Night Attacks: When is darkness your friend?

[Didz]

I remain somewhat confused about the benefits of Night Attacks.

I read elsewhere that attacking at night prevents the enemy army bringing on reinforcements and provides a +1 leadership bonus to generals with the night attack ability.

But are there any negative effects of attacking at night, like reduced missile fire range or accuracy?

[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.

[Kryptonitus]

This info is great. I have only fought one night battle and it was awesome. I attacked Scotland and chose attack at night just out of curiosity when it was offered. It did not let in their reinforcments and I took the castle.

[Sir_Hawkwood]

Just an observation...

When besieging a large town during a night attack, I noticed that the enemy deployed all around the settlements walls, rather than opposite my units, or damaged sections of wall, like they normally do...

It felt like they didnt know where the attack was coming from, which was to prove a great help.

I've only used this once, and only seen it once, so I cant be 100% certain its a feature.

Many thanks
SJH

[Didz]

I nearly came unstuck by opting for a Night Attack for my assault on Bologna last night. I had shipped my main army with its seige engines across from Ragusa and landed it on the coast whilst my supporting army with most of the the Italian Militia had marched overland from Venice.

The two armies were now poised to assault Bologna, although the HRE had another army much larger than the garrison hanging around just outside the walls.

I attacked the city with the main seige army and noticed that both my army and the HRE defenders would gain reinforcements from their other armies but that my general commanding had the Night Attack option.

In a moment of muddle headed thinking my logic concluded that if I opted for a night attack then the germans larger army would be denied the chance to join in the battle making my job of taking the city really easy.

So, I opted for Night Attack...what I had forgotten to take into account was that my general commanding my other army didn't have the night attack ability. So, his army remained deployed in its starting position on the far side of the enemy city and didn't do anything to help my assault either.

This left me seriously outnumbered in melee troops as most of the assault army were catapults and mortars, nevertheless I did notice that like Sir Hawkwood says most of the defenders were deployed on the opposite side of the city facing the larger reinforcement army even though it was asleep. It took quite a while redeploying to counter my assault and did so in penny packets which enabled me to defeat each unit in detail, so in a way the night attack worked, just not as I had imagined.

[Matty]

How do you get a night battle option? Is it a certain way that you finish your movement or is it random? For example, if you had a night fighting general who you wanted to just fight night battles, is there a way of making him always get night battle options?

[FactionHeir]

Trait NightBattleCapable.
And only if you are attacking or being attacked by someone with that trait choosing the option.

[Frederick_I_Barbarossa]

Personally, I just think the night battles look cool, and that's all the more reason I need! hehe

[IrishArmenian]

I fight night battles in any of these situations:
1) The enemy has superior missile troops
2) The enemy has lots of reinforcements
3) I have no missile troops (very rare, normally after a hopless battle in which I try to inflict as many casualties as possible and then withdraw)

[Sentinel]

Whilst it's true that your General (with night fighter trait) gains a command star when fighting a night battle. If your enemy General also has the night fighter trait, then he will also gain a star. Thus cancelling out this advantage.

note also that if your General is already maxed out in command stars there will be no room to gain another, therefore no advantage.

If your enemies General is already maxed out then he cannot gain an advantage.

[King Jeron]

If your general has a night fighter trait he will only gain that extra command point when fighting at night. So if your general has 4 command points, he still has 4 when fighting day, but when fighting night he has 5 command points.

And the night fighter trait can give you more than just 1 command point. It can give you up to 5. So if your general has 5 command points, he has 10 when fighting night.

So it is a huge advantage, but you gotta create that situation yourself.

[neoiq5719]

Now in order to get a night battle you have to get a 5 or 6 star general and even after getting it i dont see any advantage at nite. Anyway, shouldnt day/afternoon/nite battles be based on WHEN depending on your movement points you get to your target?. AND if u get it at nite ,get a moral and weapon boost in your attributes? what do u guys reckon?

[Marius Dynamite]

A general good at night battles (and is fighting one) Gets an extra command star (which can make all the difference). Also if there are any reinforcements(In a siege at least) they are not in the battle.

Anyway, shouldnt day/afternoon/nite battles be based on WHEN depending on your movement points you get to your target?.

I doubt that would work. A turn is 2 years remember. When you say attempt night attack, your basically saying, "Gather the Army, we march on them tonight after the sun goes down".

[neoiq5719]

maybe i didnt express myself well. Let´s say u have 10 movement points and one target is at 5 so then you´ll have an afternoon battle( more or less) and if u can reach another target of course in the same turn which is at 9 or 10 then u´ll have a nite battle, that´s what i meant regarless of the stars cos even a crapy general should have a shot at nite.

[_Tristan_]

You don't need to have 5-6 stars generals to get the NightBattleCapable trait... I even got it with a MOTH Captain with only 2 stars in Command...

The beauty of night battle aside, there are some advantages in fighting such battles...

On line of sight :
The player line of sight is reduced, thus I sometimes am surprised at finding some Ai units in my way... Il leads to much more fun battles...

On unit movement :
Night battles make flanking much easier... the Ai cannot see most of your unit movements.

On reinforcement :
As been stated in some threads, Night attles enables ou to fight only one AI stack at a time, mostly if those stacks have no general or a genral without night-fighting capability...

On missile fire :
Human players gain an other advantage in that the AI at night only uses fire ammo (less ROF) whereas the human player can turn it off and thus fire more rapidly w/o any significant loss of accuracy (from my experience) thus in a pure missile vs. missile contest, the human player gains the upper hand...

As to when you reach your target, a turn takes 2 years in vanilla (Still can't get over it....) so how would you decide if it was night or day when you engaged the enemy ?

On morale boost : The 1 star advantage your general gets is alrady a morale boost...

So, finally, I would say, fight a night battle whenever you can...

[FactionHeir]

There is already another topic exactly like this one on night battles, please keep it in one instead of reposting a question.

[Globe]

Hey, I know I dont have to post this here but i have a question . I am going to buy this game MTW II but I dont know for which kind of amount I would have to buy it (in euros) And where do I have to buy it for the lowest price?
Is it by the way a good game? I liked RTW very much, and I heard this 1 was much like it, so....good or bad?