Battles - how to win big with equal numbers?

[phonicsmonkey]

No, unfortunately I'm not going to tell you how to do this (hence the question mark) - instead I'm looking for a bit of help from you guys.

I consider myself a fairly experienced TW player but I'm really struggling to meaningfully win battles in this game so far.

It's wrecking my campaigns because while I'm on top of the economic management side of things and I'm keeping up with my neighbouring factions in terms of army size and composition I keep getting my sorry self kicked on the battlefield, leaving me wide open to invasion.

It's (very) possible I might just need more practice but I thought - why not ask my orgah buddies for some help?

My issue, I think, is that I have become addicted, through many many hours spent playing RTW and M2TW, to cavalry charges as a way of winning battles and inflicting massive casualties on the enemy for very little loss of my own. Clearly this is not going to work in this game as cavalry are more realistically balanced and in the early game appear next to useless except for taking out bow ashigaru and chasing down routers.

So, would you mind posting some tips for me as to how to win battles against equal or greater odds and maybe this thread can become a tactical resource for other players like me who are having trouble?

(BTW I'm playing on campaign VH or H and battles Normal difficulty)

[Centurion1]

i play vh vh

i can give you two tips that net me heroic victories mostly.

A. kill the general. you do this you win it matters more than in any other tw game to date.
B. archers. you win the archer fight you win the battle. my traditional army in sp now is about 6 teched up to the brim archers with three infantry units to engage the line (what survives the field of death) a couple cavalry to deal with the guaranteed mass rout and a general.

[Dead Guy]

A cheap way to win big: Have more Samurai than Ashigaru ;)

If you're on the defensive and can find a nice hill, that's a guaranteed way to win big too, of course. I think the bonus you get from fighting downhill is pretty huge.

The key factor, imo, is to have the rock to his scissors, switching out units in the army to match the enemy army. This is hard to do of course, without serious scouting ahead, and not very feasible economically. If you're up against an all archer stack, you want to be heavy on the cavalry side. If you're facing only infantry, there's less need for cavalry and if you're facing a lot of cavalry, you want a lot of spears (duh).

I tend to win costly victories when my balanced stack comes up against a very biased stack and I for some reason fail to use my advantages and/or allow the AI to use the advantage of focusing on one kind of troop type. If you field balanced armies it's absolutely key to fight cavalry heavy armies in a forest, distract archer hordes with flanking cavalry while the infantry closes the distance without getting completely annihilated etc.

Other than that I don't know... Use the Inspire ability well? I like the Stand and Fight ability a lot, it's wonderful when you've parked your army on a hill. Your archers reload faster and your infantry gets a bonus to attack.

I've played a bit with splitting my force into two when the AI has allowed it. Basically, I was the attacker and the AI camped on a hill. He had fewer archers, but I didn't want to just engage him head on anyway, so I put all my archers out on a flank so they came at his hill on top of another forested hill. I put spears and two katanas behind them, and then a strong line of katanas and naginatas in front of the AI but some distance away. By moving my troops closer/further away from him on either side and hiding/revealing the archers in the forest I got the AI to constantly change his position at a run, tiring his troops out so the sandals by their banners were red or deep orange before the melee eventually began. By then I had managed to get some free volleys in from the archers on his flank. Major win. The tiring out part is a bit cheap though.

[Monk]

A cheap way to win big: Have more Samurai than Ashigaru ;)

That's not cheap, that's just stacking for quality!

I think it goes without saying, if your army consists mainly of Ashigaru you're going to suffer a lot of losses. Even in relatively 'clean' victories, expect to lose 50+ men per unit on large settings.

[Dead Guy]

That's not cheap, that's just stacking for quality!

Lol, guess I should've written "An expensive way to win big:" eh? =)

But yeah, the raw number of men lost can be a bit misleading. Ashigaru die easily (like other men, as the romans would no doubt say)

[Rothe]

I definitely agree on the Rock, Paper and Scissors being key.

For instance, if I see an enemy stack with tons of katana samurai, I try to reinforce my army with something else than spear troops. Naginata will lose head-to-head vs. katana, but with a good amount of archers you should be able to beat a katana heavy army. Having my line with lots of yari ashigaru and yari samurai would just be suicide.

It is kind of counter-intuitive, but I think that naginata are really good just because they are not biased. I can have a core of naginata infantry and just swap out some "auxiliary" troops to match my enemy's stack if I have time. That way, I can keep most of my troops standardized, but still I can respond to most threats. My Chosokabe armies tend to have 8 archers, 4-5 naginata, and the rest is usually a mix of ashigaru and flanking forces (monks, katana) or special use units (yari samurai, cavalry). Obviously I am archer heavy because Chokosabe gets a bonus for that.

[phonicsmonkey]

So the main message I'm getting from this is: have more archers.

Secondarily, if they have more archers use cavalry to run them down.

Anyone had any luck with horse archers? One unit of those routed my katana samurai with a couple of volleys from behind...

[xploring]

Use your agents to help you before the battles begin? They can be very powerful if you leveled them up.

[andrewt]

So the main message I'm getting from this is: have more archers.

Secondarily, if they have more archers use cavalry to run them down.

Anyone had any luck with horse archers? One unit of those routed my katana samurai with a couple of volleys from behind...

I haven't been impressed so far with horse archers. They're best used as weak archers that can chase down enemy routers.

They have multiple problems:
1. They're more expensive than samurai archers.

2. Their reload rate sucks. The only way to get your bang for your buck is to send them skirmishing early, which brings up the next problem.

3. Skirmish is bad. They tend to run towards the edge of the map, where they'll get trapped and slaughtered. It's also a pain to control other horse archers to shoot the pursuing cavalry. You have to manually turn off skirmish mode (since it overrides instructions), tell them to run towards your main force, turn back skirmish mode after they're safe already. If you don't have skirmish mode on, infantry will slaughter them when you are busy somewhere else. Having yari cavalry escorting them all the time is a micromanagement nightmare, since yari cavalry have no skirmish against infantry.

4. They don't outrun generals and katana cav so even these can keep your horse archers occupied until they're trapped in the corner of the map.

5. They're only really useful against armies with no cavalry and not enough foot archers to protect all their flanks. And to chase down routers.

[Rothe]

Killing the general is a sure way to win. I even consider it a bit of a "cheap" tactic and I avoid targeting enemy generals with archers for this reason - call it "honourable" or whatever.

Archers are quite important to take into account. When defending, you can kill a lot of enemies with archers alone and routing them after a good barrage should be pretty easy. Assaulting, you have to take care to avoid archer fire (loose formation when closing) and plan for it in the strategy side to have a good mix of units to counter it.

Flanking is key to getting a chain rout, which is the way to reduce your casualties.

My plan usually is to close the melee ranks with defensive units like naginata and some ashigaru, and then flank with katana and naginata monk units, perhaps cavalry if I can fit it into the budget. The naginata monks are great for flanking, as they have the battle cry ability - flank and after a short while use that ability and you should be able to rout ashigaru and even some samurai units - shooting a few arrows into the mix will make it even better, but try to avoid the monks as they have low armor.

To avoid casualties, the flanking move should be happening quite fast. I sometimes even use yari samurai flanking if I lack monks because they are quite fast. Also, in the flanks, they tend to be quite good protection vs. enemy cavalry.

I find most of my casualties are coming from enemy archer fire and the ashigaru I lose when I close ranks with the enemy. Ashigaru are cheap, so I have some in a reserve stack to stock up my army after the fight and I leave the surviving ashigaru to restock.