Tactical Tips
Tactical tips from myself, and other forum members. I have tried to categorize in a sensible manner, and there is plenty of room for more tips in each category thus far. Suggestions both for more tips and for improvements in format are encouraged.
Battlefield formations:
Infantry line: Infantry can maintain their line so long as they are at least 2 men deep. If you think you can control the battle due to superior artillery, cavalry, and position, you may get away with a two-man deep battlefront. If extended enemy contact is anticipated you will want to maintain at least a 3 man deep line if you have superior troops, 4 or 5 if you have inferior troops. Your line need only be as long as your enemy's line (shorter if you can use terrain/battlefield border to protect your flanks); the fewer units you use to match that length, the more units you can use to flank the enemy or defend your own flanks
Unit settings:
Do Not Pursue (Guard mode): Infantry, when holding a line; ranged, when you do not want your ranged units wandering into unprotected areas/enemy fire; cavalry, never (except HA, sometimes). When your infantry is in guard mode, do not order them to attack; the guard mode will reduce the effectiveness of their attack, and the units will still tire just as quickly. Instead, let the enemy attack your units, causing the enemy to tire. Once you no longer feel the need to maintain your line, then de-select guard mode and order your units to attack.
Units ordered to chase down enemy units in rout should not be on Do Not Pursue mode.
Melee/Avoid melee (Skirmish mode): HAs and skirmishers (duh); could also be used on exposed archers/slingers. There are a few skirmisher units, like the Rhovanion Rangers, that are serviceable as front-line units; make sure the skirmish mode is de-selected if using them thus. FATW has skirmish mode automatically selected for mounted bodyguard units to preserve AI generals from their own stupidity; players should de-select this at the beginning of each battle.
Units ordered to chase down enemy units in rout should not be in skirmish mode. Units will often not be able to charge effectively with this setting active.
Shield Wall: Use to defend against light artillery attack; to defend against cavalry charges in the open or in a battle line, if you have sufficient units to compensate for the smaller formation. Try not to use while moving due to increased fatigue. Avoid using against infantry, heavy artillery, chariots, Trolls, and Oliphaunts.
Shield wall forces the commander to the back of the formation, making it a good formation for infantry bodyguard units to protect the character from attack (Dáin II). Can also be useful when defending a narrow passage, like a bridge, where you want to ensure your unit is not pushed backward into an open space.
Shield wall can be useful when deploying as units with shield wall active will place themselves without gaps between the units, and can then be set to normal without those annoying gaps which otherwise result.
Whirlwind (vanilla Cantabrian circle): When you want your HA to be exhausted as quickly as possible. May reduce damage taken from enemy archers (Dáin II), though not quite as much as just staying out of range.
Fire Flaming Ammo: Using fire arrows reduces both the attack value and rate of fire for your archers, but can be very effective in certain situations.
Run Amok: Against Trolls and Oliphaunts, fire arrows can cause them to run amok; the more units using fire arrows the more likely to produce this effect.
Rout: Fire arrows cause a debuff which can encourage rout, but the debuff does not stack from multiple sources. If you want to, for example, break a charging cavalry unit before it makes contact, or fire into the flank or rear of an engaged infantry unit, you only need one of your units to use the flaming arrows to get the effect.
Rally Troops: Mostly a Fisher Price toy. Technically, it allows you to give a routing unit an additional chance to recover from the rout. Units already check to see if they will recover from rout automatically every 40 seconds, and the rally button will not work within 8 seconds of that 40-second auto-attempt, which makes it close to impossible to for the player to know if activating the rally button is having any effect. Also, units that have routed for a second time will no longer be able to recover.
When the rally button is used, the commander will go through a little animation which, if his bodyguard is in motion, will cause him to fall behind the rest of his BG unit. This can be useful in keeping your commander out of the front line of a charge, but can also land your commander in trouble if you use the button while your BG is being pursued. (CountMRVHS)
Warcry: Taken from Aradan's Complete EDU Guide:(CountMRVHS/webba84)Gives the unit an attack bonus of 10. The ability takes 10 secs (unit can't move or execute other action) to be activated and remains active for 30 more seconds. If the unit enters melee at some point during that time, the bonus will be applied only for the remaining of those 30 seconds. (eg if the unit warcrys, then runs for 7 secs and then engages in melee, the bonus will be applied for 23 secs only). Also gives a momentary boost to morale, evident in the case of berserkers.
If the lieutenant unit has the warcry ability, this will replace the normal rally button.
Berserkers will have a very high chance to enter a berserker rage when they use their warcry. The unit's banner will flash red, the player will lose control of the unit; which will attack the nearest enemy unit, and the unit will be immune to morale until the rage has passed. If a unit fails to enter a berserker rage, you can try the warcry again when the button lights up again in about 30 seconds. It does not appear to matter if the unit is engaged in melee or not when this button is activated to cause the berserker rage.
Drop Siege Equipment: If a unit is manning a piece of siege equipment, this button is the way to drop it. Almost always a good idea if you need to defend against a sally, as troops manning siege equipment will be defensively compromised in melee. If your lieutenant/general is manning siege equipment, he will have his rally button in the place of the drop siege equipment button. If you need him to prop his siege equipment you will have to order him to withdraw from battle ("W"); he will then drop the equipment, and you can then cancel his withdraw order.
Fire at Will: If there is a William on the battlefield, this order will cause a unit to concentrate fire on him.
Otherwise, this button instructs a ranged unit to choose his own target when not given a target by the player. The AI will choose the closest target that is not currently engaged in melee but will not pursue that target if it moves out of range. If a ranged unit has instructions not to pursue, and its assigned target moves out of range, it will select its own next target in range if this option is selected. It does not intelligently select targets in any other way, so you are more liable to waste ammo on targets that are resistant to ranged attack.
The fire at will setting will never cause a ranged unit to fire automatically at units engaged in melee, even if that unit has its back exposed and there seems little or no danger of friendly fire; the player must order the attack. Units that would normally follow up their ranged attack with a charge, like the Swords of Harad, can be made to only throw by using the attack with secondary weapon order ("alt+right click"); the same way you would order archers to make a melee assault.
Raged units with fire-at-will selected will fire at routing units if no other enemy targets are available, even if your other units are trying to run down the retreat (as stated, available targets does not include enemy units engaged in melee). This will result in significant friendly fire if the player is not careful.
Siege towers come equipped with a ranged attack, with larger towers having stronger attacks. In order for a manned tower to make use of its ranged attack, the unit must be set to fire-at-will; it is not possible to select specific targets for the siege tower. A unit that does not normally have a ranged attack, will be given a fire-at-will button when it mans a siege tower. Units that normally have a ranged attack will not be able to use their normal ranged attack while manning the tower. Once a tower has successfully attacked a wall, and can no longer be manned or moved, its ranged fire will become automated, but its arc of fire will be significantly increased; probably to avoid friendly fire; so you will not often observe any further fire from the tower, unless in one of the special settlements with high platforms relatively close to the walls.
Rock, Paper, Scissors:
Units have become significantly more nuanced since the original RTW, but many unit types are still tailored for use against specific others. Many give clues to their proper use in their descriptions, but here is a more explicit list of how to best use units.
Spearmen: Bonus vs cavalry, malus vs other infantry. (CountMRVHS/webba84/Athenogoras)
Non-spearmen Infantry: Bonus vs spearmen, malus vs cavalry.
Cavalry: Bonus vs non-spearmen infantry, malus vs spearmen. Cavalry can expect to take severe casualties against spearmen/pikemen even when charging their rear. Light cavalry is best used to run down routed units and vs artillery, though many artillery in FATW are heavily armored and armed for melee; use caution with these. Heavy cavalry, especially those with a fear bonus, can be very effective in breaking middling or weaker infantry. Use flank or rear charges for best effect; avoid frontal charges against all but the weakest infantry. Cavalry with bonus vs cavalry can be used to good effect against cavalry, but are still liable to severe casualties if left in prolonged melee. (gasas)
Armor Piercing/Effective Against Armor: Particularly common among axemen and macemen/hammers, but some other unit types will have this attribute, like the Dunadainic Mariner units. The greater the "armor" portion of the defensive rating of a target unit, the greater will be the benefit of the "effective against armor" attribute for the attacking unit. Such units will often have lower defensive stats, and are best used to flank, and should be protected from ranged attack.
Catapult: Fire munitions against all enemy troops, stones against walls/gates. Most gates on larger walls in FATW are resistant to catapult/ballista stones; you will do better to target the walls at these settlements. Targeting towers will only silence the tower, it will not breach the wall.
Ballista: Normal munitions in almost all scenarios. Fire munitions to cause Trolls/Oliphaunts to run amok. Do not target enemy units engaged with your own troops unless you do not mind losing a lot of your troops to friendly fire. Ballistae are good for attacking walls/gates where catapults are not available; same limitations as catapults vs gates. (athanaric)
Trolls/Oliphaunts/Wains: Always be charging. Once the unit has stopped charging, run it back out of the enemy formation and charge again. Mostly applies to cavalry as well. Trolls and Oliphaunts can be used safely against gates on tier 1 walls; on tier 2 and higher the rest of the unit is likely to come under gate fire while the gate is attacked, and Oliphaunts are very likely to get stuck trying to reach the gate.
Tips:
Vs Trolls/Oliphaunts/Wains: Catapults and ballista are your best friends against these units, otherwise massive light artillery, with throwing spears being particularly effective. In the absence of these, you can use masses of cheap troops to surround and pin down these units. As long as you can keep them from moving you will remove their most effective offensive abilities, and they will eventually fall to the many blows of your mass of men; you will lose a lot of men with this tactic, which is why it is wise to use lower tier, cheap to replace, infantry.
Vs Wain Bows: If you cannot out-range these units, your best bet is to charge light cavalry at them, they will fall pretty quickly once caught.
Vs High Walls (tier 2 or higher): The wall defenses in FATW are weaker than in vanilla RTW at about 1/5 of the attack value and speed, and about half the range (webba84). Nevertheless, attacking high tier walls can be daunting, especially when the settlement is well garrisoned. The following tactic can be very effective in dealing with such settlements.
Before deploying your troops, take a look at the wall around the entire circumference. Most walls have a weak spot; an area where the towers do not cover either due to the wall segment being too long, or being angled such that the towers point away from each other. Once you have found the spot, set up your entire attack force on the opposite side of the wall from that weak spot (outside the range of enemy fire). When you start the battle the entire garrison should be oriented toward your deployment, and the weak spot should be open.
Send a small part of your force around to that weak spot with a ladder, tower, or whatever you are going to use. You should be able to take that part of the wall with minimal losses. Then send a unit along the walls in both directions to capture all the undefended portions of the walls. Don't try to fight units on the walls. If you see an enemy unit moving toward one of the units you are using to capture the walls, run them in the opposite direction until the enemy unit gives up the chase.
You can now start sending your own forces into the settlement through parts of the walls you control. The enemy should now start moving his own troops off the walls to defend the interior; as they do, the walls you now control will be firing at them. Send your wall capture units to claim the rest of the walls once they are undefended.
You now have very good control of the battle. You can either start moving your troops in en masse and engage the enemy on favorable terms, setting up your own killing fields, or you can tease the enemy toward the walls and let the walls take them out. Be careful not to put your units between the enemy and the walls; they love to shoot your men in the back of the head!
This process takes a lot of time, but you can get near zero casualties against over a thousand defenders. Since I started playing DoM I have been playing with the battle timer off, but I was using this technique for years beforehand with the timer on, so it is do-able either way; though sometimes it would get down to the wire.
Siege Sallying: If besieged by a force that has not yet constructed siege equipment (usually only the first turn of a siege), or does not have infantry to man them, the besieging force will typically re-position themselves toward their line of retreat when your forces sally. As they do so they will often expose themselves to fire from towers, and from any well-positioned artillery you have prepared. While re-positioning themselves, the AI troops will be generally unresponsive until/unless engaged in melee. If you have HAs at your disposal you can safely deploy them to run right up behind the AI infantry and take out a good portion of their troops by shooting them in the back.
If you only have non-ranged cavalry, you can still use them to catch up one or two of the re-positioning units to allow your other ranged units a chance to inflict some casualties. If you can cause enough damage to the enemy force, it may willingly quit the field, thus breaking the siege.
For this reason, it is almost always worthwhile to sally on the initial turn of a siege, if only to let your towers do a bit of damage to the enemy.(Highland Laddie)
Fatigue: This is a huge, and often neglected, factor on the battlefield. Husband your troops' stamina by limiting the amount of time they spend running around the battlefield. Have light cavalry or skirmishers on hand to run down routing enemy, while your line units and heavy cavalry maintain their formation and rest up before the next assault. Avoid attacking up-hill. Heavy infantry can tire very quickly; an utterly tired heavy infantry unit may fare poorly against a fresh light infantry unit.
Use fatigue against your enemy. Use "do-not-pursue", and do not order your units to attack until the enemy has become exhausted, being sure to deactivate "do-not-pursue" before ordering the attack. When on the defensive, set up your troops far from the enemy's deployment area, on a hill if possible, so the enemy wear themselves out just to get to you. Have your enemy follow your cavalry around the map on a merry chase until exhausted, then loose your troops; form hiding if you can; to slaughter the weary enemy.
Hiding: If your general/lieutenant is a cavalry unit, have the rest of your army hide and have the enemy force follow your commander around the map until they are exhausted. Maneuver them to expose their flank/rear to your hidden forces, then spring the trap.
Units hidden in trees will display a hiding symbol on their unit card which looks like a tree. Many infantry units can hide in long grass, and some can hide anywhere; when doing so they will display the same icon on their card, but will also assume a crouching position.
It is also possible to hide your units from enemy forces by placing them behind contours in the landscape, or behind, rather than in, densely forested areas. (CountMRVHS) Even units that are not normally capable of being hidden can be hidden in this way, however, units thus hidden will not display the hidden symbol on their unit cards. Your only indication the enemy cannot see you will be the AI's behavior. If the AI is the aggressor, it will often send out a single unit to scout out the location of your forces; it can be quite fun to ambush that unit.
Mechanics:
Reinforcements:
In order for a stack to act as reinforcements, it must be adjacent to the tile in which the battle will take place, and be free to move from its current tile. It is very important, therefore, to understand which tile the battle will take place in. If you are the defender, the battle will take place in your tile, if you are the attacker, the battle will take place in the tile occupied by the target stack; i.e., the battle always takes place in the defender's tile. A defender controlling a choke point in which an attacker can only attack from one tile is in a strong position since the attacker will never be able to get reinforcements into the battle, though the defender may.
Some units cannot move through wooded or rough/rocky terrain. These include heavy artillery, Oliphaunts, and wains. If these units are part of a reinforcement group, they will spawn at the far edge of this terrain type in a direct line from the normal spawn point, and either very slowly work their way around the obstruction to enter the battlefield, or, more likely, be stuck and unable to enter the battle. It is a good idea to ensure these units are in the attacking stack, and not the reinforcements stacks if you have reason to believe such obstructions may exist.
A besieged garrison can only reinforce a field battle if that battle takes place in the tile occupied by the besieging force. A besieged garrison will not be able to reinforce a battle in an adjacent tile if that tile is not occupied by a stack which is currently besieging the garrison, even though the actual besieging force may participate as reinforcements in that same battle.
The player can only control 20 units in a battle. If the player chooses to control reinforcements, and those reinforcements take him over his 20 unit limit, excess units will wait outside the battlefield until one or more of the units the player currently controls leaves the field or is destroyed. The reinforcements will enter the field in the order they appear in the stack on the campaign map, as in reading left to right, top to bottom. This can make arranging your units in your stacks very important if you make use of reinforcements in your battles. It can be very helpful, for example, to have ranged units first in line so that when your current units run out of ammunition you can replace them with fresh ranged units.
If you leave your units under AI control, they will be able to enter the battle at once, even if this takes your forces beyond the 20 unit cap for player control. Do not expect the AI to use your units wisely. The AI factions have no limitations on the number of units they can field at one time, beyond what they can squeeze into the adjacent tiles on the campaign map.
Reinforcing units will arrive from the direction determined by their location relative to the battle tile on the campaign map; e.g., a reinforcement stack which was located southwest of the defender's tile on the campaign map will enter the battlefield from the southwest corner of the battle map. The battle map can be disorienting for compass reference; remember the overview map on the bottom left of the battle map screen is always oriented with north up. Because of the geometry of the battle map, reinforcements arriving from the corners (northwest, northeast, southwest, and southeast) will take longer to enter the battlefield, and will be farther from the center of the battlefield when they enter; this can make it tactically advantageous to ensure your reinforcements can arrive form a cardinal direction: north, south east or west. E.g., it is more advantageous to initiate an attack from the southwest, and have reinforcements situated on the tiles due south and due west of the defender's tile, rather than attack from due west, with reinforcements situated southwest and northwest of the defender's tile.
Generals with the night battle ability can use this option to prevent any reinforcements from participating in a battle unless the reinforcing force is also led by a general with the night battle ability. This applies to both the player and AI faction reinforcements.
One more factor may cause enemy units not to show up when they otherwise would: the game engine's estimation of your CPU's abilities. In the preferences file you will find the entry:
UNLIMITED_MEN_ON_BATTLEFIELD: [TRUE/FALSE]
If set to false, the game will use its own discretion as to whether your computer can handle more units, and will often choose to exclude them from the battle until enough soldiers have died that it feels more can be introduced. This feature is rather outdated, as very few will still be using systems that would benefit from this feature on a 12-year-old game; and the game is no longer able to judge properly. With this preference set to true, reinforcements should only be limited by the aforementioned factors. (Saul Tyre/CountMRVHS)
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Originally Posted by gasas
