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god i hate bridges, was playing a sp battle earlier and had to cross a bridge, the AI deployed directly to the right and left of the bridge and hit my units as they crossed. for some reason my units felt a great need to march completely across the bridge, right past the attacking units before they turned to fight. by this time my units were routing off the field!!!!!!!!!!!! this has to be a bug
the pathfinding sucks on bridges.
I love bridges.... but then I usually defend them
If you are the attacker, set up your forces like you will be defending, and send 1 unit across to just engage the enemy. After they start coming at you, retreat that unit behind your lines, and hopefully the other side will be chasing you. Sometimes this takes a couple of tries before they fall for it. Easier with the barbarians!!
Bring along plenty of missiles & the CPU should back away just enough to give you time to establish a bridgehead before the rush comes.
Anyone noticed that enemies tend to rout forward on bridges? Its a pain in the ass.
yesterday i attacked some rebels (standing on a bridge in campaign map) with nothing but a basic german cavalry and one unit of spear warband. i sent the warband in first, they did their phalanx thing, and i won easily when the rebels marched onto the bridge to defend it. soon all five units of rebel warband and barbarin peasants were fleeing, and i used my single cavalry unit to likk most of them off.
when defending a bridge, i have several phalanx units 'enclose' my end of the bridge, and some archers and a general unit for morale. and so long as the phalanx units don't move out of position or get fired on by enemy arrows, it's usually pretty easy to defend, even against cavalry and chariots (haven't defended a bridge from elephants yet).
once when my forces and enemy forces were fighting it out on the centre of a bridge and i wanted to get across, i waited for my units nd their units to tire, then i sent a huge cavalry charge to the other side (repeatedly making them all run to the other side, not simply attacking enemy units) and just about every enemy routed when i did that, and lots of enemies fell into the river HA! HA! HA!
it's when you've got a bridge battle where the enemy has many ranged units that problems come up for me
This would make an interesting character "trait": Fears Bridges -- Unable to cross bridges, -2 command when defending at a bridge.
The pathfinding with bridges and gates are the same: unit must march all the way down the lane, then deploy. No shortcuts to form a line just in front of the bridge. There must be some sort of limitation of the engine that forces this, but it looks bizarre, and makes it tougher than it should be to cross.
With bridge attacks I often order a unit to march across. When it nears the other end of the bridge the AI rushes in, so I "halt" and then engage them on the bridge where at least the melee problems are equal. And if I have missile units on the banks...I just pull back and let 'em have it. Skirmishers work very well for bridge attacks too (unless you are facing archers/slingers), advanding across and throwing a volley then running away, rinse and repeat. Just don't fully cross...that is a mistake.