Reinforcements : you or the AI?

do you let the AI command your reinforcements or you commanded it yourself?
any stories about reinforcements?

IMO if you had the "unlimited men on battlefield" turned on, you have to rely for the AI to command the reinforcements or you will get crushed by multiple enemy armies (this if your enemy have more than 1 army).

btw with "unlimited men" and giving the reinforcements control to the AI, I once had some crazy and fun battle against the Mongol/Timurid with more than 10K men on the battlefield, however while many of us know that they're hard to beat in 1:1 battle, this time they become MUCH tougher to beat :dizzy2: since there were thousands of their heavy cavalries like a big tsunami wave flooding the battlefield, the only strategy I could think is to rely on much horse archers/muskets + some heavy cavalries and then use hit and run tactic.

share your experience with battles in which reinforcements played a role :yes: (and pics if available)

It depends on circumstances. I've done both. Sometimes I'll command them myself, like when I'm defending a bridge crossing. 20 units is more than enough to hold a bridge crossing against 3 full stacks if not more. When a unit becomes too badly damaged to continue being effective fighting, I'll give it the withdraw command and let it run off the board to be replaced by another. Other times I need all the units on the map at once, and then I'll let the AI handle it, especially when we've got the enemy sandwiched between us. I'll command the anvil and let the AI bring on the hammer. The important things to remember are 1) you yourself can only command 20 units max at a time, any other units will hold off the map until you have vacancies in your OB due to routing, withdrawal or destruction of your units, and 2) the units under the AI control do not alway act in an intelligent manner. It will let them separate, run units all the way across the map so they're exhausted by the time they arrive, keep the missile units marching instead of stopping to shoot at approaching cavalry, etc.

I have never tried it but the manual refers to giving the ai orders such as defend or attack of the troops they command. Might be useful.

I have absolutely zero confidence in the AI. This is especially true with `lighter` armies that don't do well in an en mass infantry orgy in the centre of the map. I may give the AI a small heavy infantry force though as it's hard to go to wrong with those, but I doubt the AI will do anything sensible with my expensive heavy cav or mounted missile troops.

Once you see how bad the enemy is at using reinforcements it's very discouraging. The AI reinforcements on seiges will walk to the side entrance of the city to get in and ignore the Heavy cav / missile cav murdering them. On an open field the AI deploys one army in the centre of the map and the other comes in from the side so you can crush one army at a time, rather than doing the sensible thing of deploying at the edge of the map so both armies begin together.

I'll do the commanding thankyou.

Heavy inf is indeed hard to screw up. I never let them command my missile troops or light ones. Whatever you do, don't let the AI command your stack with a good general in it. With all likelihood, you'll lose him due to the AI suiciding him into the middle of the enemy.

I'll never let the AI control my armies, firstly because i dont trust them but more importantaly because my armies are heavily specialised and the AI doesn't deal with that very well (they fall to pieces with an all missile army, for example)

The one or two times I have let the A.I. control one of my two armies it was a mistake. I forgot to uncheck the box and the result in both cases was a distaster.

Together my two armies were equal to and could have beaten the enemy in a combined effort, but instead in each cases the A.I. army made a suicide charge and got wasted.

Never again.

I've only done it once so far and the AI was as dumb as a brick. I was waring the enemy down with archers and waiting until they had reduced numbers. That was going OK, until I saw part of the friendly AI breaking away from the rest speeding to the enemy. Turns out it was a bunch of archers. Great I thought, they're coming to help thin the enemy. The AI might actually be smart!

The archers got there, started firing and the friendly AI caught up. What happened next was unbelievable. Friendly cavalry including the general charged the front of the nearest unit of enemy spearmen at an angle. Then the friendly spearmen jumped in too. All on one unit. Part of the fairly large enemy swarmed around the friendlies. I moved infantry forces outside and beat crap out the enemy. Surprisingly my ai assisted general survived being surrounded by enemies, but had far more casualties than I did.

The stupid beggars army didn't even reform when they got to the enemy forces. Just ploughed in like morons. Prince Rufus the moron.

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I have never tried it but the manual refers to giving the ai orders such as defend or attack of the troops they command. Might be useful.

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That might help, but how exactly do you do it? I looked but couldn't see anything.

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Originally Posted by Jagger

I have never tried it but the manual refers to giving the ai orders such as defend or attack of the troops they command. Might be useful.

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No. That's for units in your own army that you place under AI control. Reinforcements seem to be completely autonomous.

AI reinforcements almost invariably charges in. This forces you to commit as well in order to save the gallant fools. This unfortunately often results in the slaughter of both forces.

However, if you have a few stacks of heavy cav, then by all means go ahead. Massive cav crunch can beat anything.