How to defend a bridge?

[Philbert]

Do you put your spearmen on the bridge, or do you create a pocket at the end of the bridge so that the crossing troops are attacked from 3 sides?

I was just attacked by a mongol army and they took forever to rout and even though I won, my army took a serious blow and had to bail out of the next attack.
I took the second approach, making a pocket.

[Doug-Thompson]

I'm a "pocket" advocate. If you put the troops on the bridge, they'll be shot to pieces by all those Mongol archers before the real fight starts.

[Doug-Thompson]

What faction were you, by the way?

[TinCow]

The "pocket" method is preferable, unless you don't have enough infantry to hold the pocket. In a rare situation where you have many ranged units, but only one or two infantry, place the infantry on the bridge to give your ranged more time to kill the enemy before they force their way across. The "pocket" is preferable in every other scenario I can think of, though with an all cavalry army, I would say use a 'charge pocket' method. Instead of blocking the bridge with your cavalry, have them surround the 'pocket' area and charge into the enemy from all sides when they reach that point.

[Shahed]

The problem with defensive pocket (or anything else) is often a determined cavalry advance will see the cavalry breaking through the pocket at multiple points. The push back effect at it's best. It also happens in gate defence.

[TinCow]

The problem with defensive pocket (or anything else) is often a determined cavalry advance will see the cavalry breaking through the pocket at multiple points. The push back effect at it's best. It also happens in gate defence.

Yes, cavalry can force an opening, but that in turn can be countered by lining the pocket with spears in schiltrom formation. 3 units can do an effective job. With sufficient cavalry, even this can be forced, but with very high casualties and that's assuming only 3 or 4 spear units on defense.

[Cheetah]

The problem with defensive pocket (or anything else) is often a determined cavalry advance will see the cavalry breaking through the pocket at multiple points. The push back effect at it's best. It also happens in gate defence.

You have to push back. Deploy your troops in the U shape, select all, then wait till the first enemy unit gets into the focal point of the U shape. Then double click on the lead unit. Sit back and enjoy the show ... It is amazingly efficient.

I have won battles this way that would have been impossible in any other way. For example defending Sofia vs a byzantine army with two militia spears, 19 and 29 man strong repsepectively (playing on normal thus full strenght is 75), with one DFK, one bosnian archer, one magyar cavalry and one hungarian noble (i.e. six melee unit 2 of them 1/3 strenght). The byzantines had a full stack of mercenaries: trebizond archers, alan merc cavs, armenian cavs, turcopoles. I deployed my tiny force in a U shape, 2 spears on sides, one cav behind each, DFK front. Waited for the lead unit (it was a turcopole), select all, double click. Turcopole routed almost immediately which chained the other turcopoles. Soon half of the enemy were fleeing, the rest were pushing but amazingly even this tiny force was able to keep them in the pocket, had to throw in the bosnian archer though to win. Both spears died, DFK had 4 men left, hungarian nobles had 1 men left, magyar cav died, bosnians had 22 men left. But: I won! Killed almost all of the byzantine forces. On the open it would have been impossible.

On another occasion using the same method I defeated an army of boyar sons (4 or 5 unit) supported by some archers and a family member with a "force" of 5 town militia and a half strenght militia spearmen.

[Vladimir]

A modified hammer and anvil approach works. Take a large unit with high defense, a small unit with high attack and charge and form a half isosceles triangle, I forget what that's called. Form your spears up at about a 30 degree angle with the bridge and position your charging units a little way back from the open side, enough so they can get up to max charge speed. If you make sure that your spears are close enough that the enemy engage them and not go around, you set up a nice flank charge with your (hopefully fast) attack units. Keep running those suckers in and out until the enemy breaks. Set your spears on guard mode.

That's the poor man's bridge defense. The box is probably a better option and make sure you have indirect fire support.