Tactics in R:TW?

[Adrian II]

In trying to decide whether or not to order R:TW, I have managed to break down all the complaints and hoorrays so far into a few categories. Category one is made up of all the possible bugs, most of which will likely be sorted out by tweaks, patches and the like. Number two is strategy, this aspect seems to be brilliant as compared to STW and MTW, including diplomacy. Number three is tactics, and I'm hearing very little about this. Do the massed battles, sieges and manifold units allow for sophisticated tactics similar to MTW? What about the role of Cavalry, what about flanking, running battles, horse archers. C'mon, tell me all about it, guys. From the battlefield management of those wardogs to the trajectory of elephant droppings, let's have it.

[Silver Rusher]

Well, I don't have the game, so I don't know, but...

Order it anyway!!! Come on, the tactics are only improved from MTW. There are city sieges, and unique abilities for units, etc. etc. etc.

[Quietus]

Adrian,

Single player campaign is a big winner!! The only major quirk I don't really like is the uber-speed and killing power (particularly when routing. Whole Units disappear). I guess they did this because you can't ransom anymore. Face to face though it is ok. Cavalry flanking is powerful especially your general's.

Sieges are 5x better than MTW. About 3x better than Shogun. And this is based on average barbarian towns. I haven't seen the big settlements yet. The only problem with the sieges are the siege machines. It quite some time before you tech up to those. You can only lay siege to an enclosed settlement if you have a siege unit. Level 3 tech is minimum for ballista.

However for every 1 turn (during siege) your besieging army is allowed to construct a siege weapon. Your army is allocated points and each siege unit point is deducted from the total. Right now I'm about to storm a settlement. I have 170 points. Battering ram is 50 points (the only one option active in the option so far). After 1 turn sieging, I get a ram and I can break the gates and 120 points left.

Battles are a lot more fun than MTW ironically. One reason is because units are scarce. You can't build like crazy because they get deducted from your small population. Population is tied to the tech levels. You have to reach a certain population before you are allowed to build up in tech. So, it is sort of a negative-feedback-loop to balance the game and curb rushing.

You should see the tech tree first, Your troops will be really limited early. I'm using my General, Hastati, Town Watch,an Equites and a single Archer that I got at the start. Archers are level 3 tech unit. My units are mostly Hastati and Town Watch which are glorified peasants I only have a single 10-12 unit army. You can't build too many units like MTW because you will be broke in the first place and your population cut so bad you won't progress through the tech tree. Hope that gives you an insight.

[Adrian II]

Cavalry flanking is powerful especially your general's. Sieges are 5x better than MTW.

Thanks for your elaborate answer, Quietus! Finally we're getting some beef here. Sounds great.

[Adrian II]

OK, this is day 2 of RTW and I've hit some bad turbulence while reading the boards.
1. Is this a Cavalry game where the horses are running on crack and "to flank or not to flank" is your only question?
2. Is it true the AI is scripted to only attack head-on, and that your (AI-controlled) allies are suicidal maniacs?

Will somebody please tell me this just my Sunday morning blues while I help myself to a third cup of coffee?

[Quietus]

OK, this is day 2 of RTW and I've hit some bad turbulence while reading the boards.
1. Is this a Cavalry game where the horses are running on crack and "to flank or not to flank" is your only question?
2. Is it true the AI is scripted to only attack head-on, and that your (AI-controlled) allies are suicidal maniacs?

Hey Adrian,

1. Initially you really get crappy troops. You have to flank to win. I guess it depends on the units too. Gaul units especially the Warbands, first yell like crazy (to lower your morale) then chaaaarrge!!!. The only thing you can do is charge back and flank with cav or other units. (missiles are pretty much worthless due to speed) Although missiles will work very effectively vs. Hoplites (they walk slow and can't run). Again, like I said you can't build a lot of troops or you'll go broke. I hired a hoplites merc out of necessity and they are sloooowww.

Right now it is in the 250s, and I have about 41000+ denari. Looks big, but if a war erupts among the Roman factons it ain't going to last. Hastati upkeep is 170 denari, Town watch is 110, so you get the picture on. In a couple more turns I will be building Principes. Hopefully those are better shock absorbers.

As for Equites only army (54 per unit), you'll lose alot of money because they only good for flanking. You charge them head-on against a warband(120) they won't last very long. Regular price for Equites(54) is 390 denari, Hastati(80) is 440d, while Town Watch(80) is 150d. You gotta find a cheap upkeep army that will be comparably durable. Romans aren't horsemen either so it is inaccurate ( the major reason I don't use too many horses).

2. For friendly AI, they go suicidal. Early in the game, I stormed a Gallic town, one of my family member general was included in the reinforcement. He charged alone on the other side of the town and got slaughtered. You can control AI reinforcement though if it isn't led by a General, just a captain (and your 20 slot isn't full). Generals must be a family member. I have done it a number of times it has become a tactic When I can't, I just try to beat the friendly AI to the battle so the General won't get killed. They just walk.

For enemy AI, have only fought the Gaul & Rebel armies so far. All they do is charge, no missiles as far as I know. AI Cavalry is so fast you gotta pause because weave in and out like fish in the water. One thing that irks me is if you barely beat them with a block, they still penetrate or go around your blocker like they aren't there. Remember in MTW, when you block a cav trying to hit your archers, some of them go around the sides. Here, they can go through all the way. They do this when they are charging your General or Archers/Velites.

Oh well, the campaign is getting hectic. The Senate is giving me crazy missions and my reward was a mercenary unit or $1000 denari (for capturing a Carthagian town) Now I have a two-front war and Carthage owns the Mediterraenean Sea.

It's great though, the campaign is long and continuous, like you're making you're own story or should I say History.

[Adrian II]

Quietus, where would I be without you? I'll repay you in kind if ever I can. So I gather the game has completely different challenges from STW and MTW, like concentrating on the long term (building durable armies and strengthening your family faction) and all sorts of new battlefield phenomena (the Cavalry run-through effect, etcetera). As long as these are equally exciting as the old ones I guess it's no big loss, it's just become a whole different game. I still don't like what I hear about the AI, though I realise it's early days. And i do like what I hear about the strategic map and the battlefield maps being more or less integrated, that seems to be a really new feature and working well, too.

Oh well, the campaign is getting hectic. The Senate is giving me crazy missions and my reward was a mercenary unit or $1000 denari (for capturing a Carthagian town)

Yeah, I can tell you're up poo creek, and boy do you love it!

[DisruptorX]

OK, this is day 2 of RTW and I've hit some bad turbulence while reading the boards.
1. Is this a Cavalry game where the horses are running on crack and "to flank or not to flank" is your only question?
2. Is it true the AI is scripted to only attack head-on, and that your (AI-controlled) allies are suicidal maniacs?

Will somebody please tell me this just my Sunday morning blues while I help myself to a third cup of coffee?

1) Yes. Infantry is utterly useless unless its a heavy phalanx. Horsemen cut through infantry like a hot knife through butter.
2) The enemy AI will send its horsemen (50-70% of its army) to attack your flanks. The friendly AI will send its general off alone into enemy spearmen, every single time.

[zentuit]

1) Yes. Infantry is utterly useless unless its a heavy phalanx. Horsemen cut through infantry like a hot knife through butter.

Well I won't go so far as say utterly useless I've had my hastati accept a charge; now they weren't spread out but bunched up together and while they got hammered they held while another hastati swarmed the flanks.

Control is something to get used to. You have to anticipate things more since the units don't go immediately - I'm playing it as runners passing the orders ... although they do stop immediately when I tell them (cowards!).

I am using pause a lot during my battles. But I'm not a 14yr old twitch king no offense intended to any 14 year olds or twitch kings; my hand-eye coordination/reaction times are slowing as I get older

2) The enemy AI will send its horsemen (50-70% of its army) to attack your flanks. The friendly AI will send its general off alone into enemy spearmen, every single time.

Now here you and I are on the same page my friend! I hope a patch addressing that is planned.

Although its strange since it doesn't look like the enemy faction members are all that suicidal. Has anyone noticed if they are?

[Adrian II]

Infantry is utterly useless unless its a heavy phalanx. (..) The friendly AI will send its general off alone into enemy spearmen, every single time.

I find that hard to believe. No offense, DisruptorX, what I mean to say is that the developers are supposed to love their own game just as much as we do. They should know the real beef is not in the graphics or interface, it's in the Artifial Intelligence. Every player's wish for Christmas is:
1. A good AI
2. An even better AI
3. The best freaking AI anybody can come up with
I can't believe they didn't iron out such things as a suicidal AI, unless it's intentional and they want you to rely solely on your family -- this is Italy after all, so maybe a bit of the old mob ethics was to be expected...

[Ulstan]

"1. Is this a Cavalry game where the horses are running on crack and "to flank or not to flank" is your only question?"

Cavalry is very fast and too powerful. I don't use any. The AI does and you have to watch out for it. If you form your infantry properly they can withstand a charge. But ifthey are already engaged even milita cav can knock down dozens of them.

Pilum are very effective against horsemen though, if you can manage to throw a volley at them if they are charging someone else.

"2. Is it true the AI is scripted to only attack head-on, and that your (AI-controlled) allies are suicidal maniacs?"

I don't know about friendly AI. Enemy AI is not bad. When they attack, they either seem to charge down the whole length of the battle line, or send in masses of men on the flanks and then try to move down the side of your army crushing it. They do this with both infantry and cavalry as far as I can tell.

Seiges are awesome :) You can build rudimentary seige machines (rams, towers, ladders, sapping points) on the spot. Which is good, because there is no way you are taking down these castles by hand :D

The towns are huge and you actually get the feeling you are attacking a big civilized hub, instead of just a fort with no people ala MTW.

One siege I fought at tarentum, I got a spy in before the battle, and it told me he would try to open the gates before the assault. He did!

So, I happily marched my men in fine parade order through the gates, only to get doused with burning oil. O.o I ran them through the gate at top speed, only to have all the archers on the walls (Your men can stand and fight like 4 or 6 deep on walls now - very cool) turn around and start shooting me in the back!

I told my hastati to go clear them out, and they all ran inside a door in the wall and vanished.

A little while later, they popped out a door on top of the wall and attacked the archeres. Was neat to see.

Seiges are much much better now :)

Also if you attack the town and fail, any damage you do carries over to the next fight, so you can slowly reduce the walls and towers bit by bit :)

[Ulstan]

"Oh well, the campaign is getting hectic. The Senate is giving me crazy missions and my reward was a mercenary unit or $1000 denari (for capturing a Carthagian town"

At least your senate is giving you rewards Mine now hates me (thanks to the people loving me as much as they possibly can) and have given missions like this

Do:

Or:
We send the qaestor to investigate you!

Do:
Sail across the sea and take out this town with more soldiers in it than you have total!
Or:
We reveal your dirty little secret.

[Ulstan]

"From the battlefield management of those wardogs"

It is pretty neat actually - the handlers run with the dogs towards the enemy, then whoop and cheer the dogs on to the enemy when you get close. The dogs rush forward enthusiastically and the handlers discreetly retire behind the rest of your men.

Dogs are great for getting the enemies line out of order. :) It seems like none of the guys I fight can stand in their places and let their buddies to the side cope with the dogs - it quickly devolves into a big frenzy of dog killing. Of course then you take advantage of that and your brave doggies have not died in vain :D

[Dimeola]

Tell ya `bout Peltasts.....made the mistake of taking all hoplite army onto the filed vs a mixed army. Peltasts evaded my foot and peppered them with stones. My foot chased but couldnt close. They clashed with their Hoplites and the enemy peltasts hit my flank and I routed. Spartans learned this lesson the hard way too. My early builds will include missile troops from now on.
Phalanx is a site to see, the bristling long sarissas....they are slower and when they change direction raise the sarissas and turn and then lower weapons. If you hit them front and flank they are in trouble. Cavalry is very fluid....when they crash into foot you see them riding a sea of troops. They seem to either crack the formation or crack themselves. better used to hit and withdraw if they dont break the enemy. Hit and withdraw and charge again. So far i`m really liking RTW.
Dimeolas.

[Underhand]

Ah yes, the mistake of taking too few or no supporting troops with your heavies. The Spartans themselves made that mistake against one of the poorest city states of Greece, I forget which, and had an entire unit of highly trained hoplites disappear because of heavy javelin fire. Sometimes it's fun to recreate an historical mistake unwittingly. I had a similar experience in a different game where I attempted to conquer Russia and faltered just outside the capital and had my expensive shiny army annihilated by a counter attack. The thought went through my mind: 'I just repeated Napoleon and Hitler's greatest mistake... How cool is that?'

[X6_861]

I agree with the posts above that cavalry is very powerful, but I've had some good experience repelling cavalry charges down the center of my line of hastati. The poor fool commander tried to flank me with his barbarian cavalry, but my hastati threw their pilums at 'em, causing them to veer across my entire battle line. So pretty much every single one of my frontline hastati got to take a pop at them with their pilums.

I've also managed to repel gaul cavalry with nothing more than town watchmen. Just keep them in good formation, and they'll get bogged down. Hopefulling you have a second line, so you can reinforce them or, even better, enclose them!

[Orvis Tertia]

I have not had any problems with enemy cavalry vs. my Roman infantry. (I've only fought barbarians so far.) They cavalry always seem to zero in on missile troops if they can, so I can often get them to charge close to my line in an attempt to flank me and get to my Velites. Then I hit their flanks with Hastati and they don't last too long. The trick is to draw the enemy cavalry in and pin them with your infantry while you quickly hit them in the flank with another infantry unit or your general's heavy cavalry. One of my generals gained the title of Infantry Commander or something like that after a couple of fantastic battles where I was outnumbered and had only Hastati but beat the barbarians soundly. Cavalry get chewed up pretty fast if you can get an infantry unit into their flank. Also, javelins can really devastate enemy cavalry. Just keep your Velites close behind your Hastati, pin the cavalry with the Hastati and let the javelineers fire away.

[Morindin]

From my experiances so far (Im up to around 200BC, Conquered Gaul, Germany, and half of Macedon, and I have also played extensive multiplayer games).

There are plenty of not more tactics in RTW due to the fact there are more USEFUL units. It simply isn't Swords/Ranged/Cav anymore.
You now have skirmishers, light infantry (which tires much slower), heavy infantry, cavalry, siege weapons are viable, and spears are back! Also you can employ aux units such as war dogs.

Cavalry is hardly overpowered. Fighting lightly or non armoured troops it can be devistating on the first charge, after that its dead. Heavily armoured troops against even the later cavalry will tear them up in melee and wont even flinch and their charge.

[Sisco Americanus]

I've had simlar experiences against the Carthaginians. While cavalry are indeed powerful, they are most certainly not unstoppable, and in my experience I don't find them TOO powerful. More powerful than they were in MTW? Absolutely. But then, I always thought they were slightly underpowered in Medieval.

Of course, I haven't faced off against the Macedonians or Egyptians yet, so perhaps I'll change my tune when I have to fight some of the more elite cavalry in the game.

[Adrian II]

Thanks for all the comment and clarification, guys. When you don't have the game yet it's fun to read these widely diverging statements and try to "make chocolate out of it all" as we say in my country.The icing is already there though, it's the sense of humor with which everybody is tackling their first battles, faction troubles, software hiccups and other WTF's.

[fey]

About cavalry it seems that many people's perception is based on playing the Julii versus the Gauls. The Gauls' warbands, which is the majority of what you meet, are lightly armored and don't have high morale. A flank cavalry charge WILL route them.

Thus the tactics against the Gauls basically involve (a) letting enemy melee make contact, either with hastati or, much better, with the doggies :-) and (b) immediately flank charge them with equites. The enemy unit will rout almost immediately. Rinse, lather, repeat.

I don't have many problems with barbarian cavalry charging my ranks because a deep line of hastati will survive a frontal charge and because any time enemy cav is charging my melee/missiles there's usually a unit of my light cav (equites) charging THEIR flank.

However it seems that:

(1) Cavalry dies on the pikes real easy. There's a rumor that the spear anti-cav bonus isn't working (a bug), so presumably once it's fixed spears will do as well.

(2) As you go up in tech tree, the cavalry effectiveness seems to diminish a great deal.

(3) Cavalry is considerably less effective against armored melee (which Gauls are not).

So hopefully the dominance of cavalry in the early Julii campaign will get reasonable in a bit.

One difference from MTW that I noticed is that it's much easier to extricate the cavalry from an engagement and have them regroup and charge again. In MTW it was almost impossible, in RTW my equites have little problems disengaging from combat with enemy melee.

Fey

[Orvis Tertia]

One difference from MTW that I noticed is that it's much easier to extricate the cavalry from an engagement and have them regroup and charge again. In MTW it was almost impossible, in RTW my equites have little problems disengaging from combat with enemy melee.

True. I have even on occasion charged my cavalry right through the flank of an enemy unit and then run out the other side, turned and charged again. It was fun.

[Morindin]

About cavalry it seems that many people's perception is based on playing the Julii versus the Gauls. The Gauls' warbands, which is the majority of what you meet, are lightly armored and don't have high morale. A flank cavalry charge WILL route them.

Thus the tactics against the Gauls basically involve (a) letting enemy melee make contact, either with hastati or, much better, with the doggies :-) and (b) immediately flank charge them with equites. The enemy unit will rout almost immediately. Rinse, lather, repeat.

I don't have many problems with barbarian cavalry charging my ranks because a deep line of hastati will survive a frontal charge and because any time enemy cav is charging my melee/missiles there's usually a unit of my light cav (equites) charging THEIR flank.

However it seems that:

(1) Cavalry dies on the pikes real easy. There's a rumor that the spear anti-cav bonus isn't working (a bug), so presumably once it's fixed spears will do as well.

(2) As you go up in tech tree, the cavalry effectiveness seems to diminish a great deal.

(3) Cavalry is considerably less effective against armored melee (which Gauls are not).

So hopefully the dominance of cavalry in the early Julii campaign will get reasonable in a bit.

One difference from MTW that I noticed is that it's much easier to extricate the cavalry from an engagement and have them regroup and charge again. In MTW it was almost impossible, in RTW my equites have little problems disengaging from combat with enemy melee.

Fey

Excellent post, and I completely agree.

As for your last point, its because your cavalry is usually in a deeper formation hence many unengaged units are milling around. If you use them in two deep formation they are usually quite difficult to disengage, and when they do they usually take heavy casualties.

[Dimeola]

In my SP battles as gaul....they can stand up to Romans in short term but need to win battle somewhat early. If they stand toe to toe too long Romans chew them to bits.
D