Kill Pussy Cat, Faster! Or Bumping off Enemy General in Battle

[BlueRobin]

RTW though could apply to earlier TWs

Say you are engaging an enemy faction in battle and going up against their leader. After an extensive military campaign and knocking off all the family with your now 10(ish)-star assasin, from what intel you have gathered you are going up against an heirless leader. With the enemy still holding on to several territories, killing their leader could be a shortcut to winning the war much faster.

The risk though in battle is that the enemy general routs and lives to survive another day. How then would be the best way to surround, pin him and bump him off on the battle field?

I want to hear "the enemy general is dead, the blaggard gone to his grave!" rather than "you don't play fair, I'm off home to me mum, waaaaa!"

[Papewaio]

Both, try and kill him in the field of battle, if he runs away then send in the assassins.

[BlueRobin]

I was thinking more aht sort of units can he get away from and what pins him in?

[BlueRobin]

Despite having a kickass assasin, in my experience its likely that the leader will be successful in warding off any assasin.

[roman pleb]

You could keep a unit or two of light cavalry like mercenary barbarian cavalry around to chase down and kill the enemy leader if he flees the battlefield.

[CountMRVHS]

In those battles, where my primary goal is to kill the enemy general and thus destroy the faction, tactics basically go out the window. In other words, I don't try to win the battle so much as rush the general and kill him fast.

Take your baddest, heaviest unit(s) and charge them straight at the general. Meanwhile, as roman pleb said, take some light cav around the flanks to wait in case the leader routs. At your leisure, try to surround him with other units, such as spears, that can form a sort of wall to intercept his escape route, should he flee. Finally, pour all your arrows into the fracas. It's pretty brutal, and you'll kill a bunch of your guys, but if you really want the faction gone you've gotta do what you've gotta do.

Obviously these are very sloppy battles, but the advantage of rushing like this (rather than waiting to set up a nice tactical plan that would win the battle but take a bit longer) is that you force the enemy general into the fray quickly -- AI can't resist answering your head on charge -- and thus decrease the chances he'll leave the battlefield. If you wait and mop up his army first, he might simply decide to book it. Plus, if you've destroyed his army already, his morale will be even lower (in addition to the morale penalties he's taking for being surrounded & under arrow fire), and that might precipitate a rout. You want to keep him on the field until he's dead.

Even if he does rout, you can sometimes catch the lone, routing enemy general with cav of your own. Doesn't happen often, but you can get lucky. That's what the fresh, rested light cav are for: send them to the AI's end of the field at the outset of the battle and keep 'em standing there. Hopefully they'll go unmolested and will be ready for when you need them.

Good luck!

[GeneralHankerchief]

What I usually do is wait for him to commit. Meaning that he finally sends his escort in at the critical point. At that point I immediately throw in my own general plus some reserve infantry (if available). Usually it kills him.

If it does not, I have backup plans. If my general is less tired than the enemy's, I usually let them just pursue. If not, I'll send in the lighter cavalry which is almost guaranteed to chase him down and kill him.

If that doesn't work, the enemy's got one lucky general. Depending on how many soldiers are left and far back he goes on the campaign map, sometimes I detach my cavalry from the army and go off pursuing. This only works if the remaining enemy units are a wounded general plus either cannon fodder or extremely depleted "good" units.

[][GERUDO][Mojoman]

try and surround him.....and also, try and make sure u ahve a lot of FAST cavalry units in your army in reserve when u go against him....then if he tries to leg it, chase him down with them...horse archers work well for this. Also, even if he does escape of the field, u might be able to split your light cavalry from the rest of your army and engage him in a second battle (in which he HAS to fight, if he runs off the field he dies anyway)...u can do this because light cav have the longest campaign map movement in the game.

[BlueRobin]

I was thinking perhaps if you have spear or pike units then you could pin the general in from all sides? The problem though here is one of mobility.

The trick with standby cavalry is knowing where the enemy general will flee to and position them appropriately.

As it turns out the above happened to me about 5 times until I drove the leader back into his local provincial town. From here, I can definately fix him in place.

[Somebody Else]

Attack with an archer heavy army - large enough that his army won't charge you, small enough that he won't retreat. Form up in range, and shoot him down. He won't rout with his army intact around him and none of your troops nearby. He'll just die. (Lots of archers are needed because generals tend to be quite tough...)

[bedlam28]

A question based on this tactical idea:

Working on the tactic of using the spy network to place your enemies family members, and attacking those cities and armies as your target.
With the aim of destabilising the faction, giving you the power to fight or diplomacy them to death, is it possible to destroy their family network before new heirs 'come of age' ? or does the AI grow the children to fill the gaps like some crazy genetic breeding program ??

[The Spartan (Returns)]

Despite having a kickass assasin, in my experience its likely that the leader will be successful in warding off any assasin.

i once killed an heir with an assain. if you can kill heirs you can kill kings.

[gmjapan]

if you fail the assassination attempt a few times you are unlikely to ever get him.

[BlueRobin]

i once killed an heir with an assain. if you can kill heirs you can kill kings.

Is that an assumption? ;) Rarely do I get an assasin of enough ability to test out killing all the enemy "royal" family so I can only go on what little I have 'umbly experienced.

I can be a bit haphazard though and shoudl really assess the full consequences of failing as gmjapan alludes to. TG for the load game option!

[Vladimir]

M:TW Jinettes

enuf said

[GeneralHankerchief]

Regarding assassins.

Really it's just luck of the draw. Some of your guys are expert killers but die as soon as they fail a mission. Others miss their targets more than they hit, but always manage to get away safely.

I have seen assassins wipe out entire factions. In one recent WRE play by e-mail campaign they were used to wipe out the entire Slavic horde when they were threatening. So your guys can kill their king, just make sure you have some good ones (preferably 8 eyes or more) at hand to do the job.

[stalin]

Well killing the named characters (especially high ranking generals) leads to armies led by captains and insta-routs for the enemies. And then the game sucks. I always let them go if possible: I do tent to kill them when sieging the last city though.

[Grimmy]

I tend to be a rather "scorched earth" fighter in all my battles.
I always try to destroy my enemy utterly and entirely on the battlefield.
For that reason, I tend to use "enveloping" attacks when on the offensive and always try to be on offense.

By enveloping I mean I tend to put lighter foot and faster cav on either one wing or both (depending on my force make up and that of the enemy). I use this to run around behind the enemy and kick him up his tail pipe while my heavier stuff grabs his nose from in front.
That's a common enough tactic in general and nothing splindiferous but where I seem to have really good luck is in slaughtering the enemy battlefield commander with a regularity.

I get that result by "stacking" my swing arm if I am up against a general/faction man that I really want to make sure gets dead.
The swing is to send a light fast foot against the enemy general first. This pins him and holds him still so that my light horse comes in and drives through him. I also try to "drive through" in the direction of the enemy's expected retreat to give me a couple steps lead in any chase that might ensue.
Dont know if any of that makes sense or isnt so basic that everyone's doing it already, but it works likkity split for me.

[Andres]

If the general has a big army, I first crush his army. If he manages to escape this first battle, I pursue with all my cav units. On the battlefield, I surround his unit and attack from 4 sides (frontal, left, right and rear), so he can't escape.

Enjoy seeing him fighting to death. Job done. Another skull to decorate your throne room :)

[Vidar]

I usually try to sneak up on the enemy general by sending a couple of fast moving units in a wide arc, using terrain if possible to hide them, if he then engages your main force and is pummelled into fleeing he usually runs into the grasp of the units sent in behind him, They might not kill him but they may just slow him enough to allow the units hes fleeing from to catch up, and capture or kill him. I also try and keep a missile unit handy to target the enemy general if he gets locked into melee with foot soldiers, even if hes winning he seems to still take damage/losses from the missiles. its not full proof but usually works for me.

Ive found that sometimes its better to kill the heirs of a faction, particularly if the King is old and tough - let Time Slay the King While you leave no one to take over when he dies.

[Vladimir]

If the general has a big army, I first crush his army. If he manages to escape this first battle, I pursue with all my cav units. On the battlefield, I surround his unit and attack from 4 sides (frontal, left, right and rear), so he can't escape.

Enjoy seeing him fighting to death. Job done. Another skull to decorate your throne room :)

If the general has a big army, kill him and reduce it to a little army.

Actually your way adds more fun to the game, I just like trying to get the butcher virtue. +

[Ciaran]

Ive found that sometimes its better to kill the heirs of a faction, particularly if the King is old and tough - let Time Slay the King While you leave no one to take over when he dies.

That only works in MTW, since in RTW every faction will auto-promote captains to family members in case there are too few, that makes wiping out a faction with assassins a hell of a job. It´s possible, though, if you manage to kill all family members in one single turn.

What makes things harder still, each failed attempt will result in the respective intended victim to develop a new degree of assassin immunity instantly. In MTW that only happened if the victim survived all assassination attempts of one turn.