Bridge battles are your friend

[gaiusjulii]

I was playing Vanilla 1.5 Last night and I had a Bridge battle me defending I had 2400 men roughly, 2 Preatorians, 4 Legionary cohorts, 3 Roman Heavy Cavalry 1 Gen unit (1Star) 4 Archers Using flame arrows and 2 heavy onager units also flame ammo.

The Julii had some 6 units of Early legionaries, 3 pretorians a 6star Gen 3 archers and some Equites left over from the stone age... So I know I am going to win this i use the classic open box formation I I on the end of
I______I
= = = =
^ ^ ^ ^
the bridge, the 2 I's on each side are leagionaries the line is the 2 units preatorians and = is the archers and the ^ my cavalry. all troops on auto fire so as you can imagine a put the timer on double time and wait for the carnage as the first units start to rout I surge forward with my legionaries and then my cavalry while all the time keeping up the barrage of hell fire from the sky. I wasnt suprised that i won but the margin was what shocked me

Me - 4
Julii over 2000 ill try get the screen shot on later of the final tally. is this a regular occurance cos i normally lose at least 500.... also does anyone else get attacked on a bridge just for the dam AI to sit there and do nothing?

also if you have any funny storie of Bridge battles would love to hear em

[Omanes Alexandrapolites]

Hi gaiusjulii,
May I ask if you had your troops firing at units which were already engaged with your men? If that was the case, then you may have lost some men to your own missiles. Unlike most RTS games, missiles destroy anything they hit, including the launcher's own troops if they have the misfortune to be in the way.

Hope this helps, cheers!

[gaiusjulii]

Hi gaiusjulii,
May I ask if you had your troops firing at units which were already engaged with your men? If that was the case, then you may have lost some men to your own missiles. Unlike most RTS games, missiles destroy anything they hit, including the launcher's own troops if they have the misfortune to be in the way.

Hope this helps, cheers!

yeah I did, always do.

[CrazyGuy]

Last night, I was surprised by the Egyptians who tried to make Turkey their own private playground.

My forces in Turkey are bare, so the plan was to conceded defeat, but make them work for it. Luckily there are two bridges I can defend with Hoplites.

After an ineffectual archery duel, I notice that instead of attacking with their hordes of axemen, the Egyptians are just milling around on the other side of the bridge. Indeed, some of them seem to be walking towards the river.

'Is there another ford across the river', I thought, 'Is my plan ruined?'

Turns out, no. 3 drowned units later, Egyptians return to milling about on the other side...

[Celt Centurion]

Your plan is effective, and would work. Your casualties were very low considering that your archers were seemingly shooting between the heads of your Praetorians.

I use a quite similar plan with one major difference.
River,Enemy,River
River,Bridge,River

/////,Infantry
/////,Infantry
Archers (notice that they are deployed on my left side of the bridge shooting into the unshielded right side of the enemy.)

^^^Skirmishers^^^ (if available can throw over heads of infantry)



Cavalry^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^Cavalry

the cavalry secure the flanks in the even of an enemy swimming across, and once they are running away can cut them down.

Strength and Honor

Celt Centurion

[gaiusjulii]

Your plan is effective, and would work. Your casualties were very low considering that your archers were seemingly shooting between the heads of your Praetorians.Celt Centurion

I used to us the plug the end of the bridge and once a unit is depleted move in another to support, I started ussing this box move as a result of a bright idea of mine, I realised that no matter what unit of my troops the enemy go for they always show there back to another of my units and thus you create according to the AI Worried about FLanks being exposed, so combine being surrounded, having pannicked flame arrows and Distraught with the number of enemies
Morale hits rock bottom and even the elite troops (not asmuch obviously) feel its effect especially when the message worried by routing friends appears in the unit banners. I lose much less troops this way, I also use similar tactics defending cities and towns i have Leonidas tactics to thank really. In regards to the Onagers.... dont use them close range over your troops heads, I lost a lot in a seige last night when I decided to do this with flame ammo and bam 4 giant balls of fire straight into my general unit killing nearly all yes including my 7star faction leader oops so now i adopt the firing at the farthest unit away and letting the archers get stuck in closer to home safer really lol

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Depends what you've got to use, but my favorite in vanilla is:

Force:

2 Hoplites, 4 Archers, 2 Javileneers, 2 Onagers, 2 Swords, 4 Dogs, 2 Heavy Cavalry, 1 General, 1 Light Cavalry.

Deploy:

Hoplites come up to either side of the bridge, partially in road, and are turned 45 degrees inward so that their spears block more or less the entire opening.

1 Javelin unit races to the water's edge on the right side (enemy left) of the bridge very close to the bridge. The other races up just behind to seam between the two hoplite units. The sword units are a touch back, behind the hoplites, ready to move in to the scrum if needed.

The archers are positioned behind and to my left (enemy right) so that they have as unobstructed a field of fire on the far end of the bridge as possible.

The onagers are positioned to the left, outside the water's edge javelin, right at the deployment line. If the enemy lines up slowly to get onto the bridge, you can sometimes push them forward a bit.

Cavarly and General wait in reserve.

Dog units go forward quickly to my end of bridge, intermingled with the other units.

Engage:

Manually target all of your artillery and archery to minimize fratricides.

Your Onagers will start, aiming for large clumps of enemy, elephants, or generals. Your archers will target enemy archers moving up to their river bank -- kill them quick and you don't have much trouble for your archers.

As the enemy reaches the far end of the bridge and starts over, release the hounds! All 370-odd guided missiles will rapidly head for the bad guys creating an impenetrable wall of dog flesh that completely jams the bridge. Run the handlers back smartly, or you will lose them. Put the hoplites into phalanx at this time. The pups will all be killed, and will only do a moderate number of kills themselves. No matter, the enemy is now completely stalled, packed tightly together on their half of the bridge. With your handlers safe, the dogs will regenerate.

This milling blob is, of course, the perfect target for your onagers and archers, while the javelin folks can be relied on to help the dogs a bit. They'll shoot themselves dry, with even some misses getting kills. Be sure to do the targeting yourself so as to minimize the chance of an onager short shot and to focus the archers on targets you deem to be choice. Even after hacking through the dogs, your opponent must try to break a supported spear wall when not themselves in formation. Don't worry about too many of them getting through.

For the few leaking routers, you can send your general or light cav to cheap them as they run along the river. If the enemy withdraws rather than continue this, release your cavalry to mow down as many as possible.

[Caius]

Lots of Elephants against Infantry.

[Ibn-Khaldun]

Bridge battles are friends indeed but not then when you are sitting on a bridge and the enemy attacks you an both sides ..
I had a battle on a bridge north of Antioch .. I played as Egypt .. had nubian and nile spearmen, some skirmishers, archers, general and merc cavalry ...
thought that i sit on the bridge and wait til the Seleucid army from Antioch attacks but no ... suddenly another seleucid army attacked me behind .. so when battle started i rushed my men on the side of the attacking army cause the army in Antioch had phalanx spearmen and elephants ...
Anyway .. i lost most of my men when crossing the bridge because my general pushed them of the bridge .. doh ..
I won the battle but i never want to get attacked on both sides on bridge battle ...

[CrazyGuy]

Does anyone else miss the '2 bridge' maps of Medieval. Ok they were a tad simplistic against bad AI, but I always felt they added something.

Does anyone know why they were taken off?

[Omanes Alexandrapolites]

Hi CrazyGuy,

Does anyone else miss the '2 bridge' maps of Medieval. Ok they were a tad simplistic against bad AI, but I always felt they added something.

Does anyone know why they were taken off?

Although there aren't two bridges, from my experiences, there are still two crossing points on the majority of bridge battles maps.

If I remember rightly, there is usually a small shallow area of water slightly further up or down stream from the main bridge. Troops can cross at these areas and can use this point to flank the enemy.

Sadly, unlike in M:TW, the AI doesn't know how to defend these alternative points, or cross at them. Due to this problem with the AI, in my opinion, using them is a kind of exploit.

Hope this helps, cheers!

[gaiusjulii]

Bridge battles are friends indeed but not then when you are sitting on a bridge and the enemy attacks you an both sides ..
I had a battle on a bridge north of Antioch .. I played as Egypt .. had nubian and nile spearmen, some skirmishers, archers, general and merc cavalry ...
thought that i sit on the bridge and wait til the Seleucid army from Antioch attacks but no ... suddenly another seleucid army attacked me behind .. so when battle started i rushed my men on the side of the attacking army cause the army in Antioch had phalanx spearmen and elephants ...
Anyway .. i lost most of my men when crossing the bridge because my general pushed them of the bridge .. doh ..
I won the battle but i never want to get attacked on both sides on bridge battle ...

You can totally exploit this by the actually putting your battle line facing the bridge from the side so that basically the bridge would be on your right or left hand side your archers can be lined against the bank and use 2 untis to hold them in place while using the riverbank to hold your flank you can pick off the second army, thanks to the ai basically gets confused and ends up with masses of men on the bridge not doin much you can get serious killing going on just from your archers and the rest of the army can work in safety as such but this one of those strategies which can be so right and yet go so wrong, but as long as you keep slightly back fomr the bridge you wont get the worried about exposed flanks thing