Anti-spam tactics

[Cheetah]

Per request of ElmarkOFear here I would like to start a thread about anti-spam tactics.

Post the spam army and your anti-spam tactics here. The anti-spam can be spam of course, but more preferable if it is close to "well-balanced" (i.e. it has roughly equal amount of inf/cav/shooters), and of course post the appropriate description how to use that given army.

For the start I will post some egyptian and roman spam armies here. I have to admit I dont have detailed anti-spam tactics against these armies, so I will give just a few hints.


Egyptians spam armies:
10 desert cavs/ 10 chariot
10 desert cavs/ 10 pharaos bowmen
10 pharaos guards/ 10 pharaos bowmen

Well imho one has hard time with a well-balanced army vs any of these spam armies. So, against the first two I would bring an all chariot briton spam army against the 3rd some onagers Again, suggestions using well balanced armies are welcomed!

Roman spam armies:
20 pretorian cavs wedge
10 pret cavs/ 10 aux archer
20 (all) urban cohort

Well, vs the first one the obvious anti-spam spam is a cata/cata camel army. Vs the second one the "good old" briton all chariots spam. Against the last one any cav heavy army.

I think that a well-balanced army can work vs the 2nd and the 3rd, but you will have a hard time vs the first.

Cranda in the other thread nicely summarised the 3S principles of fighting against a cav spam army: stop, surround and slaugther.

IMHO the crucial and most difficult is the first step, to stop the blob. If you dont put the sufficient "mass" in the way of the cav spam your first units will be routed well before your flanking units can get there. IMHO best units to use to stop the cav bolb is either sufficient heavy cavs (imo at least 6 "en masse", so practically in blob ...) and then you have to hurry to back them up with inf, or of course, pikes but this implies that the spammer is stupid/self-confident enough to run into your pikes, or that you had enough time and pikes to deploy a box formation.

Surrounding is self-explanatory, and the slaughtering can be speeded up if you have some good archers or even some onagers to fire into the heart of spam, preferably with fire arrows ...

Good spam hunting!

[AquaLurker]

Errrr...isn't counter spam witrh spam encourages more spaming???


What I feels is that we should discuss about how we can counter spam with balance armies.

All desert cav can be beaten by a balance roman army by they way as long as you keep your lines tight and your cav close.

same things apply for phalanx civs, Keep your pike in deep, tight circular formations and use hold ground. it will inflict heavy casualties to the spamer if he charges his horses or chariot into it, but be quick to turn unengage pikes to the right direction.

Use the hammer and anvil theory, your inf is the anvil, your cav is the hammer. keep your cav alway the the spamer's cav.

one thing I must note, even scythian "balance" cav armies have problem dealing with spaming preatorian cavs. So think like a mongol, let them chase your horse archers to scatter their cavs while concerntrate your fighting cavs to destroys his isolated units piece meal. Difficult to pull off but can be done. This is the suntze pit 10 against one tactics, or was it Mao Ze Tong?

[Rodion Romanovich]

Hehe, best anti-spam tactic vs chariot armies with an own balanced army? If they're close together when attacking, just use some flaming arrows from 2-4 archers against the first one, and it'll start running amok. When it runs amok through it's own chariots, they start running amok too. Artillery can also be useful for making them run amok. Against the remaining chariots, just get some light cavs around their flank and charge once they're getting closer to your army.

All/many ele armies are easy to defeat with flaming artillery and flaming arrows. Just individually assign new targets to your archers and art once they've made one ele unit run amok or rout.

All cav armies can be defeated by forming a circle with your footmen, then trying to keep your cavalry out of the way (maybe all except general hidden in an ambush?) until the enemy have attacked. Unfortunately a roman army is quite weak against an all cav army, pikes or spears are better. Usually roman players don't bring any spearmen at all, only cohorts, which is really a half-spam army so they really deserve to get beaten by all cav armies. If they want to win, packing their units tightly is the key. If a cav ambush is hidden, it's good to unleash it first against enemy reserves that haven't hit the footmen yet, then hit the rear of the pinned cavs. Those nasty cohorts seem to be able to hold out a ridiculously long time so you can take your time.

Greek spartan hoplite spam army: just bring much more art than he does :). If there's a no art restriction, buy ridiculous amounts of high-quality archers. Pharaos bowmen and chosen archer warband are particularly useful.

Desert cavs are not nice to be up against. I finally found out they have an anti-cavalry bonus. Their unit size is also larger than that of normal cavs. If Egypt bring much desert cavs the trick is to keep part of your line of footmen in reserve behind your line. Put them in the middle of your cavalry. If Egypt comes charging your line, you should have a stronger footman line, but still have reserves behind. Do NOT go after the desert cavs when they're far away from your line. Instead wait for them to come to you, then take advantage of the footmen you mixed with your cavs. If they're hoplites/pikes they can easily slow down the desert cav charge and demoralize some of them. The low morale of desert cavs means routing the first one is quite important and will make defeating the rest of them an easier thing. Once the footmen have slowed down the cavs, let the own cavs attack from flank and rear if possible. Flaming arrows and art when the desert cavs approach will indeed help defeating them. Now if Egypt brings very much upgraded footmen you're in trouble. The trick then might be to keep few drawn out footmen to hold their footmen, while sending most of the footmen against the desert cavs. If they bring the spam army with 10 desert cavs, maybe 8 pharaos guards and 2 axemen, your line will also be in trouble when the cavalry engagement goes on.

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

I'd like to restate that settings do matter: it will be easier to counter spam with large or huge unit size.

The main reason is the first part of the 3S: Stop. Larger unit size makes it easier to stop spam blob.

I'd advise against using pike in circle and holding ground. Get your phalanx with phalanx off, guard off so that you can move them around and get enough mass: once you meet the blob, get phalanx on.
If you're static with your pike, in circle and holding ground, you'll have a tougher game if playing with more than 2 players. Also, it is going to be an archer festival for the spammer.

I know that many people complain about infantry running too fast: for any modder out there, slowing infantry down is only going to make cavalry spam easier.

Louis,

[Crandaeolon]

Phalanx management would probably be another issue worth of a topic. Once mastered, you will notice that phalanxes are only slightly less mobile than shock infantry, and are well suited for offensive action too.

for any modder out there, slowing infantry down is only going to make cavalry spam easier.

Yeah. While doing a custom balance mod I flip-flopped between reducing and not reducing movement speed. Fast infantry speed has its benefits. Right now it feels like the speeds aren't worth changing... now just waiting for the flip-flop to happen again

[Rodion Romanovich]

If against many archers, instead of circle use a double line that can be easily reformed into a circle. I almost always keep my phalangites in standard formation when they aren't in battle.

And regarding offensive phalanx usage, I use it very often but against much enemy cavalry it's not easy, because of cavalry speed. Sending them into the middle of a cavalry vs cavalry engagement is usually very effective, but in my experience it's most effective if the phalanx was already there and facing the enemy so they charge right at it compared to when the phalanx is sent against the flank of the massive enemy cavalry assault.

[Puzz3D]

Is there an easy way to make a phalanx circle, or are you doing this by positioning one unit at a time?

[Wishazu]

how are you supposed to know if your opponent is spamming or not?

[Cheetah]

Yuuki, the best thing to do is to set up the box formation you prefer at the deployment phase, then group those units together and they will keep (remember) their position in the formation. You can click them or redraw them (in the same formation ofc) anywhere you want.
If you see that your opponent has a balanced army, thus there is no danger being spammed, then you can just press SHIFT+1 or +2 or +3 (depending on your prefernces) to order them into line/double line. (Of course once you pressed "SHIFT+number" you will lose your original formation, so if you need it again you have to redraw it moving units one by one!!!)

Wishazu, that is good question! I am sure that everyone would love to know the answer!!! Of course you dont know it beforehand. That is why roman and egyptian spam armies imho are more dangerous than the rest, because a roman or egyptian general has a choice of various spam armies, whereas, for example, if you see someone picking parthia you can be sure that he will have a cav heavy army.

That is why imho the best thing to do is to be catious against unknown opponents. Deploy your inf in a box formation decribed above, and move out of box only if you see that there is no danger of being spammed.

The other good thing to do is to play low denarri, with max rules, and preferably with friends.

Also, Tomi made his suggestion (the Honour Society) to create a society of players that do not use spam/cheese armies.

[Cheetah]

Errrr...isn't counter spam witrh spam encourages more spaming???

What I feels is that we should discuss about how we can counter spam with balance armies.

I agree with that. That is why I wrote that solutions using a well-balanced army are prefered.

However, I think that the more we know about spam armies (including anti-spam spam armies) the less efficient they will be, thus, hopefully less frequently used.

[sheelba]

Wishazu, how indeed. This is the point that causes me most problems. It threatens to turn me into a spammer. The only cast iron solution I have is play team games and be a team player. In two recent team games people have attempted to spam my team. The first time, someone was hassling us to deploy quicker. It turned out that they didn't need to spend time deploying as they just had a line of 15 cataphractii. Not even a camel! He thought he could beat two armies single handed. So the spammer just lines his army up and charges, one cav after another all hitting my allies triarii. When the dust had settled, my allies units were formed up in in a u shape with my cav in the middle. Only one cat actually routed and got to the map edge. I probably didn't need to throw all my units into the fight, but I didn't take any casualties, and my allies army was only slightly damaged. The poor guy playing the greeks just sat there, what could he do against two full armies?

The second time, we thought we were going to get spammed by des cav. The enemy took a very long time to set up and we were expecting all sorts of rushes and flanking attacks. First things first, my ally rapidly moved to join me on a hill. However, we had miss judged our enemy, and it was the pharaohs spearmen/archer spam mentioned above. But he had started at the bottom of a hill, in some trees. His ally had to give up his high ground to join him, or face two concentrated armies without support. I was blocking for my ally, he was feinting to help me. It was a joy to play.

Even the worst spam should not be able to stand up to two armies. Howeever, you still need to take all the other suggestions on board. Spear men v horse, flank the blob, etc. If I was as humiliated as some of the people we left in our wake, I would change my tactics.

In fact, it was obvious that I was playing good players, who were let down by there partners. I have a friend online I prefer to be in a team with. When we fight, I regard myself as half of a bigger army. This attitude seems the best defence against silly spammers.

[sheelba]

Pompey the Spammer.

When Caesar finally met Pompey at Pharsalus, Caesar had about 22,000 crack legionnaires, and 1,000 good Gallic cavalry. Pompey had about 45,000 good legionnaires, and 7,000 crack (mainly) greek cavalry.

Caesar mixed light infantry troops in with his cavalry, in the German manner, and also detatched some cohorts of infantry for his third line to form a fourth line. These ran to support the cavalry the moment Pompey's forces hit home. Caesars cavalry routed, but the light infantry held the Greek horse long enough for the crack legionnaires to hit home. Pompey's cavalry routed, Caesar turned his "fourth" line to the rear and flanks of Pompey's infantry. The rest is history. BTW one side of the battle was blocked by a river, and thus Caesar forced Pompey to concentrate his horse.

Hope this helps.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Is there an easy way to make a phalanx circle, or are you doing this by positioning one unit at a time?

I've lately found it easiest to use a double line, then when the enemy comes change facing of the line furthest back and move the troops of the flanks of both lines to face the sides. That way I obtain a square or rectangle. It's then easy to reform it into a circle if needed, but usually a square is as good as a circle, especially since the square has some offensive power, whereas the circle is completely stationary.

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

how are you supposed to know if your opponent is spamming or not?

A good question indeed.

Anyone playing with Egypt or Roman and taking one of the above army is not a spammer: a power gamer yes, but not a spammer. (and probably not a fun player either).
On the other hand, you can be spammed by cataphracts too... or by greek cavalry!
And I would not agree with Cheetah: balance army can spam too!

My understanding of spam is: units in wedge stack on top of each other attacking one unit, breaking them in seconds, and moving to the next one.

To be honest, I quite don't believe that infantry spam is such a big deal. Anyone getting caught by infantry is to be blamed for its own mistakes. Outrun them, get them tired.
So a 20 urban cohorts army or a 10 pharaoh bowmen, 10 pharaoh guard army would hardly qualify as spam. Powerfull, yes, unbalanced and unfun, for sure; but spammy?
(not to mention; how much money are you playing with to get that kind of army? More than my usual 7000 I guess )

The real issue is cavalry spam. For them my recommandation is (again), to play on large size.

Louis,

[Lord Preston]

My understanding of spam is: units in wedge stack on top of each other attacking one unit, breaking them in seconds, and moving to the next one.

thats not spam.... thats the blob bug/exploit

my understanding of it is that they get the bonuses but dont loose any defensive cappabilities.

1. because they just kill everything infront of them
2. they are merged together so there is no gaps for armies to merge and stop the charge
3. no unit has a flank open because they are so close together

so a spam army + blob = Powerfull, unbalanced and unfun

[Cheetah]

Not surprisingly I agree with Lord Preston here

Basicaly, there are two kinds of exploits:

1, filling up the army with one or two types of uber units (which I -and many other- would call spamming).
2, exploiting the weakness of the game engine, like the swipe-bug in MTW or the "blob/stacking-bug" in RTW.

Now, which one is less desirable? Well, of course both but if I have to chose I would say the first. Why?

Exploiting the weakness of the game engine was always around and will be around. People used swiping even when they had 4/6/8 cavs, and people can use their cavs in blob even if they have a balanced army (so in this sense I agree with Louis). However, as long as they have a reasonably balanced army it can be delt with.

On the other hand people who pick spam armies, usualy pick not just uberunits, but such uberunits with which they can exploit the game engine (all lancer, all pret cav etc.). So in most of the cases they are both spamming and exploiting the game engine. First, for obvious reasons this is most difficult to delt with. Second, and imho this is a greater danger: it is utterly boring.

Of course, there are spam armies which do not build on game exploits, like the 10/10 pharaohs bowmen/guard, these are just simple uberunits. So, I can see why Louis would not call them "true spam" but imho these are still spam armies and just as boring as any other spam army that builds on game exploits.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Not surprisingly I agree with Lord Preston here
the swipe-bug in MTW

What was that?