need help with a historical Campaign

[Silencer]

I'm at the 2e mission of barbarossa, were you get ambushed.
In order to win, you must have 60% of your troops alive. I only barely manage to win, bit a higher cost rate.
(the other difficult battle at the orleans siege, I won by pure luck :-) )

Any help, tactics for beating this mission?


thnx,

S.

[Silencer]

bump for some help.

thnx

S.

[Silencer]

bump

[Forward Observer]

I remembered seeing your post, and that no one had ever answered you. I didn't, because after playing this battle a couple of times and getting beat, I got involved in a single player campaign and forgot about it.

I just finally went back an beat it on the first try, but I was a little more methodical in my approach this time.

Many of the historical battles are more challenging battlefield puzzles than they are true tests of tactics. What I mean by that statement is that when the battles start, your forces are in bad field positions--positions that you would have chosen in the first place.

This battle is like that. First of all, you only have about 800 men and the enemy has two separate armies totaling about 1700 men.

Secondly, your forces are split with all of you archers, on one side of the map, facing cavalry, and all of you cavalry facing infantry on the other side.

I can give you my starting strategy, but after that you are pretty much on you own.

After clicking to start battle, immediately pause the game. Now give an assignment to each of you troops. The goal here is to try to get your rock against their scissors, your paper over their rock, and so forth.


The starting position of most of your knights, including Barbarossa, has them almost surrounded. The only two enemy archer units on the feild are behind this group and 6 units of infantry to the front. Assign squads of knights to turn and charge the archers. Assign another squad of knights plus the little group of foot knights to charge the two columns of Infantry in front. These guys are mostly sacrificed to hold up that infantry while you send Barbarsso's group plus another towards the other battle area.

At the other side of the field things also look bleak. you have 3 crossbow units, one archery, one infantry, and one group of feudal knights against 4 units of mounted sergeants, 2 units of hobblers, and several units of militia and peasants. Assign each archery unit an infantry target. Use the one infantry unit to block some of the cavalry, and send your one unit of knights against the mounted sergeants. You want to hold on until Barbarossa and his contingent get there to aid. In each of the two separate areas will be the enemy commanders. If you can reach and break them, their armies will follow.

From this point on I would periodically pause, review the situation, make new assignments, and hope for the best. It is a very confusing battle with stuff going on all over the field.

When I finally beat it, I got 1400 kills with only 300 losses. I thought that I was so hot that I went back to try it again without all of the pausing. I got trounced and run off the field. It is still a tough battle no matter what.

Hope some of this helps.

Cheers

P.S. Of course, I am assuming that if there are many more posts to this thread, there will be some dufus telling us both how easy this battle was and how they beat it with their eyes closed.

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Artillery adds dignity to what would otherwise be a vulgar brawl.



[This message has been edited by Forward Observer (edited 09-28-2002).]

[Silencer]

thnx

I got i already :-)

my tactic was to group asap.
charge the havy calv towards your archers.
by then the enemy was already engaging you troops. I came at the right moment, routed the frist army.
then I had time too set up for the 2e army, which i won rather easily.
(132 killed versus 1300 dead enme) good score i'd say.