Advance or defense?

[Lord Fluffy]

When fighting a battle, how aggresive are you? Do you pick a good spot on the field and wait for the AI to come to you or do you advance immediately and meet the AI? Assuming of course an even force going into the battle.

[Andrei]

The best defense is an offense...i meet them head on never retreat never surrender..

[Martok]

If I'm the defender, I usually pick a spot and let the enemy come to me -- no sense in wearying my troops unnecessarily.

When attacking, I enjoy employing guile and trickery. One of my favorite things is to draw the enemy away from their initial defensive position -- I find 1-2 fast cavalry units works well for this task -- and (if possible) make them come after me instead. I especially like using this tactic if my opponent's army: 1.) has a lot of missile troops and/or 2.) is parked on a mountain or steep hill.

[PBI]

It depends on the terrain. If the enemy is coming to me anyway, I will usually just wait for him so that my missiles get the advantage of the first volley. But if he's not, it can be quite fun to maneuveur the enemy army from the top of a hill to the bottom of a valley without firing a shot (although rather cheap).

I probably should be a bit more aggressive considering that I fight a lot of night battles, wherein I believe the defender starts with a morale malus which gradually returns to normal throughout the battle, thus supposedly making a headlong charge likely to rout the enemy if done immediately.

[Old Geezer]

If you really have even forces, can get the AI to advance upon you, and you have even a little high ground, it should be better to wait until the AI commits its troops because it is slow to respond. It is especially vulnerable when sending archers forward. You can easily run them down with light cavalry before they can get off a shot or run away. If the AI has artillery, however, I prefer to flank them with my cavalry, if I have such, and charge it as soon as possible and then attack the AI from the rear. (I really hate to have pikemen who can't disperse stand at attention and be blasted by artillery. What would I tell the mothers?) When the AI has some artillery it seems to be overly confident which leads to it making some silly errors.

[Rhyfelwyr]

Defense, since 80% of the time the AI will come to you regardless of who is the attacker. Also moving troops en masse seems to muck up their formations quite a lot, and your line often ends up pretty squint.

I probably should be a bit more aggressive considering that I fight a lot of night battles, wherein I believe the defender starts with a morale malus which gradually returns to normal throughout the battle, thus supposedly making a headlong charge likely to rout the enemy if done immediately.

Thats interesting, I thought the only bonus was te +1 Command the night fighting General got. Do you know if the morale handicap you describe still applies if the enemy General is a night fighter as well?

[PBI]

No idea, I just remember the manual for BI said something about this being an advantage of using night battles. No idea if it was implemented in M2TW, it's certainly not a dramatic enough effect that it affects my tactics (as I said, I tend to forget I'm fighting a night battle and fight exactly as I would during the day.)

EDIT: Just searched this, and the consensus seems to be that there is no such bonus. Which is a little disappointing, there really is no reason to fight differently at night.

[Eikon the Magistrate]

Will try to defend as often as possible. Even when on the attack will try to leave a mini-army in a good defensive position ie: 2-3 missle, 2-3 cav/inf on a nice lil hill or the like where they can quickly be brought to bear. Also this gives you the chance to feign attack and withdraw through the range of this force and then engage with them.

My goal when attacking or defending is to bring every available form of attack to the battle.I wont engage in melee at all if possible until all arrows/bullets are gone. This may be overkill but an arrow/bullet is cheaper than a soldier. Also I find the idea of missle units being engaged and dying while they still have ammo entirely repulsive. Far better to run em out of ammo then lose them in melee no? Same goes for HA when I happen to use em.

Since the AI seems to LOVE attacking even when they are the defender,Ill happily oblige that deathwish.

[Lord Fluffy]

Regarding troop formation, I recently had a battle where I had a nice line of heavy infantry moving forward. They were all in 4 rank deep formations, all nice and neat, so I looked away towards my cavalry in the flanks. When I looked back at the HI, all of a sudden one of them is in a square formation. They're just going downhill no trees no rocks no obstacles, anyone know what's causing this?

I'm also one of the sit back and let em come to me type, except when the enemy won't come.

Here's another question though, when you sit back and have the enemy come at you, do you charge your men at them once they're in melee range or let them come in and charge your line? I'm usually busy playing with the cav at that time and just let my infantry line take the charge. But now I'm thinking would they fare better if I micro a bit more and have them charge first.

[Eikon the Magistrate]

1. If your INf are 2h or hi-attack/ap better to charge in, if theyre hi-defense better to sit and wait. ie unit dismounted (random faction) knights charge in ... pikemen wait.

2. you can make this easier on yourself by separating your front line into unit types
and have all your defense units bunched together with the other units and the cav supporting on the flanks.

3. depends on a the ground abit too, if you are on a large hill better to have all sit and wait so as to use the height advantage to the maximum, but all in all point 1 is prolly the best option.

4. if you afford too much time into the charge and you charge too early or after a unit that is faster than yours and retreats instead of engaging, you can put your units out of position easily so micromanaging your counter-charge is a good idea.

5. always charge your cav as opposed to letting them "take the hit"

[Dead Guy]

If I understand the AI correctly, it will always attack if it considers itself inferior in missile troops. This is to preventthe passive behaviour that let you march right up to the flanks of the enemy army and massacre it with missiles otherwise, I think. If you attack downhill this will effectievly let you defend that hill. It's easy to exploit this to gain an advantageous battleground, but it's better than the annoying passiveness. So just bring more archers than your enemy and you'll get to defend, basically.

One exception seems to be when the AI decides to try to ambush you with hidden units on the defensive, it will almost never move it's army so that it has to reveal the hidden troops, even if you spot them or completely annihilate them with for example a ballista to the side of 3 units of nicely lined up pikemen, which the AI for some reason considers good ambushers?

disclaimer: I don't play vanilla.

[Lord Fluffy]

Yea, with cav I always make em go round and charge. But I usually let my infantry wait for the charge. Which has worked only because my cav will slam in the rear within a few seconds of the enemy charging. But I'm loosing more men that way I think.

That's interesting about the missile count. I recently had a battle where I was outnumbered 3 to 1. So I found myself a nice little bluff to perch my men. Lo and behold the enemy did the same and waited. Now that you mentioned that, they did have quite a large number of HA's. They seem to also do the same if you have canons.

[G^2]

I enjoy defensive battles myself. I usually find good ground and place 3-4 spearmen in siltrom. Then I place archers/xbows behind to fire between the corridors with skirmish turned off. Then a unite of dismounted knights or two-handers on each flank followed by heavy cav. further out on the flanks. Works against most factions. I remember in MTW Chivalric Sergeants and Previse Xbows were my bread and butter.

However, playing against HA heavy factions I prefer to take the offensive with mostly cav. armies and archers/xbows very little spear or melee infantry involved.

[Yaropolk]

Do you know if the morale handicap you describe still applies if the enemy General is a night fighter as well?

Yes, you will see night fight's effect on the enemy General on the prefight matchup screen. If he's a night fighter clicking on the night fight checkbox increases the enemy's command rating.

[Doug-Thompson]

I always attack unless:

1. I have an enormous terrain advantage: The crown of a steep hill, a choke point or a river crossing.

2. I'm besieged.

[Lord Fluffy]

I recently had that enormous terrain advantage, put my troops up nicely on the hill. Rubbed my hands together in anticipation of the slaughter to come. My army was up against 3 armies, 2 egyptians and one turk. Once battle started however, they too found a favorable terrain and waited me out. I destroyed the first 2 armies but lost it to the third =\

[CountMRVHS]

I usually prefer to hang back and let the enemy approach. Since I almost never pause, I find it easier to organize the battle that way. That's the way I prefer to do cav charges, too -- they seem less cluttered when I can let the enemy come to me.

The exception to this is if I'm getting really shot up and don't have a way to return equal fire. Or if the AI has siege machinery. Then it's usually an all-out charge to scatter the archers or disable the siege equipment.

You can probably tell with these strategies that I don't like dealing with HAs.

CountMRVHS

[DVX BELLORVM]

Since I usually have missile superiority, most of my battles are defensive, because the AI immediately attacks.

[RollingWave]

It always depend on what you have to work with and what the situation is.

If you have mass artillery / missle .. obviously you want them to come to you.

if you have mass cavs and they have mass missile, obviously you want to be aggressive.

It's all situational.

Basically, you want to be aggressive whenever your oppenents are vunerable, but you could avoid a full out attack until you create the moment of vunerability.

[ReiseReise]

The main advantage of night battles is that the enemy cannot use reinforcements. Read that again, it can be important!

[Lord Fluffy]

Unless you're fighting the Mongols where almost all their generals are night fighters.

[PBI]

Unless you're fighting the Mongols where almost all their generals are night fighters.

Which, let's face it, is the only time you really need to split up enemy armies anyway - to be able to duke it out on the field with just the one Mongol army at a time, rather than four at once.

Otherwise, I find the enemy reinforcements usually end up working to my advantage; how many times have I captured the enemy citadel without a fight because I drew the garrison out as reinforcements and annihilated them in the field?

That's an important point actually - if the enemy is attacking with two or more armies, you should always attack the first army immediately to defeat them in detail before they can unite even if you are technically on the defensive, unless you really do have a truly unassailable defensive position.

[WarMachine187]

yeh i definantly cant stand the mongols.Only way to beat them in a full scale battle without seperating them is to quickly destroy the first like Poor said,then youd prolly have to find good ground.Then pray...

[RollingWave]

that is true, though one of my worest defeat against the AI also came in this situation, I decided to throw everything at the two weaker sides first and just bombard the main bulk with cannons... but I was too slow, by the time i finished up the two sides the main enemy bulk ran right into my archer groups. which was uphill relative to my infantry group... so my infantry fought the enemy forces while downhill with all the archers / artillery routing past them or dead... woops. what's worse is that they tied up my general with war clerics and blundgeon him to death... woops. (in my haste to back back to my infantry i didn't notice the clerics until i was in melee.. ouch)

[_Tristan_]

I personnally hate to suffer losses in my battles and so will try to use whatever works best to minimize those...

I will generally try to secure some high ground to position my main infantry.

Then I will be sending cav to deal with enemy missile or artillery, preferably lured forward of the enemy main line by my own advancing missiles (in loose formation...mind)

Once almost all enemy missile units have been dealt with, I will send some heavy cav to deal with the weakest links in the enemy line, then retreating and charging back to make them rout...

This way what finally reaches my main infantry line is greatly depleted is will msot often rout on contact or when charged in the flanks or back by the cavalry.

As a defender in sieges, I tend to adopt a more agressive stance generally sallying and sending cav units out by the side gates to harass the AI and divert as much units as possible from their main assault.

[Ratwar]

I prefer to play a defensive effort, but my tactics rely heavily on what units I have at my disposal. Horse Archers and Javelin calvary lend themselves to early offensive attacks weakening the strongest portions of the enemy line. When I have plenty of Heavy Calvary, the headlong frontal assault can actually be quite effective, especially using multiple charges withdrawing after each to avoid melee combat. The only factions I usually end up taking infantry offensives against are the Italian ones. Lots of Crossbows and a ton of spears make them unsuitable to attack via calvary or defeat defensively.

[Eikon the Magistrate]

yeh i definantly cant stand the mongols.Only way to beat them in a full scale battle without seperating them is to quickly destroy the first like Poor said,then youd prolly have to find good ground.Then pray...

The best way to beat the Mongols is to goad them into sally/siege battles. I am 1 large battle away from beating them again, this time having taken Antioch early, it is prepared for their entire army group. I have used only militia troops for this and 1 ballista. Mongols are THE WORST faction for taking a city, I find it impossible to lose against them in a sally or siege. My battle that I will play tonite after work is against the last 3 Mongol armies and then they are history.... even the Timurids are a poor match for a ballista tower defended city if you sally.

[Lord Fluffy]

Have they fixed the tower bug, you know where they only have cannon towers in cities and balistas in castles? I'm playing 1.2 right now, and all my cities have cannons even before the invention of gunpowder.

[FactionHeir]

Yes it is fixed.

[Cheetah]

Here's another question though, when you sit back and have the enemy come at you, do you charge your men at them once they're in melee range or let them come in and charge your line? I'm usually busy playing with the cav at that time and just let my infantry line take the charge. But now I'm thinking would they fare better if I micro a bit more and have them charge first.

Always charge in. The charge is a bonus, if you dont charge you lose that bonus. Besides some infantry unit's main strenght is the charge. 2H axe units can cut down the entire first line of the enemy unit provided you can get a good charge in. Conversely, if you let the enemy 2H axemen charge your lines you might lose upto 1/4 or 1/5 of your men (depending on the depth of your formation). So conclusion is that always charge! Obvious exceptions are: (a) you have stakes in front your army, (b) defending a bridge, gate in U formation.
The reason why you might not need to micro your infantry is that cavarly can do it much better!!! Whenever you can you should always have heavy cavalry covering your entire front line (behind the archers, assuming some shooting, but in front of the infantry). Usually 3 cavalry is enough to cover the front, so you might use the rest for flanking. Obviusly you should be using the heaviest cavs for this task. So when you see the enemy closing in for the melee charge in head on with all of your cavs covering the front, then follow up with your infantry to help them out in the melee, if needed.
If you can hit the flank with some cavs too the flank usually gives way and you can get a nice mass rout, unless the flank is guarded some high morale unit.
If you have a high dread general and some arquebuss or muskets it is even better, most armies will be routed off the field before you touch them. Again, obvious exceptions are high morale armies like mongols.