Your own Warfare tradition

Hi fellows, i have seen today while playing my game with France that after several Total War 's games i have developed some tactics and traditions that i repeat and improve with the time. For example: an army totally composed by cavalry. The origin is in Mongol expansion for STW when like you know the mongols had a superb cavalry wich were capable of defeat to any army of the japanese. Since there always try to build a horses's army. In MTW i had many problems with this type of army but were very powerful with eastern factions like the Byzantines, with a combination of archer cavalry and kataphractoi. Recently in MTW2 with the french i try again with excellents outcomes: mixing french horse archers (so much expensives :sweatdrop: ) plus mounted sergeants and a few heavy units, the cavalry is again the queen of the battlefield, and far more useful than in other games at the moment that with the RTW map the armies advance more fast and slow according with the type of units, that mean that this cavalry army travel two times more quickly than an infantry army, and three times than an army with artillery. I'm very happy with the performance of these guys.

What do you say people, have you any long time tradition of fight?

Yeah I seem to have "Habits" in all my TW games

For example, I always have my heavy cavaly on one side, and light cav with some Light infantry (By MY standerds) and perhaps Missle cav even further out from the heavy cav, and Box Standard Infantry as the main line (Byzantine Infantry and Spearmen for me usually) I always have big wars with Factions not the same religon of me (Im Byzantine Empire, My only neighbouring allies are Turks and Hungary, Im at war with Poland, They sent a Crusading army, it was to close to one of my cities in my opion, that army got owned, and venice had army which they droped by on one of my island cities so I attacked it, and then to further piss them off I attack there crusading army, Killed in a night time battle fought by...

My Man of The Hour Who is now a heir to the throne :crown:



He kicks ass :yes:

He is a 9 star general (10 if fighting at night)

Has 2 silver rank body guard :2thumbsup:

Has a total of 21 Hit points :grin:

Hasnt lost one battle, with anyone

Units NEVER run away when he is in the battle

And so many other stuff that makes him better than you

Strange who of thought I could make a man of hour that Über just from a tiny battle with rebels (It was a unit vedroti (Gen) and 2 Byzantine Spearmen units vs 3 units of rebel town militia and peasent archers)

Yeah, I was a heavy cavalry whore in Shogun too. Hard not to be.

In MTW I tried to avoid being a cavalry whore, so I brought almost exclusively spears and arbalesters with the occassional cruncher AP unit. Often my stacks would be made up of 50%+ arbalesters. My favorite shtick in MTW, though ineffecient, was to recruit random armies of whatever mercs were available and launch them into enemy territory like guided missiles. It made for fun, tough battles and opened a wedge for my 'valuable' (Though actually cheaper) trained troops to follow into the enemy's heartland.

I'm still finding a pattern in MTW2. Mostly I set a defensive posture and bait the enemy into attacking me. I still use armies very heavy on archers, especially with the number of decent fighting archers in the game.

Ever since MTW I've used armies in groups. This can work extremely well and one can have the infantry attack from the front while the cavalry arrive as reinforcements behind the enemy.

I also try to use generally mobile, missile and cavalry armies: Lots of missile Cavalry, some archers/javelinmen, Heavy Cavalry, Light Cavalry and that sort. However, I try to have infantry armies standing by in case of close quarters or a siege in which my mobility is nullified.

In MTW, I was a flanking maniac. I won all of my battles through using cav to flank them from the with infantry holding them down. When I attacked I never used missiles unless the opponent came to me. Defense, I ended up using arabelasters(really effective there) for missile, good infantry , heavy cavs. Don't have a habit in MTW2, haven played it that long.:book:

When using infantry-based armies, I tend to set them up like the old Roman manipular legions -- weaker soldiers in front, stronger soldiers behind, strongest soldiers next, and archers last. Cavalry sweep out onto the flanks and envelop the enemy on the side, in a horse-based adaptation of Shaka's Horns. The weaker soldiers tire the enemy front, while progressively stronger soldiers step into the breach.

Another favorite is Hannibal's Crescent -- weak soldiers in the center, strong soldiers and cavalry on the flanks. My center bows under pressure from the enemy center, forming a curve, which my stronger soldiers complete on the other side of the enemy formation. Cavalry prevent the enemy from escaping, and the result is a complete encirclement that ends in a massacre. Great when it works, risky to pull off.

When defending, I prefer to have ranged units skirmish at the start (missile cavalry and possibly foot archers) with heavy infantry guarding a second team of long-ranged missile infantry like English longbows or Trezibond archers holding a high-ground redoubt elsewhere on the map. The skirmishers draw the enemy in, but the enemy can't get too close to the redoubt without drawing missile fire they can't answer, allowing me to control the field and whittle down their force to manageable proportions for the later melee engagement.

With all-missile cavalry armies, I like to run around the enemy in circles with the "fire at will" button on. It forces them to spend time turning, and sometimes exposes their shieldless side for extra damage. Once I run out of ammo, provided it isn't smarter to retreat, I let a fraction of the force charge the enemy position and bring the rest of my force around to hit their rear while they're distracted.

In MTW2, i use cheats to get monster ribault. In a battle I get 3-6 of them and have them fire on the enemy with barrage on. It kills alot of them but i got for general/captains unit then target the rest. When Im out of ammo, I send the rest in.:laugh4:

Horse Archers for me. Always. I simply love them.

Thing is, they beat the crap out of almost every other unit what with their shooting circle and speed. You can also almost always bring them around the back of the enemy to shoot them from behind, making HA much more effective than foot archers (and they can't be trapped by cavalry that easily).

In general though, I usually use whichever army I feel is strongest for the faction. With England, I'll use armies that are really Longbow-heavy and devise strategies for that, with Milan I'll be on the Genoese spree, with Spain I'll be all Jinetes and with the Egyptians you'll see me using Naffatun and Hashashim to a large extent.
Furthermore, the core of my army often consists of cheap infantry which I'll use to pin the enemy, just as in MTW, while I charge them from behind or shoot at them. I almost never focus completely on one kind of units because I hate losing battles and really focusing often makes you vulnerable to certain kinds of armies.