A new militar tactic for the Greek faction

[HenryLet]

I made up a new militar tactic for the oplites which is almost invincible!! I formed a square with for unites of oplites. Each unit of oplites points the spears into the 4 different direction of the square. So a unit points forward, an other backward, one on the right side and the other on the left side. There's no way to attack this "square of oplites" causing serious damages!! The weak point of every phalanx are the sides and with this formation I fixed the problem!!! It's a sort of a new militar tactic. Try it, it's worth. You can defeat Roman legions as easily as you do with Barbarians!!!

[Epistolary Richard]

Well done. Just try not to go up against armies with any kind of missile troops or war engines.

[HenryLet]

You are right but javelots run out of missiles after a while and so the onagres!! So if you resist to them as long as they have munitions, the victory then is certain!!

[eadingas]

How do you make them walk this way? Or is it only for defence...

[HenryLet]

It's basically for defence but if you are quick you can form this formation while you are in the middle of the battle, pressing pause and positioning the units as you wish trying to make a square. This formation becomes stronger and stronger if you create the square with more than only 4 units. Like 8 or 16 etc. Try to put in the middle of the square some archers!!

[Zorn]

I see several severe drawbacks:

- the already mentioned missle attacks. One of your units will be showing it`s back, so they die really, really fast to archers. Every archer unit has enogh ammonition to kill any unit that it shoots in the back. Also onagers will cause trendemous casualities to such a dense formation.
- it can only work if you are defending - if you attack, the enemy will just let the timer run out. I don`t think it is possible at all to form such a thing during a battle. You will get charged in the flank and in the back before you could even form it halfway.
- The edges are still vulnerable. Also if one unit breaks, the other three get charged in the back immedeately.

[HenryLet]

I understand your worries about severe drawbacks. But since I started using this formation I have never lost a battle. The clue is to form a square of phalanx and also put an other unit of oplites in the hole of the square (along with archers) in the center so that you can protect the back of your oplites which are pointing their spears backwards. The onagres are never so accurate and oplites have great morale so especially if you can rely upon more than only 4 units the possibilities that a unit retreat dispersing the square are really low! The unit of oplites in the center of the square can also be used to reinforce any side of the square which is suffering more casualties in every moment ! Trust me it works! Try it!

[Epistolary Richard]

You're right, the square has been a valid military tactic since, I don't know when. You get the benefit of not being outflanked, but you have the problems of not being able to move once you're in the formation and presenting a big, dense target for missiles (and no matter how you form it, archers are going to be able to shoot somebody in the back or in the side).

It's highly effective against an AI that will throw itself onto your spears (and I think enough has been said about the AI on these forums already) but you'll never beat an evenly-matched force controlled by a human. Not twice, at least.

If you're interested in square formations in practice, read about some of the battles in Wellington's Peninsula campaign, I think a good one was Fuentes something or other. And Waterloo of course.

[HenryLet]

Yes you are right. I got inspiration from the battle of Waterloo when British succeeded in defeating Napoleon using the square militar tactic. It was an unchargable formation for the cavalry. It has to be said that England was also very lucky in that battle for the weather condition before and during the battle!! The balls of the cannons didn't cause any serious casualties because they didn't explode at the impact with the mudy ground!! Anyway about my strategy I have also to say that is intended to be used primarly for defence. When It's up to the Computer to start the attack! Anyway I forgot to say that I also use some units of cavalry placed out of the square in order to charge the enemy archers and onagres preventing my troops from being hit by the missiles.
It may be a possible strategy if you put hulf of your army in the square formation and you use the rest of it in the "dinamic combat" In this way the enemy army could get close to my square formation too late when it's too tired to face a square of phalanx!!!

[doc_bean]

Well against the AI pretty much anything works :-)

I see 2 main drawbacks

-friendly fire, your archers will shoot you in the back causing pretty heavy losses

-lack of mobility, if you have an army big strong enough to have decent cav and decent hoplites I doubt the AI could do much against you unless you really screw up (which happens to us all of course), I'd much rather use a long line of hoplites with the cav for flanking, it should result in less casualties.


If I were to attack an army such as yours (with an evenly matched one) I'd use archers to draw your cavalry towards me, which i should be able to deal with considering you have to leave so many units behind. Then I'd use the rest of my arrows to weaken one phalanx, next I'd probably use a wedge against one of your corners followed by an infantry rush. i think it should work.

Otherwise, urban cohorts can cut though most phalanxes, and once you sidestep enough, there's an opening.

BTW I don't think this thread really belongs here...

[HenryLet]

You are wrong about the friend fire. Your archers cannot hit your oplites because they are too close to them and when they shoot they point their bows above!

[Al Khalifah]

It has to be said that England was also very lucky in that battle for the weather condition before and during the battle!! The balls of the cannons didn't cause any serious casualties because they didn't explode at the impact with the mudy ground!!

Since when did cannonballs explode?
They were made of solid metal - unless they were using cannister rounds, which they didn't at Waterloo.
The reason Napoleon's artillery was rendered (fairly) useless at Waterloo was indeed due to the ground being muddy - but this is because the cannonballs used to bounce on impact with the ground or roll along the ground - extending both their range of firing and capacity for damage. Napoleonic artillery caused its damage by mutilation - if you were hit by a 12lb ball of metal travelling at 100 mph anything you were unlucky enough to have in way would be broken off or mauled.
Also, Napoleon couldn't rapidly reposition his guns, due to the muddy ground it would have been impossible for the gunners to move them quickly and on a battlefield as crampt as Waterloo, limbering and unlimbering operations would have been too difficult.

[alx1078]

It certainly sounds good against an enemy that would charge head on but we know that this is not always the case. Also a tactic that's so inflexible and static is just not good in my books. For my Greek/Macedonian army i found that the best tactic is forming diamonds. Having my phalanx up front supported by units on each side (on each side and slightly behind the phalanx) and another fast and strong unit (like a good cavalry unit) right behind my phalanx, that can support any of the sides quickly, i have triumphed many times. So any time i fight i have my army form a continuous line of diamonds. It's pretty effective in battle. try it and see.

[HenryLet]

You are right I got confused. Cannon balls didn't explode but they coudn't rotate on the ground because they remained stuck into where they landed.!

[Epistolary Richard]

Waterloo's a fascinating battle and well worth reading up on, both for its military manoeuvres and its politics, but it's moving off the topic in hand.

Ignoring missile units for the moment, a square's weakness is in its corners. No matter how you arrange your units there will be at least four sides of units which would not be covered by your spears. It would be straightforward to drive attacking columns into the exposed sides and break the square.

Now, you can get around this in R:TW by overlapping units so that there are no exposed edges, but then you have to deal with the phalanx shuffle moving your units out of position.

Also, as you take casualties in R:TW units reduce their frontage rather than their depth so gaps will start to appear. You can move the adjoining units to compensate but you'll end up with a triangle.

[Suraknar]

Well, I think any patern of formation can be good depending on the situation.

Hoplites are very good defensivelly, and I usually defend their flanks with sword yelding or short spearmen mercenaries recruited here and there.

I even tryed Alexandrian Phalanx tactics (Pikemen), with the More Classical Greek Hoplites (Spearmen) for offense and it worked nicelly as well.

This was forming every unit in to a square instead of a line, then forming the units in to an echellon formation that way every Phalanx on a step behind will act as part of the offensive line but also as the defensive unit for the flank of the step in fron of it.

Squirmishers can be placed in the uper echelon flanks and archers or Cavalry in the lower echellon flank.

And that works like a charm against any enemy long line of battle, as the first echelons engage (supose upper echelon is left) the right of the enmey their center and right turn to engage their flanks but they arte flanked themselves by the lower echelons advancing up to the melee line, which does result in the routing of the complete enemy line after a while.

The only thing that has disrupted a phalanx formation made up of Classical Hoplites up to now is Elephants.

The Square formation using hoplites has been very usefull when faced with a numerically superior enemy, and has actually given victory by runing as fast as possible in a hill and then forming the square up there. I was bening attacked by two sides, as the enemy had reinforcements, and managed to hold till the end.

[dclare4]

Try doing a Tercio - 3000 pikemen in a solid square surrounded by missile troops on the fringes :-) That should seriously ruin someone's day.

Clare

[Myrddraal]

To defeat the square of hoplites I would:

Deploy light cavalry on two sides opposite each other, these would sit and wait.

Then I would get a bunch of elephants, and run them at a corner. They might all die, but they would certainly break up the formation a bit. Then, right behind the elephants, would come a unit of heavy cavalry, who would attempt to break through to the soft inside. Then right behind them: a couple of sword units to break open this corner. Should any of the other units try to help out, they would have to expose their flanks to the waiting light cavalry. I'm pretty sure this would work.