battle initiative

[easytarget]

When I click on the avatars roaming around the map I sometimes gain first turn initative and sometimes I don't. Maybe it's just me, and I'll admit to being new to the game, having owned it for all of one day, but it strkes me as intuitive to assume that if I do the clicking (as in, I initiate the battle engagement) then I should get first turn to move in the subsequent battle. And while sometimes that's the case, sometimes it's not. And that's what I don't get.

I understand the AI getting first turn when I wander too close to an avatar and have it engage me before I get a chance to ride off (assuming I was trying to avoid the engagement in the first place).

But I definitely don't understand how I lose first turn in the battle when I'm the one that instigated it.

So, all you vets out there, tell me what I need to do to insure when I choose to start a battle, I get first turn.

Because, just as in chess, given the choice, I personally prefer white.

[siegefried]

You can't attack a stack, the stack always attacks you. The key to getting the first move is a unit with a high value for initiative. For example, the sprites + Agna's Ruby combo (You can get sprites early as a mage). Horsemen are decent enough in Darion + Freedom Islands (I've only gotten to this point, can't really say for those much further) for getting the first turn, but they don't always start first.

[easytarget]

Ah, understood. Thank you for explaining that.

So, early on I had sprites amongst my troops, when they all got killed eventually I didn't replace them with more I replaced them with another unit and apparently doesn't have good initiative numbers.

Thanks, I'll have to keep working on balancing my troops, which is really one of the better parts of the game anyway, fun to work through the constant trade-offs.