Could someone help me? (Strategy Help for Britannia Campaign)

[Arto]

This replay was from the Britannia Campaign, could someone comment at my strategy and give me some tips. (I have used this tactic since I first bought M2:TW)

[Korlon]

Your strategy appears to be absolutely terrible. What you did was to just crash all of your units at the enemy line all at once, with most of your units not actually doing any real work.

You were on the defensive, this automatically grants you an advantage in a total war battle. This isn't like a real battle where being on the defense meant you have had less information on your attacker. No, all the information is already there. You just had to wait for the enemy to come to you.

You had your archers on the front line, but you never used them while they're at the front. There was no skirmishing with the archers. You never bothered sticking your archers on loose formation and then shooting the opposing archers rather than just charging with everything you got.

The enemy infantry appeared to be extremely strong. You sent your knights up at the archers, probably to chase them away, but then you had them fight the much stronger infantry. The key traits of cavalry are its speed, maneuverability, and charge. You never used any of them. Once you see the infantry moving up, you should've withdrew your cavalry, as a bogged down horseman is just like a guy in a swamp, easily dragged down to the ground.

You could've at least waited until the enemy got a little closer instead of just running your infantry up. Now they just got a little bit fatigued. Even though it still displays fresh, it'll get to warmed up and eventually winded faster, which means penalties to fighting performance.

You had two lines of infantry. This doesn't mean smash both lines at the same time. This means to send the first line first while the second line remained as reinforcements or flankers. You did not do this. Your archers were also much behind you. It seems as though you could not micro-manage very efficiently. In fact, your archers were effectively hitting your own troops for quite a while. You could've sent them to the backs or flanks of the enemy infantry had you not wasted your cavalry at the beginning of the fight.

Anyways, to summarize and for closing. If you're on the defense, don't attack back. Let them come to you as you pepper them with your missiles. Stick first line infantry on guard mode. Send archers to your rear once the enemy reaches you. Either use the second line of troops to fill holes in the line or send them to the flanks of your opponents. If it's safe, send archers to the flanks or rear of the enemy, otherwise, just make them stick very close to the rest of your infantry, not far back like you did, and shoot at units that wouldn't net you friendly casualties. Definitely do not use your cavalry until the point where the enemy infantry has already engaged your infantry or to just chase off skirmishers, but don't let them get engaged for long. If necessary, you may use cavalry to fight opposing cavalry as well, but don't waste them.

[Arto]

I rewatched it, I swear I had a clear victory!
But here I've a clear defeat!

[Swagger]

yeah yeah

[Bob The Fearless]

It looked like Spain and Scilliy if you ask me ????

Any how back to your question.

Things that I wold advise on are: The use of terrain.

1. It's important to use the ground to your advantage in every battle eg high ground etc.

I did notice at the start that just behind your right flank there is a rocky outcrop with a building on top of it. You could of positioned your units so that the rocky outcrop provided a shield to your right flank therefore not really needing to worry about attacks from that direction. Do this during the deployment phase.

2. Formations: The computer generally gives you a standard formation and again during the deployment phase I would of perhaps done a couple of changes. The Cav I tend to put equally (or as near as damn it) on both flanks to try to prevent the enemy out flanking me, or for me to out flank them. On the Flanks Cav tend to get less tied up by trying to advance through other units when ordered to move.

Personally I would also have my archers to the rear of the group. Only because once they engage their target they can keep firing on the advancing enemy units until they engage with your front line. If the archers are out front then at some stage they will need to stop firing and fall back. Trade off here is range. Archers in front engage sooner but stop firing earlier. Also keep the archers off "Fire at will", this helps to conserve arrows plus they engage the targets you choose for them.

3. As Korlon said keep you need to keep it defensive here, let them come to you and keep that frontline on guard mode. You need to keep an eye on fighting units and if they start to fade/tire get them pulled back to rest and replace them with a fresher unit. Try to hold that line and don't let it break. This way its much easier to control what is happening.

If you watch the replay you will notice that just has your front line engages the enemy very quickly they do a classic move, Cav behind you and they wrap around both left and right flanks causing your units to go into a ball. It's very hard to control that ball, your on the back foot and it takes them no time to acheive it. Again Cav on your flanks helps to stop this happening but you need to look out for it in future.

4. I did notice that quite early on your Cav routes and you have a unit of 10 horsemen that withdraw to their starting position but face away from the battle. They continue to sit there until they get killed, quite a while infact. Keep an eye on all your units and what they are doing, these 10 could of provided more support to others being chased off the field. I didn't notice what killed them I just saw all of a sudden they were all dead.

It is hard to control all these things but you do get there in the end, and when its a small army out manouvering a much larger one then the sense of victory is even better.

Mind you you can't beat a good Brawl

Practice makes perfect, use the custom battle area to practise in. Let us know how you get on.

[JMSlayer]

Just a bit of information, replays aren't reliable, they aren't actual recordings of your game, they're basically just scenarios. The computer tries to mimic your strategies in the replays, but you're basically just saying "Hey, I fought this fight, now watch the computer try to do it too!"

[Bob The Fearless]

Just a bit of information, replays aren't reliable, they aren't actual recordings of your game, they're basically just scenarios. The computer tries to mimic your strategies in the replays, but you're basically just saying "Hey, I fought this fight, now watch the computer try to do it too!"

The replays that I have saved from "Custom Battles" seems to do everything that I did.

Are you sure about that ????? :hmmm:

Oh the other question that did crop up is can you save replays of campaign battles? I thought this was removed in MTW2.

[Heavy_]

it looks like you selected all of your men and just told them to charge at an individual enemy unit

[jehanzeb]

haha! I cant even open the file. What kind of extension are you using?