Advancing Tactics

[Jonny Dangerously]

I know what you mean. I have also had them rout instantly when I sent them forward "to smash the enemy lines" or whatever it says in the manual. Unless your general is really brilliant they just wet themselves and crash back through friendly lines. Still, in the early game, when you don't have much by ways of specialised units they can be pretty handy at a pinch.

Fighting barbarians rocks Slon. Watch out though, some axemen have brilliant anti-armour stats and I have occassionaly sent my cavalry in just a little bit too early and got a nasty surprise......but you will still crush them like the filthy scum that they are.

As for the cheat....the game gives you the option to end or continue....I think you'll get at least 40-50 years. I was cracking the faction file last night but I didn't see anything like that. Maybe search the forums and you can let me know what you find.

[SwordsMaster]

The best bet for the Seleuc army is:
4 SS pikemen
3SS legionaries
1-2 war elephants
1-2 onager Depending on the enemy you can just drop the onagers to trravel faster (Numidia, North, Far east) or take 2 of them in densely populated areas.
1 gen
2 companions
2 militia cav
2 greek cav/cataphracts/companions (again depending on your enemy, you might need speed instead of shock power)

And you will have a couple of slots free for mercs to do the odd support job (or manning your siege equipment as the SShields are pretty expensive).

That army can beat anything except probably a well organized and smartly used numidian army or a Parthian one, but as the AI is neither smart or well organized you'll be ok.

[Slon]

Very interesting strategies. My main problem now is basically ending up with casualties in an undeveloped settlement with advanced units. I'm moving into the Sahara so I decided to give the Seleucid empire a rest and try a different faction for a while (playing the same faction and using identical strategies gets boring sometimes). I chose Germania simply because their best units can all be retrained in fairly undeveloped settlements (highest Germania can get to is Minor City). The spear warband is already awesome. The only downside to playing as the Germans is that unlike the Egyptian cities, their population doesn't breed like flies. I guess this will pay off eventually since I won't run into as many squalor problems.

As for the Seleucid army tips, I found that my spearmen very rarely get used. I normally plan by placing elephants at flanks and placing everything out perfectly, only to have my precious elephants bombarded with fire arrows and being forced into attacking. The only casualties (or action) that my SS pikemen see is friendly fire from archers. Once you get armoured elephants, you can probably just use 4 units of them to make any of the roman infantry and cavalry rout (they don't have any good spearmen). Combine that with 5 onagers (and alright, 3 units of SS pikemen to discourage the enemy from charging the artillery) and you probably won't lose any units.

[master of the puppets]

i have played and come close to disaster time and time again the best tactic i've used when spread thin as leave areas around mountains and the sea (especially rome greece turkey mountainous areas) basicly unguarded gurd th main thoroughfares and keep towers near unused roads. in the mountains you will see enemies long before they navigate enough to attack. by then you can gather a ragtag army to weaken the enemies armies[SIZE=7][COLOR=Red]KILL THEM ALL

[Slon]

I'm finding it useful to keep low quality/small garrisons in cities. If you keep a large garrison, then the enemy won't attack until he has a large enough army to defeat the garrison. However, if you have a small garrison, you can send a roaming army to intercept the sieging army and either break the siege or kill it. The smaller the garrison, the more often the enemy will attack with small armies, and many smaller armies are easy prey as opposed to one to two big armies. Plus, you won't have to go through the painful procedure of sallying forth AND your army won't degrade (well, your attacking army) if you wait. If the roaming army gets attacked, then the spearmen can basically defend against anything if you put them in organized phalanxes at the corner of the map. Also, it is cheaper to have a few good roaming armies than smaller armies in every settlement (just keep 2 units of peasants, or more if public order decreases, and possibly a governor).

I had some money problems, but I just sold my maps to the Romans and managed to earn enough to survive on negative income until I took some settlements.

[Jonny Dangerously]

3 units of SS pikemen to discourage the enemy from charging the artillery.

Totally. Most of the time my spear don't see too much fighting but on the odd occassion that things go wrong I am always pleased that I have solid infantry that can hold a line against most cav.

Re elephants. I usually pull them back slightly from the end of my infantry line (and cav too), that way they are out of archer range and frequently tempts the bad guys to make a dash at the infantry lines flank. At this point I send them forward inot the flank of the attackers and that is usually the end of that.

Have you fallen in love with onagers yet Slon?

[Chimpyang]

My attacking army as Carthage is:



2 Bel slingers or normal sligers........
2 Num Mercs (Skirmishers)
4 IB infantry for flanks
4 Poeini/Sacred band (Sacred band are preferable)
4 Long Shied Cav/SHC (whatever is available)
2 Elephant Units
The Gen Unit
An extra slot for an extra cav or unf unit...depends of faction being fought, if romans then def inf...bcos i already have enough cav and need to hold the line.


Tactics..........use the MTW MP tactic of putting long rande missile out front protected by cav the 4 units of LSC, any early-middle game enemy AI army wil have problems dealing with that, in the later game try and use cretian archers instead of slingers.. Try and draw the enemy towards you using missile fire, esp if you have missile superiority. The main inf line is there not to knock a hole into the enemy but to hold it for the cav to flank..
The Inerian inf is for localised flanking attacks and to get the line togeather to stop any great holes appearing before the cav attack begins. The eles can be used as flanking or shock forces if the ib inf is not used to plug holes.

The javs are there to keep the enemy casualty rate slightly higher than yours, theyare also pretty cheap expendible troops to run into combat to give a precious few more seconds.

When attacking try and make the neenmy play on your terms, ie if you can take out their cav early. or shoot the main inf line up as much as you can to shorten the main melee.


Thats about it really....

[Jonny Dangerously]

Cretan archers are brilliant. They have the joint maximum range of the archer types.

If you are ever bored and have nothing else to do......try this out and tell me how it went.... Use exactly the same line up but replace all your missile and skirmishers with 5 onagers set on fire-ammo.

Hell, I should try and get a job as an onager salesman, I'm obsessed with them...

[Slon]

Totally. Most of the time my spear don't see too much fighting but on the odd occassion that things go wrong I am always pleased that I have solid infantry that can hold a line against most cav.

Re elephants. I usually pull them back slightly from the end of my infantry line (and cav too), that way they are out of archer range and frequently tempts the bad guys to make a dash at the infantry lines flank. At this point I send them forward inot the flank of the attackers and that is usually the end of that.

Have you fallen in love with onagers yet Slon?

The thing about using "wait for enemy to charge you" tactics with high-end units like armoured elephants and SS pikemen is that you WILL take losses from enemy archers. Those few losses will take you a long time to retrain in a faraway city. The thing about using armoured elephants to charge immediately after archers come in to range is that they won't have enough time to kill any elephants (even with 3 bombardments of fire arrows). And I think elephants are faster than archers so they will just trample them in melee (and shoot them with arrows, for that matter). Also, each elephant has 2 archers. That times two is 72 archers, which is almost as big as a archer auxilia unit. When you want to avoid attrition, quality beats quantity.

This is also why I am enjoying the Germans. Their units are dirt cheap and can be retrained anywhere. So, I can just autoresolve or charge them at the enemy if I feel like it and be up to full strength in 1-2 turns. Unfortunately, I don't think Germania has onagers. It's a shame I can't hire merc onagers (like in MTW), since they don't see any action and don't need retraining, anyway.

[Jonny Dangerously]

The thing about using "wait for enemy to charge you" tactics with high-end units like armoured elephants and SS pikemen is that you WILL take losses from enemy archers.

Dude,

I don't sit there like a turkey, reading a copy of My Pet Donkey and scratching my nuts whilst hoards of archers trash my VERY precious troops. Keep in mind that my standard army comprises 6 onagers shooting fire pots. The enemy get's mullered all the way.... then sure, some semi-battered archers get into range of my infantry.......cool, they shoot some arrows, I return fire with 6 onagers....I loose a couple of guys, they loose maybe 30-50 per volley. Hell, if a particular unit of archers is getting some good shots in, (and they usually do this from front-left or front-right of my battle line) cool, I'll whip the fastest cav unit out from the same flank and hit them just hard enough to make them poop-it and run. Then I pull them back and watch my BBQ progress. At this point, if they are still up for a fight and charge, then the following happens..... A battered, depleted, and exhausted army hits my as-yet-unmoved, eager line infantry. Ok, my onagers are tired, so I'll let them rest for a few minutes.....hell, I'll need them on top form when I open fire again on the enemy as they run away......usually because at just this point I use my totally rested and probably as-yet unmoved flanking cav to smash in on both flanks. It's a pretty reliable strategy, it's been used for thousands of years and I consider myself to have had a BAD day if I have a kill ratio of less than 10 to 1.

But yes, I do wait for the enemy to charge me, but whilst I'm waiting, they are getting crispy.

[Slon]

Unless you have really experienced onager units, they will probably critically miss their targets when the enemies get into archer range and closer. It only takes one screwed up fire pot to ruin your whole day. Another tactic would be to place 1-2 units of Legionaries just in front of your SS pikemen line in Testudo formation. The enemy archers will attack the closest testudo unit and just waste arrows that way while the onagers rip them to pieces. How skilled are your onagers? Did you just get them that experienced by killing enemies? Do they get experience by destroying walls?