Defense or Offence?

[0101001]

In open field battles do you prefer attacking or defending? I myself enjoy defending a lot more than attacking.

[PershsNhpios]

It very much depends on what your identity is, and who your enemy are.

If in charge of a phalanx battle-line, I play very defensively.
If in charge of a Celtic or Roman line, I play offensively.
If in charge of a Nomadic battle-line, I fight evasively.

This is how I fight with an army, but I often have cavalry skirmishes to wear down sighted armies before engaging, which can be done without any losses to your men, and thus the enemy can suffer a loss of one third of their army before they even reach your line.

[blank]

ATTACK!!!

It's easy to catch the advancing AI army off-guard like that

[TWFanatic]

I always attack if I can, because the AI sucks in EB. Unfortunately, I sometimes get attacked, and nothing I do can make the AI stand still. I just defend in these situations.

[Watchman]

Depends on the armies involved and if whether I'm the attacker or the defender, natch. For example if both armies include a lot of missile infantry it tends to be grossly advantageous to be the defender.

[Sir-S-Of-TURBO]

I prefer to attack with a large force, clogging up their line with troops who aren't going to win the battle, but still keep them stalled. Then I move a secondary force of elite soldiers around the battleline and then start to rout them, one group of soldiers at a time, and when they are routing I send my cavalry to make sure the survivors will not be able to function as human beings afterwards.

[Conqueror]

A good way to make war as one of the successor factions is to march an army to enemy territory, park it on an advantageous spot and wait. They will attack you and then you can fight defensively with phalanx deployed on a strong position, keep your cavalry fresh untill they're needed to overrun routers. This way you can inflict great casualties in a couple of big battles, then move on to siege a city.

[alatar]

Defend, even as rome, the Orbis formation is great, but anything is good.

[Geoffrey S]

When I still had a useable PC for EB I tended to attack or defend based on the traits of the general. It's very easy to win cheap victories by just sitting on hills, but more fun to mix things up and incur defeats by taking risks.

[Reno Melitensis]

With the romans I play a mixture of both. First defend, I move forward the Accensi to shower enemy with missiles, than the Velites move out from between the maniples of hastati to lure enemy soldiers out from their positions. When enough damage has been done, Attack! Charge !. Hastati and Principe throw their pila supported by the Velites and Triari. If every thing goes to plan , it will be a Roman victory.


But recently I took a all cavalry Parthian army to war against the selucid. It was a Custom battle against the Selucids. I decided to give the Selucids a balanced army with a core of Phalanxes and elite support troops, plus some heavy Cataprachts. I went on the attack, and the damage inflicted by the archer cavalry, and the tremendous charge of the Parthian cataprachts is awesome.


Cheers.