Roman Warlord
Legionary
posted 03 November 2008 21:30
EDT (US)
1 / 5
If I used that stratergy I would have lost many of the battles I have won.
Advantages(A) of your stratergy
Disadvantages(D) of your stratergy
1)(A)You can reinforce any section of your line easily.
(D)You will get flanked, nothing you can do will stop that as your infantry line is too short. While you can reinforce these flanked units you still will have some fighting on 2 sides.
2)(A)The cavaly defend my flanks
(D)Your cavaly is too close to the centre of the enemeies battline leaving you with only three options, none of them good.
a) A frontal charge into a unit, which will then get flanked by the longer infantry line.
b) Move away from the flanks out wide to get space to hit units from behind, however you cav are now issolated and will have the attention of the enemies wide infantry units. Also your front line infantry have lost thier flank protection.
c) Your cav stays where they are to cover the flanks, thus neglegation thier charge bonus and lossing thier main advantage, an extra unit of infantry would be better.
3)(A)The cavaly are evenly distributed on each side meaning I can strike and defend both sides effectivly.
(D)Unlike infantry where the object is to hold a steady line and slowly munch through your enemy, cavaly is a shock unit that relies on as big punch hitting the enemy in one go. The more cav units in a "punch" the more likly you are to succede in causing a route that can be followed/repeated down the line.
To do this you should bring all the cav to one side (left in this example), this will leave your right flank in danger of being flanked by enemy cav or infantry, to counter this you can move your reinforcing infanrty unit from the left side over to the right as exra cover. This can be done as your cavaly will weakon the left side (as you look at it) of the enemy if ultimatly you fail to break them.
(A) This is unlikly to happen with AI but a human may also bring all thier cav onto the same flank as you, unfortunatly now you are stuck as you can't make a charge due to chance of being hit from behind or waste your cav by attacking the enemy cav as your left is now weak. This can easily be rectified however by bringing the now spare anti cav unit back from the right.
4)(A) I can use my fresh second line to hit the tired enemy after my first line has routed/weakoned.
(D) Correct it is a good idea to hit tired troops with fresh ones, what is a bad idea is to sacrifice half your army to achive this. As your front line units are getting hammered from both sides and a heavy front they will route much easier reducing thier effectivness easier, while this is somewhat countered by the bonus of fresh against tired its lost by the fact the second line troops have allready seen the first fail and are allready lost moral because of it.
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I'll add more tommorow as it 2:30 am atm.
nikhilm92
Legionary
posted 04 November 2008 23:20
EDT (US)
3 / 5
After palying game for quite a bit of time, you eventually stop searching for a perfect strategy.
Your strategy should depend on your current situation.
You simply DO NOT enter a battle with a solid tactic set in your mind and follow it, no matter what.
You employ your best tactic, but as the battle goes on, you'll find more opportunities, you'll win only if you take these opportunities.
Your strategy and battle tactic will develop, change and be altered with every second that passes by in the battle.
Your starting formation will be one of the most important parts of the battle because the formations you being with will greatly influence how the rest of the battle is played.
Expanding on what The Mad Monk said about knowing your enemy, you should know about the units in Rome: Total War. It is NOT smart so rush cavalry into Spartans head-on, or to let your infantry to come into close-contact with crazy German berserkers.
Also, you might want to be aware of the satus of your enemy, are they tired or fresh, scared or heroic, are they gaining influence from their general? or is their general dead and the soldiers have no hope in them?
If you are playing a campaign you might want to make sure your strategy results in low losses, because you dont want thousands of denarii worth of soldiers dying every battle.
But if you are playing a multiplayer battle, it would be very smart indeed to employ a strategy with a coupe of suicide or distraction units solely kept for sustaining heavy losses while you sprung your true trap, similar to Chess.
There might not be perfect battle strategies, but you could learn a lot from specific tips and tactics, like eexploiting gaps. Hopefully, there is a guide on this, else lets write one soon.
I hope this helped a bit, but we shall try to put together a good strategy guide =)