thought feature or business like usual. It was here before and thus it's fine and if you think otherwise then start with the tutorial and get used to it. IMHO it's without a doubt a horrible design - removing agency from a player for significant amount of turns because of unrelated event that just happened nearby in the area... Suddenly I feel a bit less optimistic about the future of this otherwise amazing game...