What kind of general are you?

[Graphic]

MTW...

Depends on the faction. If I'm Turkish for example I spam the hell out of Ottomon Infantry and whore the archery or spam Ghazi infantry and make suicide attacks without regard to casualties.

If I'm Catholic I'll not use archers really at all. Just lots of spears and flanking knights.

[PseRamesses]

I´m a cautios guy and I´ll try to minimize losses. Most comfortably with a spear/ hoplite - archer - and flanking cav - kinda army. I´m piss-poor with a highly manouverable army and didn´t play the Mongols good in STW or MTW either. In STW I played the eastern No-dachi clan most (can´t remember name), in MTW mostly the English and in RTW the Greeks, Egyptians and Romans.
When defending I defend with possible ambushes. On the offensive I outmanouvre. I never head direct for an anemy.

[Leftenant Moley]

I'm not much of a general at all,

I just form a line, send it forward and hope for the best.

[SpencerH]

It varies depending on what faction I am, but for the most part I favor a solid line of inf (~6 units) to protect my 3-5 missile units (including 1-2 arty if available). I use 2-4 cav to exploit weaknesses or to flank but sometimes they're only used to delay the enemy cav while my inf and missiles deal with the enemy masses.

[Al Khalifah]

I'm another infantry general. I adopt the unorthadox approach of putting my best killing infantry on the flanks and my heavily armoured slow infantry in the centre. I always make sure to build up my provinces to give me armouries and armoured troops. Just before engagement I rush forward on the flanks with my killing infantry and hammer the enemy here. The flanks tend to be thicker than the centre because my killers have a nasty habbit of getting killed too so they need replacing. The brilliance of this system is you can have the centre fall back and the enemy centre exposes his flanks to you so you can crush them in the centre with your flankers.

As for cavalry, if the opponent fields heavy cavalry then I'll try my best to avoid a conflict if I have none of my own. If I do, I try to set my heavy cavalry to work against his to distract them to let my infantry do their job. I always go to war with plenty of light cavalry to quickly get behind the enemy to circle around the back to kill any cowards who try and retreat rather than face an honourable death. They're also very handy at getting rid of pesky archers, although my system normally means they're inflicting as many casaulties on their own men as my own.

My own archers aim at the enemy infantry furthest from my own centre. If things look desperate I will let them fire at nearer troops, because the heavily armoured centre can normally take a few arrows better than the enemy can. As a last resort, I throw the archers into the melee too if the centre looks like it might break.

My battles tend to have very high casualties for the opposition and large numbers of my flankers tend to die, but crazy men who kill and die quick are normally easy to find. My centre tends to survive for ages and become solid as spartans.

[Togakure]

I play STW and MTW/VI. I've only played STW online.

As far as unit type for a general goes, I prefer a cavalry unit for it's mobility. The little moral bonus that a general provides when he's nearby is useful, and having my general mobile allows me to use that bonus more effectively. In STW MP I have often used a souped up Yari Samurai (spear) unit as a general with good results. There are a lot of MP players that handle cavalry well, and they often like to try and flank you and try to kill your gen. It's much harder (but not impossible) to do this if your gen is a spear unit in STW. I usually use a ysam in battles where my army is likely to stayed grouped relatively tight, and where high mobility and sustained movement is not likely to be an issue (defense for example). An except is where I use the "4444" army, which I describe below.

As far as MP army composition goes, I tend to go with 2/3s of my army balanced, but with slightly more cavalry than is usual. I am aggressive even in defense, and use cav to bait and harrass my opponent's flanks while pressing the center with my main army. This is a common tactic, but having more cav allows me to worry those who bring more "normal" numbers of cav--two attack and two cav archer units being common.

A highly successful 10K army that I used for a while, and that for a brief period was copied by quite a few players on STW last year, was what I ended up calling the "4444" army, which consisted of a ysam gen and 3 additional ysams (h7w1 or h7a1), 4 Cav archers (h0), 4 musketeers (h2), and either 4 Nag Cav (2-h4 and 2-h3 if my ysams were h7a1), or 2 Nag Cav (h4) and 2 Heavy Cav (h3) if my ysams were h7w1. Despite the low number of infantry units, if the cav were used to good effect the army really kicked butt. Some purists complained that using ysams with such high honor and upgrades was exploiting the stat imbalance, as they could beat the typical MP no dachi and and monks unless they were significantly outnumbered and flanked (which they often were if my cav didn't do their jobs effectively). My argument was that their high cost forced me to sacrifice with the rest of my army, and I pretty much had to use my Cav Archers (very flighty at h0) to good effect and keep on the flanks and rear of enemy units, or I'd get wiped pretty quick.

When playing campaigns in MTW I use balanced armies. I don't use a lot of cav in MTW, usually 4 units max. If I'm playing the Egyptians or Turks I use a couple more, as they have good cav archers (the Egyptian Mamluks in particular). The Spanish are also an exception, as I love Jinettes and use them to great effect. I've only played the Hungarians once or twice, but their Skelezy are great so I use a few more cav with them also.

STW campaigns depend on the faction, but I do love a LOT of cav. Playing Takeda is hella fun, though I find it to be really easy against the AI, even on Expert difficulty. Surrounding the enemy to get the Yari units chasing my cav, pulling them away from their archers, and then sending in reserve cav to decimate the ranged units while the Yari are away is a favorite tactic and usually results in a rout. Then I can mow them down as they flee, with casualty ratios usually being 8:1 in my favor or better. Cav archers in STW campaigns are very cool. In campaigns they have higher honor that you can normally afford in MP without having to make cost-ineffective sacrifices, so you can use them to melee attack flanks and rear of ranged units and enemy cav archers without them routing (if you time it right and pull them out as the charge effect lessens). If your timing is good you can often cause a mass rout doing this in several places at once.

So in summary, Cav general usually, highly mobile and aggressive style, bait, draw, attack ranged with cav when the opportunity presents itself, pepper infantry with highly mobile cav archers until everyone's running, then mow the lawn. But being unpredictable doth a good general make, so I don't always play like this--just more often than not.

[Marquis of Roland]

I am a maneuver general. I think army maneuvers in battle are the most important skill a general should have, to know when time time attacks and flanking maneuvers, or when to pull units back so that your armies stay cohesive.

I tend to use combined arms armies. They are the most versatile, with each branch covering for the others, can deal with most other combinations of units. Only thing I see a combined arms army cannot face are 20 armored elephant units making a frontal charge! I tried that in custom battle, it was extremely entertaining. The Romans became the first-ever airborne infantry....

Anyhow, combined arms work well because you don't always know what you're facing, and having all 3 arms make adapting that much easier. Always flank the AI off the favorable ground before attacking. If they won't move compel them to do so by drawing them off with your skirmishers (or even your heavy cav; make it more believable).

On defense, always be fluid. Since computer hardly ever attacks me without overwhelming odds in its favor, always place your army in-between the enemy armies. You prevent them from joining forces while isolating one army and destroying it before you turn to face the new threat.

Speed is better than armor. Speed is both your offense and defense, and lets you dictate the battlefield.