Please explain how movement Works (if there is a logic to it)

Me, too.  We both have similiar problems because the player manual is so detailed and clearly explains how to play EWOM and how things work. The on-line manual is constantly updated wit each patch - so we are always dealing with a friendly user enviornment.  NOT.

Attacking adjacent tile costs movement points if you use auto resolve. Fighting the combat manually does not cost movement points.

Exiting cities costs 0 MP because it is not considered movement, it is considered ejecting an unit from the city.

Which is also illogical. Travelling on a road network should cost 1/2 MP [i.e. travelling from one tile with roads to another one]. Entering the network should however cost movement points according to the specific point of entry, as e.g. 2 MP for a forest.

It seems to me that roads always cost 1/2 mp, regardless if you enter from a connecting-road square or not. Woods always cost either 2mp or whatever your remaining mps are (if you have .5 mp you can still enter a woods) except in the case of woods-road squares. hills and marsh are equivalent to open ground. Cities are wierd, it seems "free" to exit into the first adjacent square to a city (sprawl), and whatever normal cost beyond that, entering a city costs nothing either, but you need at least 1mp to enter the city or your movement ends adjacent to the city. I have not had a problem attacking any adjacent monster at no cost as long as you have at least .5mp. You never actually "move" into an attacked square, if you win the battle you have the option of moving into the now-empty square as normal.

I've never actually built a ship this game. I always play on large maps and it seems it's always one huge continent with a bunch of lakes, which I happen to like btw, so I have no idea what water movement is like.

Also, mountains are impassible, as are coastal hexes, but if you cast "raise" or "lower" land there seems to be a bug. I typically "lower" land on mountains because the mountains are usually too long, and sometimes the game lets me move on the, now ground-level ex-mtn, square but sometimes it doesn't. This is extremely irritating, as I find "lower" land one of the most useful spells in the game given that mountains always seem to be constructed in either very long chains or in a big circles .. and I've actually found AI kingdoms encircled with no way out and just one city. It seems their sovereign has never heard of the "lower land" spell  

I always use the cloth map board with grid, as it's much clearer what terrain is in what square.

Another thing that I find unbearably annoying is that when a unit ends its movement in another unit's tile they both get the same movement points, which is an aberration of the usual logic formula: If they keep moving together they can only do so as long as both have enough MPs, but the faster unit SHOULD BE ABLE TO SPEND ITS REMAINING MPs, which in this game instead are lost as soon as the two units get together.

Horrible!

EJCTING from a city????  HAHAHA what is it a falling airplane? This game need some serious fixing, the fact that they used squares instead than hexes is the first sign that their ideas weren't that clear!

I know the square/hex debate has been raging for years, but I always find it hilarious. Hexes are more fun from the players perspective, but are nightmares from a dev perspective. Consider that squares can easily be represented as a matrix and manipulation can be done with several types of matrix functions. Hexes, however, can also be represented by matrices but it is requires extra memory and system to maintain and manipulate the interconnections. Personally I am not a fan of hexes or squares. I like good old distance based MP, a la Rome TW.

Personally I can't stand hexes. Or wargames come to that

what kind of matrix functions do you use on terrain? (I know for 3d stuff etc. matrix functions are gold, but right now nothing comes to mind for an usual map...)

If you consider a grid based game map using squares and we assume three sort of layers of map info, units, terrain, movement, then we could represent each as follows,

Unit info:

[{0,0,0},{0,1,0},{0,0,0}] ---> a single unit standing in the middle of the map.

Terrain info:

[{1,1,1}, {1,0,1},{1,1,1}] --> all the terrain is of type one except the middle which is type 0

Movement info:

[{1,1,1},{1,0,5,1},{1,1,1}] --> The movement is 1 mp for all squares but the middle which is 0.5

In general, you would probably handle all these matrices as one matrix with each square holding the information for each of these layers.

Now, since each square can be assumed to have an inherent label of (i,j) denoting its place in the matrix, it is easy enough to denote adjacency by simply using the axiom that two squares are adjacent if they are 1 off from i or j ( we could make this 1 difference exclusive to i or j, to denote only 4 directions of moment).

Rome Total War used squares for the overland map.

If it did, then they did an amazing job making me believe that it didn't.

Guys I really have no idea if it is hard to program hexes of what, but Age of Wonders did an amazing job with hexes more than 10 years ago, so it is definitely possible. This game is a a RPG, a City Sim and also a wargame. I really respect it for all the work involved in making 3 games in one, but the wargame aspect lacks the hex feature which is the natural solution for realism. Squares are a geographical aberration, other than bringing several kinds of illogical situations. Wargames have an history and hexes are the standard solution because they are the system that makes most sense. The other possibility would be to use some form of mesuration of "distance" but if that can be done I don't know, I am not a programmer, I am a wargamer.

Good point. Certain wargames make you count that 1/2 bounus ONLY if you go from a road hex to another road hex (usually they are very large scale maps, since crossing from one hex to another represents several miles/kms and giving a road bonus would be particularly absurd if there is none for miles).

The problem here is that all seems illogical... auto fight uses MPs and manual battle do not? So I am forced to play easy, boring, useless battles otherwise I waste half of my movement? DO I HAVE TO BE BORED?

The Hex system only makes sense due to a geometric reality, which is that a hex grid can be created without no hex holes. Yet, in general, this form of movement removes a very large dimension of movement namely the ability to move from side to side. The only real benefit to a standard hex grid is that a move from one hex to an any adjacent hex is the same relative distance, namely one hex. While this ultimately arguments of movement distances and alleviation of a diagonal movement bonus, it trades off the ability of a unit to make a side to side move at one hex. In general, a square movement grid can allow for 8 directional movement, encompassing all 6 directions of movement offered by a hex movement grid. While 4 directions of movement are at 1 square distance, we find that 4 are at 1.414 square distance. Since it is ultimately superior to push movement to allow for as close to a circular pattern of movement, the square grid finds itself ultimately superior to a hex based grid, though it may be necessary to apply some form of penalty to these elongated directions.

I even played wargames that tried to play on a grid made of octagons, of course that is not possible, so they alternated squares and octagons... weird... but interesting to try. According to where you were you would have 4 or 8 directions to take (Waterloo by International team - Austerlitz by the same brand, and they made Jena too I think...). Diagonally you would move from an octagon to another but sideways they had to insert squares.

Anyways with squares there is no way to apply penalties for movements since you would either be able to move diagonally or not. You would either lose 1MP or gain one when moving diagonally, but then again you could also alternate diagonal and 'parallel' movements...

Anyway my post is more about the logic of things like: I can enter a wood tile and spend all my movement or being able to first move in one plain square AND also by one wood tile and also spend all my movement, or doing certain movements and in certain situations also being able to attack, while in other apparently similar situations NOT being able to attack... I am not being more clear, sorry, because I just don't understand the system and have the feeling it is badly implemented... thus I was asking for an explanation.

Anyway making the first hex when walking OUT of a city cost 0 just feels wrong, especially because it only seem to cost zero if you do not stop in that hex, if you do it cost the regular amount of points that tile normally would. A real mess IMO unless someone can explain it!

This is incorrect. Exiting a city is always free.

Well, they could have made it this way, or they could have made it so that units with 1MP left are unable to enter forests. Does that seem more logical to you? What about units which only have 1MP as their maximum? Shall they be unable to enter forests? And if they are able to enter them, how come i can have two units, one slow and one fast(but with some movement spent) next to each other both with 1MP and one can enter the forest while the other can't? That seems at least as weird as the example you made in the quote above.

You just have to accept some degree of abstraction in games like these.

It would still likely use a grid, but the grid would be too small for the player to notice. This would consume alot of memory and take tons of processing power to manage, so it is not likely to show up for a long time if ever.