Armour in the desert

[EatYerGreens]

Been experimenting with using troops without any armour upgrades. It's a semi expensive method though, as your first line will often loose, but the second won't , as the enemy gets exhausted troops for the rest of the battle. No need to care about tired troops.

Although I think a medium armored first line, withdrawed after the first battle and replaced with light troops, would work best.

Sounds sensible to me. Rather than a cut and dried 'yes' or 'no' to armour, it's the middle way. A mixture of both gives you more flexibility. One lot able to take a pounding - just remember not to have them pursue or route march them too much - and the other lot to take over the attack in a fresh state and use speed of movement to outmanouvre and clobber the exhausted remnants of your attackers.

At least, that makes sense to me if I'm defending, whilst on the attack I might prefer to go for all unarmoured, as per Gawain of Orkeny's style.

Even without the encumberance, if it means crossing two-thirds of the map to reach the defenders, I'd still be tempted to pull up short of arrow range and wait until my troops' energy levels are back to 'fresh' before launching the attack itself.

Not a luxury one can expect to get in MP, I'd guess.

[Gawain of Orkeny]

Not a luxury one can expect to get in MP, I'd guess.

To be sure.

I'd still be tempted to pull up short of arrow range and wait until my troops' energy levels are back to 'fresh' before launching the attack itself.

Any troops with armor over 4 or 5 will never go back past two bars. Pavs for instance are at 2 bars without even moving in about 10 minutes.I never use anything but archers in desert no matter what era. People make the mistake of engaging enemy pavs with their archers instead of going after melee units. Just wait and let their armored units roast. Again after 10 or 15 minutes they will all be at 2 bars. My army even after marching accross the whole map will still be 4 bars.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Thats only if those Pavs don't move in and mow you down. I just use straight Arbelasters and I've had some very good results in the desert as the Byzantines.

[Gawain of Orkeny]

Thats only if those Pavs don't move in and mow you down. I just use straight Arbelasters and I've had some very good results in the desert as the Byzantines.

How their the slowest units in the game?

Regular arbs arent much better nor are Byz inf. It may work in sp but you will loose in mp.

[antisocialmunky]

I always found archer hybrids great in the desert. Heat exhaustion and massive arrow fire equals sad and funny at the same time.

[Roark]

I don't know how you guys do the big battles without the pause button...

I need it just to get all my units into good position, especially lining up ranks of spearmen/sarges.

[antisocialmunky]

I don't know how you guys do the big battles without the pause button...

I need it just to get all my units into good position, especially lining up ranks of spearmen/sarges.

You really need to remember 3 simple things if your playing with Cathys and using a spearman core or the Byz with a Infantry core:

1. Simple = Good - For example with your spearmen. Select them all, group them, and drag them into a 5-6 deep formation. This allows them to be side-by-side each other and reduces the time it takes to line your troops up on an offense if the enemy starts running around.

2. Camera and Minimap - Set the camera as high as possible so you can see as much as possible and always check on any unit with a fighting symbol or is doing something not right(moving while should not, staying still while should be moving). For example, if your line is surrounded by archers, you can double click on them to instazoom to where the enemy is advancing. Learn to use it and love it all the time.

3. Only micro 1-4 units at a time. Main battleline units can usually take care of themselves unless they get really really messed up. Besides, you can really move those guys around. Cav is what you really have to concentrate on when you're microing something.

[EatYerGreens]

I don't know how you guys do the big battles without the pause button...

I need it just to get all my units into good position, especially lining up ranks of spearmen/sarges.

a.s.m. beat me to it ...........but another variation is to create the group using Ctrl-clicks on the unit icons, press G for group, then right-click on the group header bar to get the group actions menu, hover your cursor on 'group formations, then browse the pop-out list of available patterns. Then press the number for the required formation. '1' makes them all line up nicely.

That's the menu-driven way but I have to admit it is cludgy by comparison. However, once you know which number is which pattern, you only have to create a group and press '1' for single line, or whatever.

Actually I hate the GUI since, if I'm rushed and I slide the mouse pointer sideways in anything less than a horizontal straight line, the sidewards pop-out menu vanishes when the cursor misses its mark and I have to repeat the process. Perhaps it's best to do this in pause one time and write down the various formations on a quick reference card. (I ought to take my own advice here, so I don't have to keep browsing the menu to see what's available).


The method a.s.m. described is far better though as you can click on units in a logical order L to R across the field (or vice versa) then drag out unit shapes to exactly where they're wanted, with a clear idea of how much ground they will cover. Much more intuitive.


With regard to what I described, the hazard of clicking on the unit icons at the bottom of screen is that they frequently don't relate to the relative L to R positions within your army. When you select the icons, group them and tell them to form line, sometimes they all bunch up as they bump into each other halfway to crossing over to their new positions according to how the game decided to sort them. Oops.

A fast-reacting and wily enemy will charge into you while you're temporarily in a disorganised mess like this, provided you were close enough.

It is also the only clean way to 'wheel' your entire army into a particular direction and retain overall formation. As far as I can see, there is no game command to do this, seemingly, most fundamental behaviour.

Alt-right-map-click only makes units turn to face that direction but they all swivel on the spot, whereas I'm talking about entire formations turning (in reality it's quite tricky to do, as the flanks need to run many times faster than the centre ranks).

There are times when I've tried to use 'march with fixed facing' to achieve this but muddled my keypresses, pressed Alt-map-click instead of Ctrl-map-click and ended up with all my units charging to the assigned map point, then standing, arranged as previously but obligingly with their collective flanks facing the enemy I was lucky that a crash to desktop saved me from the ensuing massacre I was suffering as the enemy took advantage of the mess created by my attempts to re-orient everything.

Basically all attempts at whole-army maneuvres (conducted with all 16 units highlighted) have the inbuilt hazard of a clumsy click here or there...

[PittBull260]

turks freakin own in the desert :)

[Gawain of Orkeny]

Nope english do.

[BAD]

turks freakin own in the desert :)

Exactly. Coudn't ask for a better lineup than, Futtuwa's, Ghazi's, Jannisary Heavies, Turocoman Horse and Armenian Heavy Cavalry.