What Battle Tactics work for you?

[Fisherking]

This is where we learn from one another.

There are any number of approaches that work and I thought it would be interesting to here how you find it best to fight your enemies.



I try to use combined arms. I usually try to have a couple of batteries each of cannon and howitzers, four or so light dragoons, a couple or three of light infantry, and the rest line infantry with maybe a general thrown in. I don’t find straight cavalry all that useful as it lacks the firepower and flexibility of light dragoons. When playing a faction without light dragoons I try to use a missile cavalry.

I have not used mortars much since 1.1 and regardless of how you target them I find it almost imposable to hit the enemy. Sometimes they can do a good job on your own troops though.

Also, in the current form, I find auto-resolve to be wasteful of troops at the best and usually so slanted toward the AI it is best not to use it if the enemy has more than two units vs. half a stack or so.

[Didz]

I take great care in the placement of my artillery and the TROM mod has corrected the trajectory of guns so that poor placement renders them useless, whilst good placement makes them battle winners.

Having placed my guns, the infantry are deployed to support the batteries in a single line. Any reserve brigades are placed well to the rear with 'fire at will' turned off to avoid friendly fire.

Cavalry are placed on the flanks and slightly to the rear of the infantry line, usually with clear and unobstructured ground to their front if possible, so that they are not disorganised if they need to charge.

Battle opens with a long range artillery barrage, usually aimed at silencing the enemies guns.

Once their guns are silent the enemy army has no choice but to advance and try to close to within musketry range of my line. My artillery bombards them as they move forward, and switches to cannister once they are within range. At that point my infantry will step forward if necessary and join the fight, trading volleys with the enemy.

If one of my infantry battalions becomes too depleted, or expends all its amunition then a reserve battalion is sent forward and a passage of line conducted to replace it, before the new battalions 'Fire at will' is switched on to continue the fire fight.

The cavalry will occassionallly be used to flank the enemy battle line, or sent in deep to finish off the enemy artillery, however its main purpose is to fend off any enemy cavalry trying to flank our line and to chase down and scatter routing enemy units.

I don't use mortars as they were never used in battle and so have been reomved from my game. Howitzers will sometimes be placed behind the centre of the main battle line to fire shell over their heads. Light troops if any will normally operate on the flanks of the line screening the cavalry.

I rarely use fortifications and obsticles except to disrupt the enemy formations particuarly cavalry who suffer considerable loss of cohesion if forced to cross them.

And thats about it really.

[Fisherking]

@ Didz

So what does your troop mix break down into?

You have all arms but emphasize the cannon. How many are in your ideal stack and of what types?

edit: As to mortars not being used, I think you have jumped too quick to that assumption.

Small coherns were used a great deal, particularly in North America. The 4 inch is what is in the game and not the big 10 to 13 inch models.

They were man portable and didn’t need wagons for transport. They have not been given movement points in the game but I can only guess as to the reasons but at times they were the only artillery employed. Though the game version now renders them a little worse than useless.

[aimlesswanderer]

I mostly have line inf. A typical stack will be approx 10-14 LI, 3-4 cavalry, 1-2 artillery, and a general. Once I get light inf I normally cut a few LI and have a few light inf.

Unless they have piles of artillery, LI will, once you get bayonets, be good against everything. Cavalry keep enemy cavalry at bay, chase down routers and finish off artillery, and my artillery harass the enemy into coming after me or sitting and getting pounded. Light inf are good for getting the enemy to move into rang of the LI.

A few cavalry are a must or else the buggers just run off and come back again and again. Autocalc means that you need to chase the remnants half way around the world a few times. But fighting a battle against 3 units each turn is just a waste of time.

[Fisherking]

In the early version of the game I experimented with all horse stacks and they faired quite well.
They were light dragoons with 4 horse artillery and one straight cavalry unit throne in.


That was at a time when cash was almost inexhaustible and upkeep much lower however. They did surprisingly well in auto resolve also. I have noticed that cavalry do remarkably well in some auto resolve situations though, especially heavy cavalry.

[White_eyes:D]

One thing I learned as the United Provinces in the early going (1-20 turns), always use what you have at hand.

[MasterPhantom]

I try using infantry as much as possible. Cavalry really doesn't do much in game. It's good to screw up light inf and to flank during melee, but otherwise, it is useless.

[Fisherking]

I find cavalry useful. It is a quick way to rid your self of enemy artillery. It will draw away infantry from the battle line. Particularly light dragoons are great for putting infantry into a square while they pound them with gunfire and hold them until the infantry arrives. Not to mention what they can do with routers. Also most missile cavalry has better accuracy than line units.

Dragoons, and especially light dragoons are very flexible in battle and often give better than what they get. Just don’t charge them into a square and watch infantry they are attacking to be sure they do not form a square. (that part should be too late to matter irl but in the game having horsemen among the infantry doesn’t matter and the squares are deadly to horsemen. As dragoon types are also excellent for garrisoning cities they are my most used cavalry.

Still half my army is infantry of some sort or other. I like light infantry a lot too. They are worth their weight in gold in the attack. I send them forward of the line to engage the enemy line before the regulars arrive. If the enemy does not close then they take a pounding. If they do then the line is near to take over and the lights move to the wings to continue their damage, but backed up by cavalry. They take higher losses then the line but they are cheaper to build and replace. I usually find three of them a good number to work with.

[GFX707]

Tactics? I don't really use them in this game as I don't need to.

I usually just slap the line infantry in the centre as cannon fodder and try the old double envelopment. Not very imaginative but then again I don't have to be as I always outnumber the enemy in ETW anyway. The tactical game moves far too fast to do anything realistic. Most of the time (especially towards the late game) I outnumber the enemy so much I just use auto-resolve.

In previous titles I liked to "blitzkrieg" and pick a weak spot, ram the heavy cavalry through and flank while the infantry engages the front, which would usually result in fast annihilation but I haven't really found a way to do that in this game.

[Xipe Totec]

Once I get howitzers all hell breaks loose. Half a dozen howitzer units or more kills everything. In buildings, behind walls, in woods, behind hills, in fortresses: nowhere is safe from massed exploding / carcass / quick lime / percussion shells. Infantry kills everything that tries to get at the front / flanks of my artillery. Cavalry kills everything that tries to attack the rear / flanks of my artillery. Sometimes I finish up occupied buildings with bayoneting line infantry rather than artillery because they get easy chevrons that way.

[Fisherking]

humm... double envelopment is a term used by, and a tactic that the US Marines think they invented...most people call it a pincer movement. And yes lord, it is a tactic.

In fact all that cannon fodder in the middle is the base of fire while the maneuver units crush the flanks.

Now as to the howitzers, I guess if you target one unit at a time with six of those bad boys it could ruin your whole day, being on the receiving end of that kind of e-mail (e being explosive).

The trouble I have had with using artillery on the attack is the slow movement rate and finding good positions. But since you bring it up I will have to try it at least one time.

on the defense I am sure it would work with an all cannon army. Just put them in a circle and set them all to canister.

[Prussian to the Iron]

early game i use:

1 general
2 heavy cavalry
6 horse arty
12 infantry

late game i usually have:

1 general
2 heavy cavalry
3 mortars
3 rockets/howitzers
5-11 elite infantry
0-6 infantry

[GFX707]

humm... double envelopment is a term used by, and a tactic that the US Marines think they invented...most people call it a pincer movement. And yes lord, it is a tactic.

OK, you got me there. It's still not really trying though, is it?

I think Hannibal got to the double envelopment about 2000 years before the US marines did.

[Hooahguy]

i use combined arms. arty in center, infantry on the flanks, cavalry on the far flanks. the enemy usually charges straight into the cannons, where i shred as many as possible before i send my arty men to retreat, and the enemy usually pursue. my infantry are positioned on the sides, so its like a funnel. the enemy is funneled into a kill zone. before they realize whats happening, its too late for many of them. of course, you have the times when they dont follow my plan, but when that happens i just bring the intantry up. doesnt take too long, and i send my elites to guiard the flanks so they can hold a while.
my cavalry are on the flanks so when the enemy cavalry and infantry are charging into the funnel to get slaughtered, my cavalry rides around and takes out the enemy arty.
its like the double evelopment, but with a way to funnel to pick off the enemy as they run towards the routing arty men.
of course there is the risk that they will overtake my arty men.
heres a pic:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Prussian to the Iron]

theres a great tactic called a 'v formation', where you put your men in a very shallow 'v', with arty at the vertex.

in campaign, it doesnt work as well, because the a.i. likes to mass its 4-unit-pikemen armies and charge them into 1 unit on the flank, before it gets torn to pieces.

in MP though, it is great. the enemy player just walks right up, all jolly and crap. unless your opponent specifically charges yur arty, you can probably keep them in position, or retreat them just far back enough that they cant advance without going into melee with 2 units.

[Fisherking]

Hannibal did indeed use pincer movements a little while before there were US Marines.

The Zulu used something like it too and called it the horns of the bull, but there were was a Marine Corps by then.

Also those defensive V formations are a kind of variant of the same theme.

Today it is known as drawing the enemy into a kill sack. It is envelopment by fire.

It works best if the flanking forces are hidden and the force at the base is basically bait.

To attack that formation I would try to envelope one of the wings to the rear and attack the flank. Hold back a maneuver force to take advantage of developments.

In all likelihood the enemy would bring other forces up to support the flank and disrupt his battle plan. Then the reserve force can be committed to best effect, or you can withdraw and spring your own trap when he is in disarray.

Of course the axiom goes: No plan ever survives first contact with the enemy....

[Prussian to the Iron]

ah, but that saying is wrong. it should go:

No plan ever survives first contact with the enemy....unless it is semi-retarded a.i. that falls right for your traps.

The Zulu used something like it too and called it the horns of the bull,

looks like someone watched history channel....

Also those defensive V formations are a kind of variant of the same theme.

not in the least. the formation i am talking about is almost exclusively a way to incorporate artillery into your line, unless using howitzers, mortars, or rockets. it has nothing to do with flanking, but the way i do it (with a unit of infantry facing straight at each end of every 'V', i suppose you could flank. but unless your arty has already retreated behind your lines, the canister would kill your own men.

basically, they just walk in. thats as simple as it gets. what i think you're not getting is just how shallow the 'V's are. they are too shallow to flank effectively, but te crossfire is very effective.

[Fisherking]

Much has been said about the French Tactic of Attacking Columns. Breaking the line and flooding the rear. It worked against the Armies of Europe but the British used massed fires to defeat it.

The preparatory barrage was defeated by reverse slope defense. While most anything will work vs. the AI some work better than others.

I have never had the opportunity to use most of the field fortifications in the game. Just simple entrenchments and stakes.

Has anyone had opportunity to use the mines? Are they effective?


@ Prussian Iron,

I wish I was watching the History Channel!

Did they have something good on this?

I’ve been in upper Bavaria for the last 5 years or so and we don’t get much TV in English here.

I’ve got to look into Sky TV soon...

[Didz]

@ Didz

So what does your troop mix break down into?

You have all arms but emphasize the cannon. How many are in your ideal stack and of what types?

Ideally, I try and produce a mix based upon a brigade formation of three infantry regiments, one artillery battery and one cavalry unit. But depending on the faction and the period this will be supplemented by irregulars and howitzers.

Typically, my late armies will have three batteries of guns, one or two howtizer batteries, three or four cavalry/dragoon regiments, one or two irregular units and the rest line infantry.

I limit my use of grenadiers to as close to 1:10 ratio as I can, and rarely recruit guard units except in my capital. I would only consider using mortars, if seiges were modelled correctly and my army had a seige train, and as they aren't, and don't, its easier to switch them off.

[Didz]

Much has been said about the French Tactic of Attacking Columns. Breaking the line and flooding the rear. It worked against the Armies of Europe but the British used massed fires to defeat it.

Whether this was actually the French intention, and whether it worked is still a matter of quite heated debate amongst both historians and wargamers alike. It actually dove tails with the other major controversy of the Napoleonic period which centres on whether troops really tried to use their bayonets for anything other than cooking, and finishing off the wounded after the battle.

The alternative view, which I actually beleive to be more plausible, is that the French used columns to close with the enemy battle line as rapidly as possible, with the intention of forming line if they met with serious opposition.

Letters written by French soldiers and officers suggest that there was an explicit intention to make these rapid column movements as intimidating as possible with the intention of causing a similar morale effect on the enemy as that imposed by the advance of cavalry. Therefore, there was a lot of noise and drumming involved which usually induced the enemy to fire on the column far to early and the resulting lack of effect merely compounded the morale effect, such that the vast majority of european infantry began to give ground long before the column got to the point that it needed to deploy into line. Under those circumstances the columns would indeed keep advancing and pursue the retreating infantry line which could not escape fast enough and thus just fell apart.

The problems for the French column arose mainly on occassions when their intimidation tactic's failed to result in a panicked response. If the defending line was disciplined and it officers experienced enough to ignore the column until it was close enough for musketry to be effective, the usual result was disasterous for the column. It would usually try to deploy into line, however, if this was left too late as was normally the case the fire being poured into it would render any such manoeuvre extremely difficult, and the British often added to the problems by making a sudden rush at the column whilst it was still trying to deploy catching it in a semi-confused state and panicing the men into spontaneous rout.

However, it didn't always fail. At Waterloo D'Erlons right hand column actually managed to weather the fire of the Scottish Regiment it faced and was in the process of pursuing it across the line of the Chemin d'Ohain still in column, so that Ponsonby's Cavalry Brigade were forced to advance to stablise the line and give the British infantry a chance to regroup and reform.

[Fisherking]

Intimidation is a good place to start. The mass of troops looking unstoppable and the pounding of the drums would have a definite effect on most anyone.

If you can make the rank and file fear you then you have likely already won.

As to the vaunted bayonet charge, it must have been used in much the same way, as there were seldom defenders standing stalwart to receive it.

On the other hand, I have read more than one example of troops running out of ammunition and rather than resort to the bayonet they preferred to throw stones.

No tactic works all of the time in every situation, nor do they fail always. They are all situational.

A good commander has to be good a guessing what to use when.

Thank goodness this is a game free of the constraints of wrote doctrine and tactical shackles.

[pevergreen]

In a completely realistic situation, i would do the same as didz in the second post, but since this is a game, pound them with arty then charge with line inf. You take less casualties in melee.

[Didz]

I think the most telling example of the reluctance to resort to cold steel was the one I found in Mark Urbans book on the rifles, where one of the riflemen relates an incident that occurred whilst he was looting the dead after a battle.

He was bending over a corpse going through its pockets when a Frenchman less than ten yards away who was doing likewise suddenly decided to take a shot at him. The shot missed and the Frenchman started hurriedly trying to reload his musket. The Rifleman's rifle was not loaded and all logic would have suggested that he ought to attack the Frenchman with his bayonet. Instead, a bizarre race ensued as to who could reload the fastest and several shots later the Frenchman finally gave up and ran off.

[antisocialmunky]

I would have chalked that up to not really trying hard. Who really wants to fight to the death over a corpse?

[Prussian to the Iron]

Has anyone had opportunity to use the mines? Are they effective?


@ Prussian Iron,

I wish I was watching the History Channel!

Did they have something good on this?

my Engineers get improved fougases (mines), and i have found that, unless massed, it is almost impossible to find the right place to put them. the enemy allmost never hits them, but when they do, oh man, that will wreck them so badly. especially the one that explodes, sends grenades into the air, then thos explode when they hit the ground.

not really' good', but they did have an hour about zulu formations, tactics, and weaponry.

He was bending over a corpse going through its pockets when a Frenchman less than ten yards away who was doing likewise suddenly decided to take a shot at him. The shot missed and the Frenchman started hurriedly trying to reload his musket. The Rifleman's rifle was not loaded and all logic would have suggested that he ought to attack the Frenchman with his bayonet. Instead, a bizarre race ensued as to who could reload the fastest and several shots later the Frenchman finally gave up and ran off.

........thats.....uhhhh........weird. i wonder why? with bullets, either may or may not die. with bayonet, hes gonna kill that frenchie while hes reloading.

BTW: that seem to be the a.i.'s stance in E:TW, only it takes it religiously.

I would have chalked that up to not really trying hard. Who really wants to fight to the death over a corpse?

it wasnt the corpse as much as the fact that he had a chance to kill an enemy.

[Fisherking]

When it comes to bayonets it seems an act of shear desperation to charge in the face of the enemy with a knife on the end of your weapon.

The enemy usually ran before you got there but if they gave you a volley on the way you just might not make it.

With the advent of fire arms men seldom looked into the eyes of the man they were trying to kill. That takes a much different mind set and a different kind of courage. It is much more disturbing to spit someone on the end of those than it is to shoot him, even if he is only yards away...and how does a rifleman miss at 10 yards? Fear?!


@ Prussian Iron,

Some day I may get to use improved fougases but the AI never seems to attack my stationary armies.

[Prussian to the Iron]

with the bayonet thing i meant that 1 example, not all warfare.

anyway:

the best way to get to use defenses is to seige a city, then sit there. either on or before the last turn before surrendering, they will counter-attack.

BTW: what vanilla units can use improved fougase?

[Fisherking]

with the bayonet thing i meant that 1 example, not all warfare.

anyway:

the best way to get to use defenses is to seige a city, then sit there. either on or before the last turn before surrendering, they will counter-attack.

BTW: what vanilla units can use improved fougase?

Light Infantry units to include rifles but I never remember seeing the option, but that doesn't mean a lot.


edit:by the way, how close can your units safely be to them? Behind them of course!

[Prussian to the Iron]

haha, thats funny. I'm pretty sure Arty can also get normal fougasses, you just can't see it.

perhaps guard units?

[resonantblue]

Unlesss I'm in a siege defence situation, I pretty much always attack, even if an enemy stack attacks me.

My usual stack consists of:

1x General
1x Horse Artillery
2x Lancers/Uhlans
2x Cuirassers
1x Light Infantry/Jaegers/Skirmishers
6x Infantry, Line or whatever is available.


If I used a full stack it would look like this usually:

1x General
3x Horse Artillery
2x Lancers/Uhlans
4x Cuirassers
2x Light Infantry/Jaegers/Skirmishers
8x Infantry, Line or whatever is available.

Tactics depend on composition of enemy army and the situation at hand, but my usual MO is to attain local superiority somewhere (usually a flank), overload it and rout it, then rolll up the rest of the line. If I gain an enemy flank, one of my favourite things to do is to limber up my horse artillery and wait until the rest of the enemy line turns to face the main threat, run my horse arty behind them and unleash cannister into their backs.

I dislike tactics that give up the initiative to the enemy by sitting around and waiting. That also never works against a human opponent anyways.