Bridge Battles, Yea or Nea

[Vladimir]

I can usually coax the AI into going on assault mode when they are defending a bridge. If there are two I move my cavalry to the undefended one and cause a distraction which means my main army can cross the other if I need them to. I just love defending bridges with my archer heavy armies.

[Knight Templar]

Strongly yes when defending, not so strongly yes when attacking. Bridge puts defending army in much better position. My 100 Saracen inf repeled 400 enemy by killing 150 (others started to run away) and losing only 30 men when I was defending. From my experience, second bridge is almost always unguarded and good way to send cavs to kill their archers

[English assassin]

On defence, and sorry if its old news, try a defensive box rather than plugging the bridge with one unit. By that I mean make a square bottomed U deployment with three units, with the mouth of the U at the bridge. Eenmy units are allowed to come a small way off the bridge before being set upon.

The advantage is instead of a 1:1 meatgrinder you get a numerical advantage over the attacker, and a good chance to attack some units from behind. Low morale units coming over the bridge sometimes rout immediately as they are in effect surrounded.

Of course that's not all good since you want to kill them but making them pap their pants without even fighting can be amusing in its own right.

I've also tried positioning a few very powerful units either side of the bridge with the rest of the army further back, with the intention of allowing about 1/2 of the enemy over, pinching the bridge off , and slaughtering the now isolated enemy vanguard. That idea is presently filed under "good in principle, doesn't work in practice" but if anyone has managed to make it work...

Bridge assaults, the AI is too stupid to make these much of a challenge although I admit I made a mess of my first few.

[ToranagaSama]

I hate bridge battles!

Less skill more technique involved.

In MTW bridge battles are relatively few in comparison to Shogun. Also MTW often has two bridges, which is absent in Shogun.

For those who haven't experienced Shogun, bridge battles are not to be believed. Each one is the mother of all bridge battles.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

I love bridge battles. The "cut the enemy army in half" concept does work but it has to be done in smaller doses.

[antisocialmunky]

I hate bridge battles!

Less skill more technique involved.

In MTW bridge battles are relatively few in comparison to Shogun. Also MTW often has two bridges, which is absent in Shogun.

For those who haven't experienced Shogun, bridge battles are not to be believed. Each one is the mother of all bridge battles.

I remember I fought one bridge battle in STW with 12 Kensai vs a massive Uesugi army. Man, those guys were so fun on bridges.

[phred]

The AI seems a bit challenged when it comes to bridge battles. I was defending against the Golden Horde and only had enough troops to defend one bridge but I was on a two bridge map.
I put all my men in front of one bridge and the silly AI never once tried to flank me by using the second bridge.
I still lost the battle because I didn't have enough men, but I killed hundreds of the GH and even routed them a couple of times, only to have their reinforcements drive me back across the bridge.

[Graphic]

For defense of a bridge I like to hold it with a unit of spears while I empty my archer's ammo, then when I'm out of that I hold the bridge with a good melee unit and continually rout them until it's done.

[Budwise]

I too, would like to hear from Puzz3D regarding this. My own experiences indicate that, on attack across a bridge, one should never send more than one unit at a time to avoid the "squeeze effect". I ususally resize the unit selected to no more than 7 or 8 files width, so that they'll fit on the bridge without disturbing the formation alignment.

SO THATS WHY MY KILL RATIO GOES DOWN around the middle of the battle. Thanks.