Share your favourite multiplayer army builds!

[TheEschaton]

Here's a good army that I used to beat an American army last night on grassy flats. The Rules were no artillery (HATE that), but at least my opponent didn't take Light Goons, which is my greatest hate of all...

1x 2nd Hussars as general
4x Death's Head Hussars
2x Hussars
6x Line infantry (1 with 1 vet)
5x Prussian Jaegers

It was up against an American army that was also pretty good and went something like this:

1x General's Bodyguard
4x Household Cavalry
3x Line infantry
3x Guards
6x Long Riflemen

In short, I moved my cavalry and general to his flanks while he camped in his zone in a very basic line formation with his cavalry moving to the flanks to guard against my own cavalry. Seeing his cavalry as inferior, I rushed in from both sides while my riflemen moved the left side of his line (the side with no guards), trying to distract the hidden long riflemen I knew had to be somewhere.

My opponent was not distracted, and used 3 long riflemen on each flank in front of his horse contingents to ambush my superior cavalry before it arrived to deal death, but it still arrived and dealt much death in any case, this time to his long riflemen. The horse guards joined the fight, but the Death's heads proved an equal foe. On the side in which my general joined the charge, the longriflemen and most of the enemy cavalry was annihilated. On my weaker left flank, my cavalry halved his longriflemen and routed one of his house cavalry. He then foolishly charged the remaining cavalry on that side into my 5 riflemen, who dispatched them with daggers and laughter.

The rest of the match was some carefully-timed line maneuvering, but in the end I emerged victorious with 3 very depleted riflemen and 1 68 man line infantry unit still on the field.

[TheJim]

Found a fantastic build for defeating a cavalry heavy army such as Poland.

I did this as Sweden, chosen because of their larger dragoon force, but it can work with any faction.

Needed:

2 x Light Dragoons
6 x Rifles

Your choice of line and artillery.

Place 3 units of rifles in a semicircular fashion on either flank, to the extreme left and right. Deploy your line with your dragoons on the flanks, and have this, your main force, well back from your hidden rifles. When the battle starts, march up your army, so it appears that you are moving your entire force, and move your dragoons forward and to the extreme flanks, directly behind your rifles, but deliberately away from infantry support.

Your opponent will see your exposed cavalry, and will seek the cavalry advantage early by destroying yours with his superior cavalry. As his cavalry charges at yours, they will be met by a devastating barrage of rifle fire. They can either continue the charge and get hit by a subsequent volley and counter charge from your light dragoons, or wheel about to retreat, whereupon you can chase them with your LDs and shoot them in the back.

Either way, they take huge losses and have effectively lost their key advantage-cavalry.

If they have little or no artillery, feel free to reform with your skirmishers as a screen in front of your line, cav on the flanks (standard formation) and shell them with your artillery until they have to advance.

If they have 2+ artillery, then march your infantry directly into theirs and crush them with your superior infantry power, flanking and dismounting with your dragoons to pour fire on from all sides.

This is obviously all IN THEORY but cavalry heavy armies often fall for it. In fact, the last 3 times I have fought a Poland-Lithuania army, I have used this exact strategy and crushed them in the exact same way, 3 times in a row.

[TheEschaton]

The Jim, that is indeed a workable strategy and army. However, if you really want to destroy enemy cav-heavy armies all you have to do is take a lot of Light Dragoons, really - say 4 or more.

It works like this - Light Dragoons are some of the cheapest cavalry in the game. They are also the cavalry with the highest accuracy and have a very large unit count AND a respectable running speed. How this makes sense balance-wise nobody knows, but there it is. So Cavalry are charging you - just make sure that your light dragoons are there to pour fire onto the onrushing enemy cavalry, run away when you have to, and come back to pour more fire into them.

If you look at the statistics, there's no reason to take any other cavalry type than light dragoons, as long as your faction has them. And if you look at the way people play them in MP, if you're playing a faction without light dragoons, then god save you.

[Tyranid77]

Hello there, I'm not a very experienced player, though I find this build for me works quite well in multiplayer, it is very heavily DLC based, though I find it works with me for multiplayer. I do need help balancing it out. I have a vague idea of how it's deployed and any advice is welcome.

Era: Late
Nation: United States
1 General's bodyguard
3 Minutemen
1 2nd New York
1 1st Delaware
1 1st Maryland
3 Line Infantry
4 Long Rifles
3 Light Dragoons
2 howitzers
I also have an assortment of experience on different units if money permits.

[triphammer]

united states are my fav faction on empire.
got good rifles and DLC units which u can make a very strong build. i know alot of people hate em but i just love the marines. if used properly they will always do well...

[Hekko]

Medium/Medium settings. No fixed, max 2 artillery, max 4 rifles max 2 light dragoons rules.

United States:
2 Light dragoons
5 Marines
4 Long rifles
2 Artillery (the kind of which is determined depending on the map)

UK:
2 Light Dragoons
4 Line
2 Greenjackets
2 Fergusons
2 Artillery