Attack or Defend?

[Lord Of Storms]

Do you when you have the choice like to be on the Attacking side or Defending ? and why.http://www.smilies-world.de/Smilies/Smilies_klein_1/brakelamp.gif

[Ryttare]

On hilly map i prefer Defending, who doesnt?? Otherwise i couldnt care less.

[_Martyr_]

Yeah, I like to defend on a hilly or forested map It depends a lot on what type of troops I have as well If I have a lot of archer units then I will probably defend

[Alrowan]

attack all the way... its always more satisfying

[Lord Of Storms]

Keep em coming thanks for your contibution http://www.smilies-world.de/Smilies/Smilies_klein_1/UNCLESAM.gif

[A.Saturnus]

I prefer defending. I`m a rather defensive player and I love to welcom the enemy with arbs from a hill. Although attacks are usually more challenging and sometimes more fun.

[Alrowan]

bah... *looks at all the campers*

i love to show you people how its really done... by routing your armies http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[Ryttare]

A victory is more fun if u are attacking. But a victory is alot more fun then a loss...and u got a better chance to win if u are defending.
But i did ok attacking in the tourney =)

[econ21]

Defending, definitely. I really like a computer game where the AI is serious and goes for your throat. When you are defending, there is a thrill of the risk that you may lose. I recall one of my early battles where in the early period I had a weak borderguard army facing a large crusade. Seeing those ranks of order foot and Templar knights approach my thin lines, backed by masses of archers and other troops, was awesome. Snatching a victory in those circumstances was more satisfying than marshalling a powerful invasion force.

I confess attacking is harder, more of a challenge and requires more thought but I tend to play games for relaxation, so I guess I am a little lazy.

[Lord Of Storms]

Thanks for all your contribuitons guys I like the candid responses keep em coming TSOS

[Basileus]

I usualy lose when im defending so i always attack..about 90% of my battles im attacking..

[Teutonic Knight]

I love to dig into my position and make my enemy root me out. Besides, I'm not very good at attacking anyway........

[MF_Ivan]

I love attacking, there's nothing better than pissing the defender off in skirmishing. As an attacker I feel in control of the battle, I can put myself into a situation where the opponent(s) have to react to what I am doing. I manipulate the battlefield in the way I want it, often having my opponent(s) commiting to a mistake or a weak position where I can take advantage and strike. As a defender you often give up initiative and that is something I absolutely hate.

Heh, sometimes when I am playing as defender in team games Ill march out as if I am attacking. Only to have a team mate shout out to me to "stop because we're on the defending side" http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Monk]

i enjoy attacking more than defence. although Defending castiles is fun, a few good artillary shots will really mess your forces up. so Attacking for me

[NateEngle]

Defense. I'm a big fan of Sun Tzu's Art of War, and a substantial portion of Master Sun's text deals with the greater desirability of setting your army in a way that the enemy has to march a long way to get to you, exhausting themselves in the process. It could also be argued that defending is the circumstance where you're forced to do the most with whatever limited resources are at hand. Typically I don't attack until I have a preponderance of force, but give me a couple companies of halberdiers and arbalesters and a steep wooded hillside to stand on and I can hold off thousands of horsemen and spearmen.

If you examine the tactics of someone like Stonewall Jackson or the old "King of Spades" (Robert E Lee) you find that their more decisive one-sided victories are ones like Fredricksburg (pure defense) or better yet 2nd Manassas where Jackson swings wide around the Union left and then seizes the railroad junction where he simultaneously re-provisions his army and forces the Union to backtrack and attack him as his men shelter themselves behind the railway embankment. Probably the biggest pre-Gettysburg mistake made by Lee were the 2 days his men spent around Sharpsburg without a single trench or abatis being built.

Thus even when I'm on the attack, I'm always looking at the ground trying to find a good place to set up a defensive line that either threatens the enemy's path of retreat or where I can lure enemies into attacking me piecemeal (which I call "3 Stooges-style" in honor of all the times Curly lured a bruiser around a corner where Larry Fine socks him over the head by surprise with a frying pan).

[MF_Ivan]

>substantial portion of Master Sun's text deals with the greater desirability of setting your army in a way that the enemy has to march a long way to get to you, exhausting themselves in the process.

This is false in MTW, the distances are relatively short by the time your men start fighting they're still fresh.

>Typically I don't attack until I have a preponderance of force, but give me a couple companies of halberdiers and arbalesters and a steep wooded hillside to stand on and I can hold off thousands of horsemen and spearmen.

So can anybody else.

>If you examine the tactics of someone like Stonewall Jackson or the old "King of Spades" (Robert E Lee) you find that their more decisive one-sided victories are ones like Fredricksburg (pure defense)

Which was the result of Union stupidity, they had the opportunity to ford the river and get into the town before the Confederates got there. Instead they waited to build pontoons, while the Confederates entrenched their cannons and men. It was plain stupidity to walk all the way to the hill across open plains only to get wiped out in a superior mass of firepower. No wise General would do such a thing, the possibility was on the table to walk around on the flanks and attack there. But no such action was taken.

>or better yet 2nd Manassas where Jackson swings wide around the Union left and then seizes the railroad junction where he simultaneously re-provisions his army and forces the Union to backtrack and attack him as his men shelter themselves behind the railway embankment.

This was a flanking attack with surprise, which I will give credit to Jackson for. But once again Union stupidity prevailed with lack of recon.

Your arguement lacks credibility, whats more is the all your claims of defensive success are based on overtly great mistakes of the opposing sides.

If you want to read about true military genius go look up Scipio Africanus and his campaigns, especially the Battle of Zama.

[Marco]

I like to force the defenders to attack

[MF_Ivan]

My point exactly.

[Gaius Julius]

It's great fun when you're attacking, and the enemy army is retreating.
Also enjoyable when you get the message: "enemy general is running away".

[Lord Of Storms]

yeah I like that one also GJ thanks for your responses keep em coming

[71-hour Ahmed]

Give a strong defensive position and lots of cav/missle troops any day.

Make them come to you, kill them from a safe distance, flank em, and if things go badly, bugger off really quick.

[Herodotus]

I think the satisfaction of pulling off an uphill battle is unbeatable.

[Alrowan]

the only thing that i dislike when attacking is when the defender takes catapults... and thats it... apart from that i think attackers can do just as well or better (once both archer lines engage, each player is in the same position anyway, and unless on a hill the defender looses any advantage

[HopAlongBunny]

I agree with NateEagle on one thing; choosing the ground where you engage the enemy is the most important thing you can do. Whether they come to you or have to be "encouraged" to move where you want them makes no difference; that goes for attacking or defending. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[Psyco]

I personally like defending
for me the best kind of battle is when you are holding a province with a small garrison verses a huge attacking force.
the best battle i have ever fought was me as spanish verses the almo. They had around 2000 trained troops (not peasents)and i had around 600. In the end i had 3 royal knights, 6 artillery crew (their weapon died) two units with about 60 men in between them and 20 crossbowmen out of ammo. It was the hardest and most satisfying battle i have ever played.

[Lord Of Storms]

I also agree with a point NateEngle made on positioning and making them come to you thus tiring them before the fight I have done this in MTW someone else erroneously stated this does not happen ,In a Swiss mod I made I was defending Tyrolia (steep hilly terrain ) against a numerically superior HRE force while positioned High on the mountain side by the time the HRE archers and infantry arrived they were so warn down when I charged they turned tail and ran without so much as a fight. so terrain can be an advantage in MTW it took them some time to reach mehttp://www.emotipad.com/emoticons/Clever.gif

[A.Saturnus]

Yes. Especially in desert, tiring the enemy can help a lot.

[Praylak]

Like some have already mentioned, there are advantages in being the attacker. Myself I won't choose one over the other. I like being both attacker and defender, but it ultimately depends on the conditions of the upcoming battle.
War is a fluid state, and I think to choose only one stance is certian doom. There are times you should attack and times to defend, but in every case I'll seek an advanatge. In many cases attacking can give you a decisive edge in controlling how the battle flows.

An attacker also has more options, compared to the camper ontop of the hill. Double split assaults, skirmish, fient attacks, etc. There's lots of options for the determined attacker.

[Lord Of Storms]

Good feedback ,keep em coming Thankshttp://www.emotipad.com/emoticons/Beware%20Spam.gif

[_Martyr_]

I love to set ambushes in the trees, so that I seem to be defending but then out flank and attack myself, I will always choose to defend in case of a bridge, I hate attacking those

[Lord Of Storms]

Yeah bridges can be tough always creates a log jam of bodies..https://www.clipart.com/sthm/thm5/CL/STGR007/broder3b2/children/crtch114.thm.jpg

[Jabberwock]

Defending with a hugely outnumbered force on top of a hill is great fun, particularly with Catholic forces in the desert, where you know you can't afford to chase down routing units until they're well and broken, because your men will get clapped out. You've just got to let them rally and come at you again.

Having said that my personal fave has to be attacking on a flatish map with shed loads of heavy cavalry.

[NateEngle]

NE>substantial portion of Master Sun's text deals with the greater desirability of setting your army in a way that the enemy has to march a long way to get to you, exhausting themselves in the process.

>This is false in MTW, the distances are relatively short by the time your men start fighting they're still fresh.

That may be the case on flat ground, but the cases I'm thinking about are ones where I deploy high up on a hillside at the very back edge of the map, and ideally out in the desert when I have some light cav or camels to lead enemy shock troops around in a further-exhausting game of follow the leader.

I've seen cases playing at expert level where I've crushed enemy halberdiers with militia sergeants after they've had to march across a big stretch of desert. Obviously the terrain plays a big factor in how much you can expect your opponent to be worn down, but if you manage to exploit it the differential is well-worth seeking.

NE>Typically I don't attack until I have a preponderance of force, but give me a couple companies of halberdiers and arbalesters and a steep wooded hillside to stand on and I can hold off thousands of horsemen and spearmen.

>So can anybody else.

That's just my point. Defense allows a reliable, repeatable way of defeating a larger number of enemies with a smaller number of defenders, and you don't have to be the Duke of Wellington to make it happen.

NE>If you examine the tactics of someone like Stonewall Jackson or the old "King of Spades" (Robert E Lee) you find that their more decisive one-sided victories are ones like Fredricksburg (pure defense)

> Which was the result of Union stupidity, they had the opportunity to ford the river and get into the town before the Confederates got there.

Unfortunately fording a river in the age of gunpowder has less attraction than it did in earlier periods. The firearms used at Fredricksburg were largely muzzle-loading rifled percussion cap muskets - prone to unreliability when wet.

If I had been Burnside I would have seized the town, dug in like crazy, emplaced my heavy artillery, and simultaneously sent another large detachment up-river to cross the Rappahanock with a view to turning the Confederate left, always on the look-out for what would be the best defensive position to fall back into when Lee was forced to either counter-attack or give up the heights and retreat towards Richmond.

NE>or better yet 2nd Manassas where Jackson swings wide around the Union left and then seizes the railroad junction where he simultaneously re-provisions his army and forces the Union to backtrack and attack him as his men shelter themselves behind the railway embankment.

> This was a flanking attack with surprise, which I will give credit to Jackson for. But once again Union stupidity prevailed with lack of recon.

> Your arguement lacks credibility, whats more is the all your claims of defensive success are based on overtly great mistakes of the opposing sides.

History is abundantly populated with errors no less egregious. If your point is that I deploy my units so as to trick or lure the enemy into making tactical errors, then I would agree, but I might also add "So what?"

All I can say is that I defend with armies that average about half or less the size of my enemies, and I consistently beat them with losses of around 1 of mine for every 5 of theirs - often even better than that.

[NateEngle]

> I love to set ambushes in the trees, so that I seem to be defending but then out flank and attack myself, I will always choose to defend in case of a bridge, I hate attacking those

I'm actually finally getting the hang of bridges both on attack and defense. The key when attacking is first to have good missile troops, and second to lure the enemy into a position where you can bow them down at no risk to yourself.

I had one battle attacking against a bunch of knights and swordsmen where all I had were arbalesters and 2 companies of plain old spearmen (no command bonus at all as I recall). The key was to first get my missile troops set up to cover the bridge (and naturally the enemy stayed out of range). Then, when I was ready, I would slowly start a spearman marching across the bridge.

You could almost see the enemy's minds at work ("Aha Spearmen, easy work for our swords"). Their swords would make a rush for the bridge at which point I would reverse my spearmen and march them back to my side of the river. The swordsmen would approach into range, lose a couple dozen men, and then fall back when they saw that there wasn't going to be anyone marching into their trap after all. If they had kept marching to my side of the river they would have had a field day and chopped me to ribbons, but they were the defenders so every time I backed off they backed off too.

I must have sent my spears out on that bridge a dozen times or more, and I don't think I ever did any melee at all. Eventually the enemy knights just retreated off the field after their swordsmen had taken about 500 casualties vs none at all on my men.

Defending a bridge is similar - set up the missile troops for support, and position a halberdier at the far end of the bridge just where it slopes down towards the bank - a custom-made hill to defend (order them to march across, then have them halt when they're in the right position). Sometimes the AI gets so frustrated it even charges with its archers (probably so as to move into position to be able to fire more effectively on my archers). In both cases the key is to think of the bridge as a focal killing ground into which you try to lure/funnel the enemies so that you can whack 'em.