Advantage: Defense

[Oleander Ardens]

It is of course a complex question and Clausewitz did treat it as such. From the text I quoted already:

In tactics every combat, great or small, is defensive if we leave the initiative to the enemy, and wait for his appearance in our front. From that moment forward we can make use of all offensive means without losing the said two advantages of the defence, namely, that of waiting for, and that of ground. In strategy, at first, the campaign represents the battle, and the theatre of war the position; but afterwards the whole war takes the place of the campaign, and the whole country that of the theatre of war, and in both cases the defensive remains that which it was in tactics.

Not that this suits also modern warfare equally well. In three overlapping layers called strategic, operational and tactical offense and defense are interacting. They always uniquely twistend and intertwined. One can be in the strategic (and operational) defensive form and as well be on the tactical offensive one in many locations - as in the Volkskrieg, popular uprising or Napoleon's campaign in 1814 which ended with his Waterloo.

Personally I always had the interpretation that the TW games favored the aggressive offense on the campaign (strategy) map and tactical defense on the (tactical) battlemap. While the "interception" on the campain map strenghens the strategic defense and strenghens and weakens the strategic offense the ability to entrench increases the advantages of a tactical defensive posture.


A deeper discussion should take place in the monastery.