Greetings fellow gamers,

I've recently began playing MTW having borrowed RTW from my brother and falling in love with the Total War series. Of course, in switching to MTW amongst the many differences that I've noticed is the necessity for using actual tactics in combat cause the AI does know how to fight. I've had to adapt flanking techniques, using inclines a lot more, sacrificing weak troops as bait, jumping out of woods, etc... with the greater challenge I find myself experimenting to learn more battle tactics which got me to thinking about some of the great general in history.

I've never really studied militarily the great warmongers of our past but what did make Alexander, Hannibal, Genghis, Attila, etc... great generals? What were their tactics and field thinking? I've heard of double enveloping and crescenting but what the heck are they and what other secrets do their histories hold?

Also, I know there are some serious warmongers on here as well... aside from just good field command like flanking, assigning the correct type of troop to face each enemy troop, can you guys share any particularly effective combat tactics? Or if you have an especially gruesome battle that you won only because of cunning and luck then please tell me what happened and what you had to do...

Not to knock Rome but I'm having to unlearn cut and paste combat and relearn much much more realistic battle strategies.