Movement

One of the main features of Almansur is that it reproduces military warfare realistically, including the principles of time and space. Like a real Leader, you will have to locate where your enemies armies are, what are their strong and weak characteristics, and then try to anticipate their moves and plans in order to improve your chances of success. The best choice of where and when to give battle, where to create strong defensive points and where one should avoid the enemy is an important component of any strategy you may determine.

For all this, you will have to move your armies through the map, with different terrain types, some where your army will perform better, others that may benefit your opponent!

Speeds
Bellow you’ll find a list of the possible speeds your armies may assume, it’s impact on the speed of the movement and it’s impact on the effectiveness the army has if it battles an enemy at that marching speed:

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If there is a battle, the battle strength and performance of the army depends either upon it’s marching speed if it is attacked while marching (see table above), or upon the activity the army is executing at the moment of the battle. Once an activity is under execution (the day after the army gets there) the speed used to get there becomes irrelevant. So choose your options carefully when you are near enemy forces, since the influence of these modifiers can be determinant.

When the order is to be performed at a different location, the army will start moving towards that location, using the shortest (in number of traveling days required) distance to get there, with a preference for friendly territories for similar options, and then change it’s order to the queued one when it does get to the target territory. You never give march orders to get to a territory in order to perform whatever order you want, the army will always automatically set itself in “march” to get there and then change to the intended order once it reaches the intended territory. So if for example you order your army to “conquer” a target territory, it will do battle in “march” order if called for battle during the move or the first day it gets there, and in “conquer” order the following days, until such order is concluded.

Armies will move using the slowest contingent modified base speed, and the given march speed ordered by the player to determine how many days it takes to move from territory to territory. This will then be greatly influenced by the territories terrain in two ways, which, together with roads, produce the mentioned “modified” base speed:


 * All contingents are affected by terrain other than entirely flat, and the ones that are more at ease with that terrain will be less penalized. These are Elves in forests, Orcs in swamps, Dwarves in mountains. Barbarians are not so much penalized all around as other Humans. The number of days they require to move from one territory to the other increases in a exponential way as the level of forestation, roughness and swampness of the terrain increase, so for example the difference between moving trough entirely flat territory and low hills can be very small, but the difference between moving trough hills and high mountains will be great;


 * Cavalry contingents are more affected by the difficulty of the terrain, specially the roughness, and can be extremely slow in high mountains.

Roads will affect the speed of the contingents, making it faster. This effect naturally increases according to the road level of the territory, and is especially significant in rough terrain. So the same level of road in a flat land will have some effect, but in a mountain will have a much more significant effect on the units speed. This is so because in flat land you can spread your army through the territory and they will all move at a good pace, but when crossing a mountain it will be extremely helpful to have a road since you can’t spread your army around to move it, you must use the few available mountain paths.

The effects of these terrain modifiers and road modifiers will determine what is the actual speed of each contingent of the moving army, and thus determine who actually is the slowest unit. In flat terrain militia contingents are always the slowest, but in a high mountain they will be faster than cavalry. And always all the army will move at the pace of the slowest unit.

The terrain a unit must cross to go from location A to adjacent location B is half the terrain of A plus half the terrain of B. So it’s for example easiest to go from plain to plain than from plain to mountain, and that would be easiest than going from mountain to mountain. This also means that if you want to make a move entirely using roads you need to have them both in the territory you are moving from and the destination one. If you give a move order to a location that is not adjacent, the army will automatically determine the best path to get there, best being the one that takes less time, preferring friendly territory for similar paths, and decompose that in a succession of moves from adjacent territory to adjacent territory, with, eventually, different travel times to complete each move.

Territory reaction
When an army enters a territory that is not his, the local inhabitants will detect it and send its owner a message with their estimative of how many infantry and cavalry the external army has. This report will be accessible in Land => Reports => Territory Reports. Any army can pass through a territory without conquering it, simply if it is using any orders other than conquer. The army will always do just what it is specifically ordered to do. If you want to conquer the territory, see Military => Conquering Territories and Military => Assaulting Fortresses for details upon the use of the conquer order.

Advanced Games Features
The final travel time will then be affected by how crowded the path is. This means that the more soldiers you have in both the territory you are moving from and the destination one, the more time it will take you to complete the move. Again, this effect will be much more significant in highly roughed terrain, since you can’t spread your men around the territory to avoid queuing behind other soldiers.