Total War (Shogun, Medieval, Rome etc) tactics and others ;)

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The original title was, "Total War troop choices, battle formations, tactics, long-term strategies," but I guess it was too obscure, hence no interest. Anyway, it stays the same. Basically, a discussion of battlefield tactics, troop choices, troop types, whater floats your boat.

What's your favourite?

I tend to develop my economy fast and rely on manual driving and careful selection of targets to survive until I can fast-tech. Then I'm heavily into getting the best I can get, even if that means a small elite and hi-tech army.

As for battles, I've been playing Viking Invasion (Medieval I expansion) and I've had some success with Celtic warriors (2*wedge, sort of like Zulu bull horns tactics), archers (thin lines in the back) and royal bodyguards (two units of top cavalry, one for each flank). Typically offensive combo and takes a lot of manoeuvring because there's no defence line and basically no defence apart from counter-charging. Nets me nice traits when the battle is over. Might want to add some spearmen to form a nice infantry line later on. Or see what mercs I can grab.

As for future strats (and I've played some Medieval and watched my friend play Shogun), I think I'm going to try something similar to this, or maybe to the English infantry-archers tactics from the Hundred Years war. Depending on the enemy, I might want to try what we used in Poland in the middle ages - a wide line of knights, lesser cavalry behind, archers in the back. Also thinking about flanking with large-size cavalry units, or using top (and small-size) cavalry for formation-breaking tactics. I've also had some success in dragging people into my arrow fire. I'm wondering if engaging in a cavalry battle and then sending some charging pikemen in (preferably from a forest ambush) won't be a good idea. Another possibility would be charging highly impetuous units at the enemy general unit (e.g. some elite wedge from the front and more numerous cavalry from the flanks and rear).

Now, what are your favourites?

[ December 08, 2006, 23:50: Message edited by: chevalier ]

 

I'll bite, only because I really like these games (Shogun & Medieval, haven't trried the rest yest, but also liked Stronghold). I haven't figured out what works best for me under anyt circ's. But, and the reason I responded in the first place, was to mention that these games are awesome.

 

Thanks for input. These times, I haven't really had much battle. I mostly bribe the rebels wherever my emissaries can reach over my network of boats around the coast. Then I dump the province title on the leader and send a princess his way for more loyalty et voila, I have all I need. Too bad I don't improve combat skills this way or have my units gain valour.

 

I Rome, I use spearmen in phalanx. I use a lot, in Rome(realism), say 2500 spearmen, and the rest will be cavalry. The cavalry has to big in numbers, or just very strong, because the enemy will normally always have their own cavalry, for the purposes of flanking me, so once I've dealt with their cavalry with my own, and their infantry is engaged in battle with my spearmen, I just have to ram them up the ass, and the battle is over. Even if I do not match their numbers with my spearmen, if they have no cover on their flanks, and their cavalry is weak, they're dead. The other benefit of having spearmen is that they are solid, and pretty much impenatrable by cavalry. A cavalry charge into the centre of the phalanx is suicide.

I rarely use missile units, unless I'm up against armies of horse and archer units, which are a huge pain to deal with, and I don't yet have an effective method of dealing with these guys.. I'm currently getting killed in open field battle with the Mongols in Medieval 2, they are mainly horse archers, and just kick my ass.

I favour sword/axe men type units in Medieval 2, mainly because their doesn't appear to be much in the way of spearmen. My tactics are still the very same however, it's just that my units have swords instead of spears. Most of the factions seem to like using lots of missile/crossbow infantry units in battle, which makes things much easier for the kind of tactics I use.

 

IIRC axe-wielding troops have bonuses vs armoured units, no? They should be great against upgraded urban infantry or even dismounted knights.

These days I find myself typically trying to use one army for the main theatre so long as possible and keep about four princes inside (including the king) for the top cavalry. Four units of archers for the barrage, some good-attack infantry with strong charge and some spearmen for a filler. I sometimes end up charging them at immobilised cavalry too, e.g. when throwing all good charge stuff at the royal unit.

The Vikings in Viking Invasion are pretty strong. I try to soften them up a bit before coming into contact, but auto-calc is often more generous than the best results I can get from manual steering. Sometimes it's ridiculous. Like one last houscarle holding against several infantry and one cavalry unit charging in the wedge (for shock, should trip him over) or close formation (just how many sides can you defend from at the same time?) alike.

 

The axemen I'm using(russian berdiche axemen) are good in that respect but have a crap defence, so take big casulties. I think, in MTW2 atleast, one army seems to be good for 1 or 2 battles, and that's it, back to get replenished, regardless of what unit type I'm using, the defence stats seem to be off, especially for dismounted knights, which I field the most of. One thing I dislike about MTW2, is the poor cavalry charge, they seem to be so lathargic, nothing like it was in Rome.

 

Well it's just been made more realistic. Cavalry was ridiculously overpowered in Rome. You could absolutely destroy an entire unit of troops with 1 cavalry charge. You can 'sort' of do that in MTW2, but you need to get everything right (timing, height etc.)

 

In vanilla rome yes, but in realism the stats were more realistic.

 

Viking Invasion is strange in this regard because you can break 100 spearmen with 20 royal bodyguards in a frontal charge on flat land but I seriously doubt you could get away with charging an equal number of houscarles like that.

 

Spearmen in the first three TW games (exception being units with the Phalanx ability in Rome) seem to be significantly underpowered vs. cavalry charges.

Upshot being if you go cav heavy, you can break just about anything. Even if you can't flank, you can probably win through brute force tactics that should result in your losing.

At one point, fighting the Romans as Carthage, I managed to get a war elephant unit to charge along their entire effing front line (flank to flank). It, um, killed a lot of them. By which I mean every infantry unit they had that was engaged was either annihilated outright or routed and then slaughted by my infantry and cav. I couldn't decide if I felt that was really cool or really dumb.

 

Managing to get an elephant into a flanking position could result in some funky results. One unit could literally plow through an entire army killing many but mainly wrecking formations and morale. I thought it was kinda cool to the elephants toss about with the puny soldiers. A frontal charge did not have as good results even if they too were decent.

 

That's the point of huscarles. Remember that they were the finest warriors in Europe at the time.