Oolon Colluphid
Legionary
posted 02 June 2008 11:42 EDT (US)
You know, hide units in woods o long grass, put archers at high points, try and break up and enemy formation around rocks or buildings in the battlefield.
I ask, because I usually don't. I mean, I'll take a hill when it's there, especially when defending, but mostly I've found that the position of units in relation to eachother, your armies formation, is more important than anything else.
So usually, I just make my formation, phalanx in the middle, cavalry at he sides etc. and then look where to put it. Woods tend to be only a nuisance as I pretty much always have onagers in my armies. Long grass is invisible from a distance and makes my framerate 2 f/s when I zoom in. It's nice when a unit that can hide there happens to be there, but I'm not purposely putting them there.
Anyway, any more creative strategies out there?
Legioner
Legionary
posted 02 June 2008 12:53
EDT (US)
3 / 51
I don't think it gives me bonuses, but it sure is damn cool to charge with my cavalry down the hill.
ShieldWall
Legionary
posted 02 June 2008 13:23
EDT (US)
5 / 51
I generally do use the ground to my advantage, though I rarely bother about hiding and springing ambushes. I have been known though to hide some gothic cavalry in trees, wait for the army to pass, and then leap upon their onagers in the rear. Also a general who was ambushed by rebels - I had some Illyrian mercenaries in trees while the general rode around, skirmishing with the rebels and tiring them out. Then he led them next to the Illyrians who threw all their javelins and charged. Instant rout. And if a lone general is ambushed, similarly I get him to run about and exhaust the attackers, then, having caught his breath, form his bodyguard into a narrow column on top of a hill and charge them when they reach the steepest point. Your losses will be much less this way, and his will be more.
If you have a barbarian army then woods give you a combat bonus, though I tend to avoid them as I find any advantage I have here is nullified by the fact that I can't see a f@&king thing! An advantage is all well and good when you don't even notice that your left wing is being hammered by something you didn't know was there. Also archers struggle to hit things when there's trees and branches in the way.
So I like hill tops with an unobstructed view, and if you have swordsmen or axes, this is a great position to charge down.
One thing I always do is check that the archers have a good field of fire. You can put them on a hill but, as they're shooting at targets below, they can end up shooting your front line in the back of the head once the enemy gets close. The trick is to make sure that they're on slightly higher ground to your front rank, this way they can fire at almost point blank range and your infantry will be safe. Check this by zooming down to their eye level and noting the position of the terrain immediately above the heads of your front line. Zoom out and you will see precisely how close the enemy can come before you have to cease fire. By moving the army a little bit here and there around the hill before the battle starts, you can find these marginally higher patches and so increase the field of fire considerably.
Pizzadude
Legionary
posted 02 June 2008 13:36
EDT (US)
6 / 51
I always try to get high ground for my archers, and it works pretty good. I hide some of my troops in grass/woods, but not very often as it doesn't give me much advantage. Never saw the V-shaped phalanx formation though. But it should eat anything like you said.
Also, I tend to use these terrain advantages mostly against human players and not so much against the AI.
mikecz
Legionary
posted 02 June 2008 15:13
EDT (US)
9 / 51
If you have any advantage at all as far as the before-battle odds, the enemy will commonly set up on the highest ground near a back corner. If I have any cavalry at all (usually), I really try to squeeze at least some of my cav units (ESPECIALLY if they are skirmish cav) in between the main enemy formation & the corner or highest ground. Double bonus is having the higher ground for range & almost surely when the enemy routes they will try to go out that back corner. Again, I am of the "no survivors!" school wrt running down routers.
I've used siege towers & battering rams for anchoring some infantry units' defenses. I often build 2 or 3 rams for wood-walled town assaults & if the enemy sallies out they're always right next to each other when the battle starts, making a pretty good barrier against frontal cavalry charges. It's spooky, but I've taken my javelin throwers out of skirmish & circled around the abandoned rams long enough to actually kill off an elephant unit. I'm REALLY disappointed siege towers on "fire at will" don't shoot at the enemy when they sally out ;(
I'll use anything for cover or a barrier - a few trees or those boulders that are common on the eastern plains. I fight a lot of battles with only 5 to 10 unit armies, so small differences can well be the difference between victory & defeat.
Tzar469
Legionary
posted 02 June 2008 20:43
EDT (US)
10 / 51
I don't because I don't have time to set up my army. In most battles I fight, the nearest useful rocks/ridges/hills are outside my area of deployment, or are generally facing the wrong way. If I'm defending, the AI will throw itself upon my spears, which defeats the whole point of an ambush. If I'm attacking, ambushes are useless as well because hidden units don't chase routers.
SrJamesTyrrel
Legionary
posted 02 June 2008 23:34
EDT (US)
11 / 51
the plains in this game are nearly devoid of any features but high ground, and the gargantuan buildings and trees add little strategy even so.
still, positioning on a hill is very important, as well as making sure that your archers are on your left flank (once they are shooting the enemy from his right flank, shields don't count!) and making sure that your general is behind the part of the line that can take the most punishment (i tend to make this the right flank and fight in the counter-clockwise fashion like they did in history).
rocks and orchards are great if you have a small army that you don't plan on losing (feeling from such positions is not an option).
if you don't care about honesty and need to need to need to get your back against something good, you can always cheat with the red line, set your men up to guard the corner. easy fleeing. Still isn't even as cheap as the more phalanx-in-the-doorway or camp on every bridge tactics.
if you WANT to play a game where the lay of the land is of utmost importance, play the first MTW - it's still the best in the series for pure tactics imo (MTW2 does nicely as well but suffers from still putting too much emphasis on glitz.)
I forgive RTW for being the transition to 3d and therefore necessitating a lot of sacrifice.
Germanic God
Legionary
posted 03 June 2008 15:16
EDT (US)
15 / 51
i wish siege towers came with a small archer detachment on the tops of them...this way even when the tower hits the wall, you can still shot down
and to answer the main question, i use what is presented to me, if theres long grass i take it if not what ever i can mess up the army just the same
mikecz
Legionary
posted 03 June 2008 19:37
EDT (US)
17 / 51
I'm REALLY disappointed siege towers on "fire at will" don't shoot at the enemy when they sally out ;(
They always do fire at the enemy for me. You'll have to equip them to a unit and put them on fire-at-will. Then wait for the enemy to come and die.
Uh, that figures, I guess. When the enemy sallies out, I pretty much immediately "drop" the siege equipment to try to gain a little mobility. So you're saying if I had left a unit "attached" to the tower (& have it on fire at will) it will actually shoot at the oncoming sallying forces? Gotta try that!
SrJamesTyrrel
Legionary
posted 03 June 2008 22:17
EDT (US)
19 / 51
send scythed chariots in a huge arc to kill the general full minutes before the real battle starts. who cares if they rout or die or even run amok - they're behind the enemy, half a mile away, and easy to retrain. even the best cavalry gets it's legs cut out.
also, militia cavalry up the ass, let them chase enemy missiles until the cows come home. worse comes to worse you lose a couple of $6 horses
my version i basically made naptha throwers from MTW1 for parthians and selucids (just took the pants off to make them more iron-age and gave them area launching ability), they are good at scattering phalangites and the computer actually knows how to use them! they always go straight for my toughest spears right before the charge >.<. I could put the code and models up when i'm not so tired if anyone wants.
train up your slingers if you like playing tactically - the bullets are better than arrows because they get more hits and the need to use missiles as skirmish troops adds historical flavor. good slingers get damage points in the mid-teens, too, so there's no lack of firepower.
all seige equipment's gotta be manned to do anything, not like regular towers :/
mikecz
Legionary
posted 04 June 2008 11:50
EDT (US)
22 / 51
You have to fiddle around with slingers a lot more than archers or peltasts but a non-archers faction, like Carthage, really teaches you to use them. They have way more ammo than peltasts & given a little terrain advantage, will cream archers & peltasts 1 on 1.