What kind of general are you?

[Shambles]

A Shout, A Charge and a glorious death is my favourite battleplan - up the hill, into the arrow storm, onto the spear points and forwards to victory is my favourite stlye of play.

Think il try that my self :)

Thanx for the new strategy

[Craterus]

I hate the way the AI charge but retreat as they come under horse archer fire, they often continue to do this until their army is exhausted and not many of their men remain...

But still, if they choose to do this and waste their men - i can't influence their decision..

[Etym]

I think a lot (probably too much) about force composition. I prefer to match enemy spears with my swords/axes, enemy cav with my spears, enemy ax/swords and archers with my cav. On defense, of course, I set up a spear wall with archers ahead (retreating behind the wall when the enemy gets close) and cutters (sword/ax) a few steps back on the wings, cav flankers and (if possible) missile cav out harassing the enemy. On offense, I position my force in loose groupings designed to deal with a particular type of threat -- spear and a cutter for most infantry and knights, one high-grade or two average cutters to kill spears, fast cav flanked forward for killing archers, heavier cav on high ground or flanked to assist units in trouble.

When badly outnumbered or outgunned, I take to the trees if available (except for horses, spears and archers). If not, I go for the highest ground I can reach (and if it has trees, so much the better). If neither is possible, I'll try to isolate one or more enemy units and kill them with my marginal troops. If it works, I'll repeat and follow up with the better units if it looks like I can win. If it doesn't, I'll set up a screen with whatever junk I have left and get the valuable units out of harm's way ("He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day").

In siege attacks (I've never yet had to defend a castle), I've started using as much artillery as I can. I buy mercenary mangonels whenever I can, and use them to breach interior walls first, then take out towers and other sources of defensive fire. I build my own catapults when I can, and use them for breaching outside walls (plus anything they can reach when the walls are down). Catapults are also really useful for river crossings - I set them up with some bows where they can cover bridge approaches.

Most mercenaries I regard as primary expendables. I'm paying them to fight and die, after all. So when its going to be a big battle, I'll buy a bunch of mercs to throw on the fire and weaken the enemy for my homeboys. This is especially true of sieges, which are always a fight to the death.

[DS_Legionary]

I'm a defensive general. While I am capable at offense I really shine on the defensive. I can take a rather small army and completely lay waste to almost anything out there, except elephants. I have a bit of trouble with those behemoths, but usually I can take em down and out of the equation. I really like to use Hoplites/Phalanx now that the shift right bug is fixed in 1.2. They are the best for defending and taking cities.

[Shambles]

I made a small picture of A basic defence that I often use,

I optimized it so its only 22.1 KB but you can still read the writing,
So if you care here it is
http://dflw.2ya.com/Basic_D.JPG
I didnt put the picture straight on page, Cos it ould slow down page opening times

Oh this is in shogun Btw

[marcusbrutus]

At the start of the game I usually have 50% Inf 25% cav 25% archers which will beat anything the AI can do. But then once the empire starts to grow I get really bored planning armies so I end up with random bunches of troops all the time, it makes the game a bit more interesting for having different types of army in every battle but can be a nightmare because I end up assaulting citys and then realising I only have one unit of infantry

Once you've played for a bit against the AI you know you can beat them with a balanced army so why not make some crazy armies in campaigns and see what happens?

[Raijer]

I'm your typical blundering idiot; all my kings have the Often Drunk vice whether it says it on the info parchment or not.

This is the best description of my general.. uh.. General style, bar none (I think it's telling that the drunks use the word "bar" in their responses ).

[DisruptorX]

Obsessive compulsive. I build up my provinces as much as possible, and rarely go to war. When I do choose to war, it is with overwhelming armies, all carefully selected and similar. I like to field a solid wall of spears, two or four units (three would not be even), with an equal amount of men at arms. I prefer axes over swords, and love halberds. I find that my armies almost always have low valour (too much peace), so I don't like swordsmen, as they tend to lose against enemy units. Instead, I take axes, and use them to chop up enemy heavy cav like lumber. Just today I got a good chuckle as the French king charged my vikings, who were in the woods! Forest penalty to cav, plus axe bonus against armour meant that the french king was fleeing with the grace of an old nag in less than a minute. How cliche! (I'm kidding, I love the French as much as anyone, just not as AI oponents ). I use at least two units of cavalry, or two of each type (light, heavy, missle)

In battle I take no prisoners.

I also go for the Otto Von Bismarck approach of trying to fight only one opponent at a time, and setting long term goals that take years to come into full effect.

In short, I love the campaign aspect of the game, being a long time Civ 2/3 fan. The battles are just an awesome icing to the cake, a wonderful feature that I see as a bonus, rather than the core of the game.

I am not going to say anything negative about it, but I no longer play RTW. When I did, this was the unstoppable formation I used that the AI could not beat: https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v...xformation.jpg

[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.

[Uesugi Kenshin]

Yeah, speed is great. I just played a campaign against the Dacians as the Julii. I only won because of my cavalry. I messed up my production and logistics and ended up with a ton of cavalry in my attacking armies and only a few infantry. Post reforms this would be ok, but my infantry and cavalry were outclassed by the barbarians. This forced me to use my huge cavalry masses to flank the enemy armies in as many ways possible all at once and hope they didn't fight to the death. In one battle I had to charge three sides of each spear wielding warband to defeat it because my infantry had fled. Many cavalrymen died in the frontal assaults, but the enemy would usually flee soon after they were struck on the flanks. Speed and manuever are key.

[Marquis of Roland]

Yeah, the Roman cavalry bites big butt. If you're going to play Romans, you might as well use their strength which of course is heavy infantry, best in the game by far. Roman cavalry is only there to keep casualties to a minimum among the infantry by flanking and protecting your flanks, they never really "decide" the battle for you, since most of the time your infantry will punch through anyway. I've been playing on hard/hard since I got the game, and I was told that the enemy troops get morale bonus on hard, and yet my cohorts have never failed to break the enemy line. I mean, just unloading the pilas already severely disrupts the enemy formation to the point that when you charge, it is only a matter of time when the enemy breaks (even other Roman factions, though you'll suffer more casualties as they're doing the same to you!).
I had no trouble with enemy infantry in the pre-reform era, but being Julii's I was fighting weak gauls, spanish, and brits. I don't know how well they'll hold up against the scared band but they did pretty well against armored hoplites (provided you don't attack them in formation - thats just plain dumb).

[Uesugi Kenshin]

Well the warbands are superior to Hastati on H/H, so that is where my trouble was coming from. My Hastati would not win decisively and the enemy cavalry would often defeat mine. It has been a campaign of glorious victories and pitiful defeats.

[King Henry V]

I'm pretty much you're straightforward infantry general, with some cavalry to do the old "pin down and strike from behind" move. I like seeing enemy generals getting killed. However, I never really find a use for my archers when attacking, since I'm a cautious general who prefers not to expose his troops to danger to much. But archers do come into their own when defending and on a hill. Once, playing the Julii, I completely annihilated a Brutii army by keeping my archers firing at them until the got to close, letting my infantry defend and swinging my cavalry round and attacking the rear. They're were 15 Brutii survivors.

[Craterus]

I use mounted missiles and cavalry the most efficiently, followed by archers and slingers, then infantry. I love to use archers and slingers though because they get so many easy kills and you don't tend to lose them unless they forget skirmish mode.

[Marquis of Roland]

Uesugi, how are you using your hastati to attack warbands, because due to the size of the warbands they can "wrap around" the hastati flanks one on one. If you keep a solid battle line (no gaps) and use ALL your pilas before your charge, you should be able to hold and defeat them.
Draw the enemy cavalry away with your light cavalry (preferably cavalry auxilia) and they won't bother you for the rest of the battle. maintain infantry superiority on one flank, allowing the larger warbands to semi-flank from the other side. When this happens charge the weak flank with your general from the side, this should cause their flank on your weak side to break. Continue breaking off your general and charging the next unit down the line and you should be able to roll up their entire flank. The key is to hold the "strong side" and lock all their troops there for your cav to hit them at will unopposed from any direction.

[tibilicus]

Other than a rubbish one lol im NOT rubbish, any way i love to haras and haras some more! then when there lines seperate get there broken units one at a time ! then haras ! This is the funest with phalanxes when they split i just hack them down. In other words im the annoying commander that when you come out of the battle you feel like comiting sucide.
This is the tatic i favour best. (woops did i go off topic a bit?)

[TheSilverKnight]

Napoleonic general
Organised warfare all the way.
Morale and training count, so do strategies.
A good, tactful commander can win victories, but he can't inspire his men like a good, personable commander can.

[gardibolt]

Poor. I get better results auto-resolving.

[Craterus]

Surely not. Maybe knock your difficulty level down a knotch. If not, keep trying, we'll make a great commander out of you yet!!

[Colovion]

I realized the kind of general I am last night while watching my brother. My stomach was in knots when I saw his hell-mell display of tactics he used. It wasn't without victory, but he basically just advanced the infantry and then charged with the cavalry again and again. The infantry barely saw any action and the Cavalry ended up halved in numbers and the infantry losing maybe a half dozen among their hundreds.

I'm supremely anxious to send any cavalry charges in - especially against spearmen. He lost a full half of a General's bodygaurd by attacking a hoplite unit from the rear. Once they were milling around in the hoplite's rear he went and did some other things elsewhere on the battlefield only to come back and see that the hoplites had turned and were now easily holding the cavalry at bay. Naturally, I would assume that he would tell them to back off as quick as possible. What does he do? He tells them to run straight through the hoplite ranks to charge the rear of another unit which is 100 ft away! Needless to say, that unit routed pretty quickly. He said "What the hell is that guy running from?"

I usually have the infantry engage the enemy only after all javs and arrows are used up, once pinning the enemy I'll send flanking units around the sides. Pretty standard, really - but I hate losing units, especially members of my royal family.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Rome: Cavalry armies using basic Mongol tactics, hit and run.
Medieval: Combined armies, cav used as flankers with infantry in the front and archers and skirmishers running forward then retreating behind my battle line.

[Tigranes]

Scythia:

100% Cavalry, with the odd axeman thrown in for fun.

What other option is there, with Scythia?

Anyway, that's all I need, in most situations. The only problems I really face are lots of heavy cavalry, chariots, especially scythed, and very long ranged enemies.

[Uesugi Kenshin]

Ninja peasants and generals?

My tactics would probably look disorderly and muddled to some, but they work out well with a fairly even distribution of casualties, except my generals they drop like flies. I use them to shore up any weak point and hold off enemy troops so my men can finish a unit before dealing with reinforcements.

[katar]

its been a while since i posted here or played the game

but im mostly a combined arms general;

using a few artillery pieces and archers/slingshots to thin down priority enemy units before engaging them with infantry and enveloping them from the rear with a few cavalry.

artillery/archers/slingers 30%, infantry 50%, cavalry 20%