Night Attacks: When is darkness your friend?

[FactionHeir]

Night attacks are useful if you only want certain people to partake in the battle. Only those capable of fighting night battles will appear on screen (which means you can also lose out).
In a way its nice to get a command boost if the enemy general does not have the night battle ability (otherwise its pointless in a way).
On the other hand, you can make battles tougher for yourself if your enemy reinforcements are capable but yours are not.
Note that winning a night battle with a heroic victory will make your enemies be afraid of the dark and lose a command point in night battles in the future, but usually their general tends to bite the dust during battle anyway, so yeah.

AI can cheat with night battles since even its capatains can lead night battle attacks (but not defense).
Units are just as effective as during the day.

[Didz]

Hmm! so it seems as though its a bit of a double-edged sword.

Are there any situations when you would definately opt for a night battle?

Apart from a situation when the enemy has multiple stacks and you are hoping to prevent him bringing the on as reainforcements. I keep seeing the tick box on the battle scene but I'm never sure when to tick it and when to leave it blank.

[FactionHeir]

If the enemy has a lot of foot archers I would because the AI is dumb enough to be permanently on flame arrows then.

[HoreTore]

I use it against the first mongol stacks. They always huddle together, but the first Khan and Khanzada(?) aren't night fighters. Thus, you can pick off one stack of the uber generals without having the other two stacks reinforcing him.

[Agent Smith]

Hmm! so it seems as though its a bit of a double-edged sword.

Are there any situations when you would definately opt for a night battle?

Apart from a situation when the enemy has multiple stacks and you are hoping to prevent him bringing the on as reainforcements. I keep seeing the tick box on the battle scene but I'm never sure when to tick it and when to leave it blank.

I use them for surgical, methodical strikes agaisnt multiple, huddled stacks. Sometimes my army isn't really big enough to attack them all at once and not suffer large casualties. Night fighting allows you to take them on one at a time.

Just recently I noticed a small stack of Milanese troops which contained most of their siege equipment huddled with three other larger stacks. I marched around the front and attacked the siege equipment in the rear at night without their infantry stacks in the front being able to enter the battle. My army was significantly smaller than what their reinforcements would've been. The next turn, they attacked, I withdrew, then repeated the process, taking out one stack at a time.

[Caliburn]

Attacking single stacks of the horde - excellent advice, because otherwise I've never seen the point of fighting half blind (it looks cool and all but...).

Has anyone noticed whether it changes game speed or not, I mean is it less taxing to the hardware than playing during the day? I'd thing the special torch animations could slow things down a bit, but there's really been no indication of this on my machine.

[FactionHeir]

Night battles drag performance more than day battles yes. Mainly due to torches and flame arrows.
But then evening and morning battles do the same (look like day but everyone has torches)

[Hoplite7]

Night battles are great because for whatever reason the AI moves its army out of the city and leaves them as reinforcements, always lead by a captain. You now have two great oppurtunities with a night fighter, to destroy the army outside the city, or to sack the city itself.

Usually I will send in some spies, take a night fighter, and kill the garrison (usually just a general on VH due to the public order glitch). Then reinforce the city once I've captured it.

[King Jeron]

When to use night attack (if available):
- if oposing force has more missile units then you.
- if oposing force has reinforcements that put you out of odds.
- so your general has more command points than the oponent.
- or you have so many missile units, you drop fear on your enemy with flame projectiles.
- when you like watching at fireworks, the battles are way more beautiful :p
- alternative: if you start on lower ground and enemy starts on a hill (you can see this on the campaign map terrain, the battlefield terrain correctly corresponds to where the armies stand on the campaign map).
- if you don't have enough cavalry and still want to flank your enemy. It's easy to flank with any unit at night, oponent doesn't spot you too quick.

When not to use night attack:
- when enemy general is a night fighter, and yours is not.
- when your army is based on missile units.
- when you have reinforcements that put you in better odds.

The outcome of a battle can seriously depend on wether you fight at night or during daytime. Even if both are victorious for you, with night attack you might have lost less men for example.

Fighting at night almost always boosts your general night attack attribute.
I have generals who get +5 command points when fighting at night.

[dumas]

When not to use night attack:
- when enemy general is a night fighter, and yours is not.

Wouldn't it be kinna hard to use the night attack if your general is not a night fighter?

[King Jeron]

Wouldn't it be kinna hard to use the night attack if your general is not a night fighter?

you're got, my bad.

Well you can scrap that one.

I kinda use night attack whenever I can, 'cause you always get some benefit from it. I find that the general's command points raise quicker, but offcourse they only count for night.

[Stuperman]

I agree, a few wins at night and a general will get tons of bonus for fighting at night.