Advancing Tactics

[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?

[Jonny Dangerously]

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

The crucial word being "probably"....try it out for yourself.

Any old onager has a range of 300, as oppossed to the archers, where only the superior types like Cretan and Archer Auxilia have ranges of 170. Forgetting advantages for height, experience and weapons upgrades, in equivalent circumstances, an onager has nearly twice the range of an archer unit. Now the enemy has to cross the field under fire from say, six onagers. Now if you target units in the middle, most of the shots that miss will hit other units as well. There is no "probably", it works really well.

As for the one screwed up shot......there is never a shot like that. Because of the minimum range issue with onagers, if you place them in a line directly behind your infantry line, it is physically impossible for them to hit any of your troops. You never, ever hit your own troops in these circumstances.

As for the issue of experience and upgrades, sure, their aim sucks at the start, but they are not precision weapons, they are for bombarding large armies. However, since you can get them fairly early, and they are never superceded, you can use the same units for the rest of the game. It is inevitable that they develop into veteran (and highly accurate) units. When they are experienced enough you will regularly take out the enemy general before the fighting even starts, and butcher the enemy before they are anywhere near you. I consider this to be a reasonably effective tactic.

[Slon]

I thought it was wierd, too. The onager took out part of my phalanx that was near it. Perhaps it was the slightly awkward elevation, or maybe I'm not remembering all the details, but it happened to me. I had a line of archers in front of the onagers and phalanxes in front of archers. They were all pretty close so I'm not sure how it happened, either.

[Jonny Dangerously]

The onager took out part of my phalanx that was near it. .

If you place all of your onagers in a line directly behind you line infantry all of you troops will be well within minimum range.... you'll notice that enemy troops will become too close to shoot at just before the close on your ranks.

The only possible mishap you can have is when you have a row of onagers and you target all of your onagers at something to the extrem right or left of the line. Since the onagers have a large profile (i.e. they are high) the onagers are easily capable of shooting each other "in the back". I would suspect that if your troops were genuinly within the minimum range, the only possibility was either a deflection from one onager hitting another, or they were far enough in front of the onager to get hit by a truly wild shot. The added advantage of keeping the distance between your onager line and your infantry line small is that the onager ammo leaves the onager at a certain distance above the ground. The closer the two are together, the more impossible it becomes for even the wildest shot to hit anything friendly since it starts some distance above the heads of the infantry (sorry, too tired to explain the geometry).

Set up a custom battle and play around with them. At best you'll be converted, at worst you'll have a nice firework display.