Tactics questions thread

[jimmy spong]

right now carthagian army ruined me , i had 3148 units they had 3800 and sth , i left 1120 and sth they left 2971 , i am always weak againts carthage but i am good againts greek7

[68 Powers]

Yeah try that haha no wonder why you are losing.

Hastai are better than your average light infantry they wear down the enemy for the princpes to come in and slaughter the enemy. take faith in the common roman!

[The10thLegion]

i am an expert defender first i put my hastasti and princepes on fire at will put my hastasti on defend mode. my velites in the front pepper the enemy run back and throw more spears. when the enemy comes i put my princepes in the gaps and rally with my general. when the moment comes i put my triarii comes in on the weakest spot. all of this happens while i take my calvary on the flanks (dont attack until my triarii come)-it frieghtens them. usually with slingers and the calvary on the flank they panick and run. but in desperate cases i put my velites on the weak spot.

[lt1956]

SPQR is a challenging Battle mod, If you do it right you can fight MANY enemy armies with 1 legions but Do not fight Barbarians in the SNOW or Woods unless using auxilia, they get a bonus.

[lt1956]

Yes I know Alot of Roman lives will be lost when I get ambushed in the woods or caught in the Snow. Notice your losses between fighting in the Snow/Woods or worse BOTH against normal conditions. You can test this in CUSTOM battles. Just fight the SAME battle in winter and see you lose more men. ;-)

[Samariten]

Put defence and fire at will on Hastati, defence on principes and when enemy is close put on fire at will for em aswell. I usually put defence on Triarii aswell since it works everytime to beat of gaul forces with 4000 men against my 2000.

I usually use one principes and one triarii to make my line longer to the left or right and put all cavarly on the other side.

Most factions get tired against you since they use brutal attack and the get tired quickly while youre men is still fresh when you use defence on all infantry (except missle).

Its not alot of fun perhaps but its effective to just hold them and tire them out and use cavalry to charge in their back or rear, you will have em routing and victory is yours. Fighting full frontal isnt very effective and you loose loads of men.

Roman fought in a defensive way having rotation on their men and let the barbarians charge up on em holding them off.

[czePowerslave]

PRecisely, but having your hastati retreat and reform may lead to mass rout and mass killing while regrouping...

[Roman Clone]

Spearmen are a bit useless in Sieges, as if there were any horses to kill, your Cohorts would end up fighting them anyway.


My Regular legions consist of:


1 General
8 Cohorts
1 Aquila Cohort
2 Archers
2 Spearmen
2 javelinmen
2 Units of Cavalry


And The rest I leave open for either empty, mercs, HA's, or Siege weapons.

[The10thLegion]

u get 1 more legio cohort

[jimmy spong]

ok ill listen to you

now im good against barbs , but carthage , hmm i always get rid of elephants but until i do they give me a good beat and than their cavalry does the rest

[jimmy spong]

my legion is something like this , full line of hastais , two units of horsemen , two archers and two auxilia

and another is to sacrifise two units of hastais for slingers and javelinmen ,

[czePowerslave]

Javelins kill the elephants, and you can always bring up infantry support for your cavalrymen

[68 Powers]

full hastai? wow...
you can build a govners palace in capua at the start and then recruit full legions you know haha.

[jimmy spong]

interesting...

[jimmy spong]

maybe i'll post more videos (oh no, i hear you say) but my battles are more like exibitions than real battles

i always do some experiments

[jimmy spong]

ok , ill try next time various ways to beat elephants and when i do good one i will post , probably testing formations etc etc.

[Garnier]

Here's a deployment I just used when outnumbered 2:1 by Gauls. There happened to be a boulder formation on the map so I used it.



In my center, I deployed the center hastati and princepes, with my reserve triarii deployed out front, as a spearwall(this I actually think was a bad idea).

On my left and right flanks, I deployed 2 hastati and 2 princepes each, with cavalry and triarii as usual. The velites and archers were all in blocks in the center with the general.

The Gauls first attacked the left flank, with a lot of heavy spearmen, but we drove them off losing only 40 hastati and princepes. Then the center was attacked, first by a shower of javelins that killed 90 of my forward triarii. After this they charged four units of chosen swordsmen in. These fought for a long time, whittled down my triarii to 16, and my hastati and princepes to 120 and 80 respectively before they routed.

They attacked my right, and then my left again, but both attacks were beaten. Eventually, there was desultory fighting around my army, small units attacking here and there. After around 25 minutes, I moved my center and right flank out and attacked some 800 gauls still on that side. These we killed or routed, and then 1000 gauls on my left flank charged in, and my general was killed while pursuing a band of archers, when 100 swordsmen who were not yet routed surrounded him.

We managed to get 60 cavalry behind the 1000 on the left flank, and after a few charges they routed. The timer ran out just as their last troops began to flee, so after 45 minutes the battle ended. I lost 577, and killed 5130.

[jimmy spong]

hmmmm , but statistic shows (red blue bar) that your troops are superior

even if you r outnumbered you got really nice troops

anyway , good victory hope someone understand why i use defensive formations and boulder formations as you said before it is a formation that noobs uses

[Garnier]

Yeah there wasn't anything special about that battle. And it did have my best legion in it. All my other legions are mostly new recruits, with a few veterans thrown in. This one is composed almost entirely of veterans.

[lt1956]

you should play without the timer, it can be turned off in the menu. I dont see how one can play with the timer as most of the time it runs out too fast and you can lose a battle from it that you would have won. lol

Also it makes a difference if an army is controlled by an AI general and the units dont rout as easily.