User Guide

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eral could be one of the dead. There is a daily
check to determine this, and you will receive
immediate notification if it happens. The com-
bat will continue, but the side will lose all of its
leader bonuses unless there is another general
present who can assume command. This could
be the case if you have two different armies
participating on a side, each of which is com-
manded by a general.
There are no additional penalties when
a general dies, unless the general is also your
country’s ruler. If your ruler dies in battle, your
country will suffer a -1 reduction in stability, a
loss of prestige, and is also considerably more
likely to experience some sort of unpleasant
succession problems such as being ruled by a
regency council or becoming the junior mem-
ber in a personal union.
End of Day “Housekeeping”
If a regiment has broken or been completely
eliminated, it will be removed from its position
at the end of the day. Another regiment may
move up from the rear to fill the hole in the
line (if one is available); otherwise, any other
remaining units will shift together to close the
gap.
End of Combat
At the end of each day of combat there is a
check to determine if the combat should come
to an end. If one side of the battle has been
completely eliminated, the result is obvious. If
at the end of a day, one side outnumbers the
other by a factor of 10:1 or greater, the larger
side is considered to have overwhelmed the
other and the smaller side is destroyed. In ei-
ther of these cases, the losing army and its regi-
ments are removed from the map. If the army
was commanded by a general, he is killed.
Since a side is much more likely to break
than stand and fight to the very last man, most
combats will not end with the utter destruction
of an army. Instead, one side will break off the
attack and be forced to retreat. A defeated army
must then make a decision about where it will
retreat. This is done automatically and is not
something that you control if your army is the
one that loses.
If you think that your army will be defeated
and wish to avoid taking unnecessary casualties,
you can order it to withdraw before the combat
would normally end. Simply select it and is-
sue an order for it to move out of a province. It
doesn’t matter which province you specify as a
path since this retreat order is treated exactly
like a normal combat defeat and is governed by
the rules of retreat.
The victorious side is now free to do what-
ever it wishes. If the invading army won the
battle and the province is controlled by an
enemy, it will automatically initiate a siege. If
the province is neutrally owned or is already
controlled by the victorious side, the army will
wait for new commands. If it was already in the
process of moving somewhere, it will resume
the movement from the point that it was inter-
rupted (if doesn’t need to start all over again
from the beginning).
Retreat
A losing side will retreat automatically based
on a set of special rules that govern retreat:
• If there is an adjacent, friendly province
that does not contain enemy forces, the
army will retreat to this province. If there
are two or more possible locations, it will
retreat towards the closest one.
• If there are no adjacent, friendly provinces
that do not contain hostile forces, the army
will attempt to retreat to a neutral prov-
ince that it is allowed to enter and does not
contain an enemy force. This could be a
province that has not yet been colonised
and thus has no owner, or a province that
belongs to a country with which the army
has an agreement for military access.
• Its next alternative will be to retreat to an
adjacent, enemy province that does not
contain an enemy army. It will do so, even
if this is not to its strategic advantage.
• If the retreating army has no alternative