Shooting Commanders

[Ironside]

Darkhorn there's also a bug in 2.0 that causes cav to come first. Get 2.1 or start using heavy steppe cav (I used that ) to fix your problem.

[Alexios]

Thanks for the kudos, Darkhorn. F.Y.I., if you're playing M-TW+VI v2.00 or v2.01 (doesn't work in vanilla M-TW v1.00 or v1.1), you should be able to click on the "Reinforcements" button on the pre-battle screen. This will show your starting 16 units in the top box, and your first 16 reinforcements in the lower box. Scrolling the lower reinforcement box is possible by using the up/down arrows, if there are more units than will fit in the box given. You can then "pick up" units (with your mouse) from any of the starting 16 slots and drop them anywhere into the reinforcements slots - the first reinforcement (upper LH slot) will jump into the bottom RH slot of the starting 16. Alternatively, you can pickup a reinforcement from any slot, drop it down into the starting 16, which will cause the unit in that slot to pop up for placement in the reinforcement pool...

Hey Geezer. But what happens if I change my mind about the order AFTER the battle has already begun? Am I pretty much stuck with it at that point? There have been situations where based on the events of the battle, I decided I didn’t want the next reinforcement unit in my pre-arranged order, but wanted to bring in one further down the stack. The only way I can think to do that is to keep pressing the reinforcement button followed by the withdraw command until I get to the one I want. In doing so, however, the withdrawn unit is no longer available to fight in the battle. Is there a better way to do this?

[Vladimir]

Hey Geezer. But what happens if I change my mind about the order AFTER the battle has already begun? Am I pretty much stuck with it at that point? There have been situations where based on the events of the battle, I decided I didn’t want the next reinforcement unit in my pre-arranged order, but wanted to bring in one further down the stack. The only way I can think to do that is to keep pressing the reinforcement button followed by the withdraw command until I get to the one I want. In doing so, however, the withdrawn unit is no longer available to fight in the battle. Is there a better way to do this?

In less you're a woman, then you have no excuse (just remember "yes dear" as women are always right ). Just play smart. Mix up your reinforcements. Generally missile troops first as they'll use up all their ammo, then cav as they'll get tired/atritted, then maybe some melee troops if it's a reeeeeealy long battle. Just play it smart and make sure you kill the general.

[Martok]

Hey Geezer. But what happens if I change my mind about the order AFTER the battle has already begun? Am I pretty much stuck with it at that point?

Yes, correct. Once you go the actual battle map, you can't go back and alter the order of your reinforcement units. So you still want have a general idea of which units you're most likely to need in any particular battle.

In defensive battles, for example, you often want your reserve missile units at the top of the reinforcement list to minimize the time between swapping in fresh archers for your tired ones that have run out of ammo. It's not a perfect system, but it's still makes life a lot easier when sending multiple stacks into battle!

There have been situations where based on the events of the battle, I decided I didn’t want the next reinforcement unit in my pre-arranged order, but wanted to bring in one further down the stack. The only way I can think to do that is to keep pressing the reinforcement button followed by the withdraw command until I get to the one I want. In doing so, however, the withdrawn unit is no longer available to fight in the battle. Is there a better way to do this?

Not really. Like I said in the above paragraph, you just have to learn which reinforcements you're most likely to bring in first, depending on the situation. Intelligent anticipation is as much a part of good generalship as anything else.

[Geezer57]

Martok and Vladimir have pretty much answered your question, Alexios. When I setup my reinforcements before battle, I like to try to forecast roughtly how the battle will go - but I still pretty much mix unit types, a couple of missle units, an infantry, a cav, then repeat the pattern again until I run out of "good" troops. The junk can wait until last, as most often, they never even appear in battle.

[Alexios]

Thanks for the answers guys. I kinda thought so.

I had a huge battle just the other night when I wished I could have changed the order midway through. I was defending Palestine against a huge Egyptian invasion that consisted mostly of heavy cav., Saracen Inf., and Bedouin Camels. Fortunately, I had a fairly large army myself, comprising mostly of Feudal Sergeants (FS), Spearmen, Arbs., Longbows (LB), and X-bows, with a few RKs and light cavs thrown in. I also had a very nice hill on my side of the battle map in which to position them on. This made it a perfect situation for being the defender! I figured the AI would hit my spearwall pretty aggressively early on, so I sequenced my reinforcements so that two spear units came on for every missile unit (ex: FS, FS, Arb / FS, FS, X-bow / etc., etc.)

What ended up happening was the AI didn’t really attack my spearwall all that much in the beginning - I was able to chase off most of their approaching units with heavy missile fire. So I found myself using up my ammo quite rapidly, and cycling out my Arbs, LBs and X-bows to bring on more as reinforcements. In order to do this, however, I had to turn away the FS and Spearmen.

But as luck would have it, the AI started hammering my spearwall halfway through the battle. I was sweating it out a bit, because I knew I hadn’t many FS or Spearmen left in reserve at that point. I ended up winning the battle after successfully nailing enough of the general’s Ghulam Bodyguards that they finally routed off the field with the rest of their army following shortly thereafter. Talk about close ones! But I guess this is part of what makes the game so much fun.

[macsen rufus]

The art of reinforcements lies very much in planning the battle from before you get there. I always find spears hold out quite well, and used to often end up with too many spears coming on from the reserve pool, so now I tend to either have 1 spear per 2 or 3 missile units, or prepare a completely new block of four spears together and change them all at once. The top row of reinforcements I prefer to have mounted missiles, as they get up to the front quickly, then after that I use a plan like Geezer - mix of troops to maintain tactical flexibility throughout.

Also you need to decide how the battle will be structured - is it possible to win with just your opening 16 units? Will the reinforcements just feed in extras to the opening army, or are you going to withdraw the first wave, and then replace it with a whole new 16 units? Checking the enemy reinforcements should help with this decision. If the enemy has less than three stacks, you should be able to win with your opening 16 alone. More than that and you will have to consider melee troop exhaustion as well as missiles running out of ammo. Four stacks per side - or more - tends to be a case where the battle should proceed by "waves" and you should set up each group of 16 units in the reinforcements as a balanced army in itself.

[gaijinalways]

The use of reinforcements can be an art in equally matched battles,　battles where you are attacking/defending aganist a larger number, or battles where you have some troops rout and then regroup.

That being said, I often am able to inflict a lot of damage with my original 16, but I still may have a few units rout, and if I am close enough to the reinforcing point, may send out some depleted/exhausted units. Using missile units is always useful, but so is getting some reinforcements that can reach your main group of troops. Sometimes I have had reinforcements get rocked and overwhelmed (too isolated) or manage to come in at an extremely opportune time (like my cav units taking over for exhausted mounted seargants who had chased HA all over).

[The Darkhorn]

I played vanilla first though. As to the last post, all that is true, but it still sends the cavalry in first although in the order that I arrange them.