The Manual Retreat Tactic

[Octavius Julius]

Ok, you have a small army but it is headed by a super general, Lucius Julius.

Then, up pops a massive Gaul army from the bushes and ambushes you.

The retreat button is frozen, so you have to fight and take the loss.

However...

...I found that if you place your units in the corner of the battle map, you have a chance. Place your general's unit at right angles to the side of the map two ranks deep so that your general, being the most left troop in the unit, actually touches the redline. The rest of your unit might not be facing towards your enemy, but that's what we want. place any other units infront and behind of your general relative to his postition, but with their backs to the enemy. When the enemy charges you, your units should flee, but most importantly, your general will be the furthest unit away from them, and after taking a few losses, he will rout and then you are saved!

Note: Your general's unit must be in guard mode so that they don't wheel around to face your enemy when melee begins.

Anyone else have any other general saving tactics?

(Last night I had only one unit left in my general's unit, and that was my general, Amulius Julius. He had a close shave with a few chariots and luckily survived. The downside was that he wouldn't rout. It was a seige, so I couldn't flee, so my other units luckily cleaned up the mess!)

[Bhruic]

I was playing Armenia, and got hit by a really large stack. I only had a few HA and my general. Well, I exhausted all of my arrows, and they still outnumbered me badly. Luckily, however, they had very little cavalry left. So I just ran around the outside of the map until the time expired. Oddly enough, I actually got a "win" from that, because I'd killed more than I lost when time ran out.

Felt pretty cheap, but I really liked that general.

Bh

[warlordmb]

Don't get ambushed. Carry a spy with your army - it doesn't count against stack limit and spies spot all ambushes as soon as you get in range visual.

Same with Diplomats.

Diplomats with the army stop them from getting bribed.

[Red Harvest]

Spies reduce your movement points by quite a bit in my experience, and that is a penalty I can rarely afford. They are more likely to detect ambushes, diplomats less so. Ambushes are so rare that I was happy when I first got ambushed (after several hundred battles.)