Split troops

[Tony Furze]

It's general piece of advice to keep your army unified on the attack (?).

So do you ever use a split troops attack? ie divide into 2 or more groups to attack from different sides?

I ve done it with two bridges and succeeded.

Just tried with the Egyptians in Morrocco, kind of a pincer movement experiment against the almos. I ended up with heavy casualties and an undignified withdrawal...Getting (or got) rusty, I suspect.

[Ironside]

8. It is the rule in war, if our forces are ten
to the enemy's one, to surround him; if five to one,
to attack him; if twice as numerous, to divide our army
into two.
9. If equally matched, we can offer battle;
if slightly inferior in numbers, we can avoid the enemy;
if quite unequal in every way, we can flee from him.
Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Says it all basically.

And that is that splitting your forces in half vs an equal opponent is extremely risky, as you'll be outnumbered if the halves are too far from eachother and if they're too close, then you don't really split your army.

The counter is to attack one half and destroy it before the other half can engage (or how to deafeat 2 stacks in the later TW games) or leave a rearguard for cover. Or to put a number example:

Two armies 50%, 50%. vs one army 100%
You counter assult one of the 50% with 80-90% or your forces, while 10-20% works as rear guard. If successful you've destroyed one 50% army with your troops mainly intact, while perhaps losing your rearguard. Even if you've taken much more losses destroying his 50% vs his losses destroying that 20% rearguard, you still end up with 60% vs 45% and you have the defensive position you've just conquered.

It might work if you've got plenty of cav, but the main reason with splitting up forces is to get him to engage all his forces and then attack with the reserve in the back. If your front cannot provide this opportunity, then you've weakened yourself.

[Trapped in Samsara]

Hi

Just to add to what Ironside wrote, there's a decent (but concise) description of Napoleon's employment of 'the strategy of the central position', with an illustration in the form of the Waterloo campaign, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_strategy.

If you're up for some serious reading in this aspect of military strategy get a copy of 'Napoleon At Bay, 1814' by F. Loraine Petre. Talk about having your back against a wall and putting up a fight! IMHO this was Boney at his finest.

As for MTW battles, I rarely split my forces until late in the game when I'm (typically) waltzing around with +4 weapon and armour upgrades and hence confident my lads can beat the sh!t out of anything the AI can engage them with. Otherwise I find that, because I'm too slow at jumping from group to group, I sustain much higher casualties than I ought to. Which really annoys me.

The one exception to the above is in the use of skirmish-capable cav. I'll often create, say, a two unit detachment of HAs or similar and tell them to harass one of the AI's flank units, in the hope (regularly fulfilled) that the AI will send one or more units chasing after my boys, so (over)extending and/or disordering his line.

Best regards
Victor

[Roark]

Tony, I think with a double-bridge battlefield (where you're on the offensive), you've at least gotta give it a go. You're almost obliged to, for the sake of your main army who are waiting for something (ANYTHING) to happen to allow them to assault. I mean, the enemy's forces are split too...

I find that you either need fast cavalry to try and squeeze through over the bridge before the enemy plugs the gap, or really REALLY heavy cavalry (like Lancers or V2 Armenians) to punch through the enemy, and then run for your life and try to create some space between you and the enemy.

Once you've got some near-full-strength cavalry over the bridge, things become a bit easier. They can harass the enemy's second force and make things generally difficult. You might then be able to push some infantry over to make a mini-battleline and build from there.

It beats the meat-grinder approach on the main bridge any day.

[Mithrandir]

I've split up my armies into 2 on several occasions (online MP Almohads), where I'd split my infantry from my cavalry, save 2 or 3 camel units. The cavalry would ride to the far right or left while the infantry would take the center or the other flank.

The enemy now has to divert his attention and split his army up. when the infantry attacks, the cavalry can either attack from the back or ride around and directly support the infantry. The camels are there to ensure no cavalry can make it to the infantry.

It works in several ways: it disorganises the enemies army (they'll probably put all their spears to one side which will hastily have to be returned to their original positions once the cav rides around them to support the infantry) and it leaves the initiative up to you most of the time. Your infantry is safe thanks to the camels, your cavalry is safe thanks to their speed.

[O'Hea]

It's important to remember that to win, the main thing you need is local superiority- you don't need to be winning everywhere, you just need to be winning by a large enough margin in one specific point. This is the principle that allows a smaller force to defeat a larger one.

Sun Tzu's advice on the matter is a description of the exceptions to the rule. When you have a large enough advantage in numbers and/or quality, dividing your forces presents new threats to the enemy without presenting them with a weakness they can exploit, and can thus deprive them of their mobility and force a surrender.

It is also said that you should "march divided and fight concentrated," the idea being that concentrating your forces on the move makes them easier to isolate and harder to supply.

[Axalon]

?

Hi guys... Am I missing something here? Why would you not want to split your forces Tony? I mean, is it not what cavalry in MTW are used for?!? I guess it all boils down to command-style and available troops, but I do it all the time, it certainly seems that I am not the only one either. I would imagine that things would get more difficult as well as friendly-casualties would probably increase otherwise (especially at heavy odds, which are the usual standard for me at least). Maybe it's just silly 'ol me...

- Cheers

[caravel]

Splitting to use 'hammer and anvil' tactics is normal every day stuff. Splitting into two distinct army groups operating independently is a whole other matter. You should probably only do this if you have overwhelming numbers where you don't need to use your whole force to defeat the enemy.

Splitting into two army groups will also incur morale penalties for those units that are not in the general's group (i.e. they will be too far away to receive the morale bonus). It will also mean less units to protect each others flanks and thus: more morale penalties. So really unless it's a dual bridge assault or some cavalry maneuovres (i.e. HA skirmishes or chasing routers) it's best to keep the main army together: Strength in numbers.

[macsen rufus]

On the scale of the typical MTW battlefield, I generally don't split forces, but there are exceptions, and it really boils down to specifics of a particular battle... as ever, universal 'rules' don't apply

And of course it depends on faction, army composition etc. With a strong HA faction (like Turks) then I might have a forward wave of HAs to break up the enemy formation before the tough guys get in there... and the classic hammer/anvil will always have a place, but whether that really counts as 'dividing' your forces is debatable, as it's a tactical application of the 'march divided, fight united' principle.

In double bridge battles a few cavalry units running between the bridges can be a great tactic as the enemy runs from bridge to bridge whilst your archers are ranged along the bank between bridges. But that's evil....