Multiplayer

[darklite]

Err, just a quick question...

I logged on last night for multiplayer and had a few a games. My first game was 2vs2, with myself focusing on infantry/archers and he focused on cav. (I's admitted that i was newbie to multi). We were defending and sent his cav out, which promptly got massacred. which left me with infantry on defense. I got beaten after a bit.

Thing is though. It made sense to me that combined we were stronger. If he had used his cav to guard flanks, with my swordsmen covering his cav against spears, we would have been fine. (roughly). Am i totally wrong with this?

[Gregoshi]

No, you are not wrong. Cooperation is key in MP. If you and your allies are all doing their own thing, your only hope is that the enemy is also doing the same thing. But you are right in that allies should support each other.

[Kongamato]

Teamwork is great, but making one huge combined army rarely succeeds. I've seen people try it before with one guy taking swords, the other with missiles and the other with cavalry. What happens is that the need to micromanage the whole surface of the army results in the player only being able to focus on one flank at one time. Your cav guy could wind up having to take on the whole enemy team during the pav war stage. This often results in your team army curling up into a little ball and resigning itself to a desperate defense. Meanwhile, the enemy team will start playing with you like a cat. One player lures your cav guy on one flank while his teammates strike the other. It wont be long before you lose your cav and missiles. You then run the risk of being methodically picked apart.

I've just never been a fan of this idea.

[Puzz3D]

Combined is better because the enemy armies can't effect a doubleteam on one of you. There are also morale penalties when smaller forces confront a larger force. The loss of the cav in that game not only takes away its combat ability from the rest of the army, but the rest of the army will be operating at lower morale because they are subseqently outnumbered by the enemy forces. This is also the main reason why attacking with single units is not effective. Single units receive a massive morale penalty when they approach a large enemy force.

I agree with Kongamato that having each player take one component of the army means each player has to cover the entire front. It's much easier to focus mainly on your local front, and have a variety of unit types at your disposal so that you can repond to different tactical situations immediately.

[ichi]

I don't like this idea of having specialist armies - one guy all cav and antoher all inf - for the reasons mentioned above. But each player has strengths and weaknesses - I can think of players who excel at cav fighting while others do better managing inf - and it makes sense to have armies with different compositions.

For example, I like heavy units - Feudals and Chiv Cav, FMAA and CMAA inf. One of my mates loves mounted Xbows and Alan Mercenaries, Billmen and Mil Sargs. When we do it right we use those unit types together to help each other out. His Alans can effectively harass pavs while my heavy cav provides the punch.

As I stated in an another thread, it is very important for each player to have 3-4 missile units, 3-4-5-6 cav (including one as Gen) and the rest quality inf.

Some teams make a lot of kills by overloading one opponent - first a cav rush on the left, then one on the right, then back to the left, three guys each using 1 or 2 cav to harass the pavs and trap cav. Its better to spread the workload around.

Also, especially at 10K, if you bring only 1 or 2 cav, 4 pavs, and 10 infantry then those 10 inf won't be very good, since you won't have the florins to upgrade them properly.

ichi