army trapped in city! help?

[Charles]

In my 1.02 PBEM game, I have managed to get myself into a pickle.

I had a smallish army at Minden with a standard defence ROE which was attacked by a much larger Coalition army. It lost the battle and started to retreat to Hannover.

I cancelled the move and left it at Minden (but outside the city), while I had a reinforcement army move towards Minden.

Next turn, my army was again attacked, at which point it retreated inside Minden where it has now been besieged and trapped for several turns.

I have tried several tricks, various defensive/offensive ROEs, evade combat orders, concentric attacks from forces inside/outside Minden to no avail. My opponent is keeping the lid clamped shut. The trapped army is now close to running out of food.

two questions:

1. what determines when an army retreats inside a besieged city? Is there a foolproof way to avoid it?

2. anyone have any bright idea how I can escape the trap?

[Narwhal]

[quote="Charles"]
If you activate the "prepare a sortie" special order, your unit will attack the besieger if another army attacks from outside.

Apart from this, I never had the opportunity to try it in ROP, but in BoA I divided my huge army in a lot of very small groups (actually, the smallest possible) that would try to reach a safe place with "evade order". Some will succeed, some will fail - but better than losing the whole army.

[squarian]

I divided my huge army in a lot of very small groups (actually, the smallest possible) that would try to reach a safe place with "evade order".

But remember to move them outside the structure before running the turn - AFAIK they won't move unless you do.

[Pocus]

The rule is that if you have troops in a region with a structure, they will retreat into the structure only if the special order 'move to city asap' is active, unless there is no other location to retreat that is.

[Baris]

1. what determines when an army retreats inside a besieged city? Is there a foolproof way to avoid it?

From my experience you can not retreat to another region even you dont have special order"move to nearest city" marked.(as you cancelled the move you dont have second chance to escape ) It needs some days to escape to other region,while the opponent attacking there is no way to escape . only solution is to win the battle

[Charles]

The rule is that if you have troops in a region with a structure, they will retreat into the structure only if the special order 'move to city asap' is active, unless there is no other location to retreat that is.

so unless I give the special order "enter the stucture", a defeated force should not normally retreat into a city?

From my experience you can not retreat to another region even you dont have special order"move to nearest city" marked.(as you cancelled the move you dont have second chance to escape ) It needs some days to escape to other region,while the opponent attacking there is no way to escape . only solution is to win the battle

I sort of suspected afterwards that cancelling the retreat order had something to do with it. Oh well, live and learn.

Another question, when I click on the trapped army, only the zones to the NW,W and SW are red. All the other zones (NE, E, SE) are clear. Would this not mean that the army can leave the city and escape to the east? Or is it, as I presume, being intercepted by the besieging force and then retreating back into Minden? The manual is not clear on this point.

[Charles]

After much deliberation, I opted for a brute force approach. Prince Ferdinand's main force attacked from the north, Wutginau's column attacked from the south and Granby's force attacked from the city, all with offensive/all-out-attack ROE.

not subtle, but it worked:





The siege is broken. I can now attend to the many, many other fires all over the map.

Thankfully, winter should be here soon...

[Narwhal]

Not only did you break the siege, but you caused significative casualties on his side.

[Pocus]

Oh wait, you were already trapped in the region? In this case if the only retreat path is the city, then in the city you end