Defending Bridges

[Carnead]

What would you suggest when defending bridges? To plug the debouchment of the bridge directly or to leave some space so the attackers penetrate on your side so you could press them from 3 sides?

I actually have problems when fighting Scythians. When I conquer Tomi they always attack me in few turns. I always lose 2/3 of my stack on defending bridge, so the victory is Pyrrhic. Their cavalry is always stuffed up with silver chevrons. Is this only a temple bonus? What kind of temples should they have?

I am actually defending with the stacks I conquered Thracia - phalangites, some hoplites and light cavalry. Should thorakitai work better?

[Lobo Solitario]

A rather cheesy tactic for defending bridges with phalangites is to place two phalanxes parallel to the bridge on either side, facing inwards with their pikes projecting over the bridge wall, with a third phalanx blocking the gap between the first two. The flanking phalanxes can attack the enemy from both sides while they are still on the bridge, unable to counterattack, and the flanking attacks often rout many units before they even finish crossing the bridge.

When using this tactic against the Scythians your phalangites are likely to suffer a lot of casualties from missile fire, as they will be presenting their flank to the advancing horse archers, although you can always try to screen them with other units.

Otherwise, tactics depend on what units you have to hand. If you have lots of missile units, it may be best to either block the bridge exit and hit the enemy on the bridge with massed missile fire, or to place your units in a wide semicircle around the bridge exit, so as to hit the enemy from all sides with projectiles as they leave the bridge and attempt to close with your troops. With mainly melee troops, it may be better to form a loose box around the bridge exit and hit the enemy on three sides after some of them have crossed, in order to have the advantage of flanking. Against cavalry it may sometimes be better to attempt to fight on the bridge, if you have a lot of spearmen, rather than risk the chance of them breaking through your lines, although that would lose you the advantage gained by defending the bridge, since you will be on an equal footing with the enemy.

[LucretiusTC]

If you are using RTW-BI.exe, most of those Light Cavalry and Light Infantry units can swim and it means that they are trying to across the river by swimming. In those cases you could use a part of your army (e.g. Phalangites, Hoplites with Shieldwall, Thorakitai) to defend the bridge against the heavy units and a part of your army is waiting the enemy on the river banks. If you play with fatigue on, those enemy units will be quite tired before they can reach the opposite river bank. And the archers can cause them severe casualties during the swimming.

Luc.

[GoldShield Guard]

If you are using RTW-BI.exe, most of those Light Cavalry and Light Infantry units can swim and it means that they are trying to across the river by swimming. In those cases you could use a part of your army (e.g. Phalangites, Hoplites with Shieldwall, Thorakitai) to defend the bridge against the heavy units and a part of your army is waiting the enemy on the river banks. If you play with fatigue on, those enemy units will be quite tired before they can reach the opposite river bank. And the archers can cause them severe casualties during the swimming.

Luc.

Although I haven't faced yet the Scythians in my GCS campaign (I have Tomi since many decades, but I have left Olbia to Indie Greeks and Scythians are allied with them, so they are still in their steppes), I have done exactly the above in any bridge battle I have given.

[Barend]

If you are using RTW-BI.exe, most of those Light Cavalry and Light Infantry units can swim and it means that they are trying to across the river by swimming.

I don't know if it's still in, but when the enemy tries to swim; elephants are your friends. For some reason even the heavy armoured ones can swim and are virtually indestructable in the water. Just have them swim in the river and watch the carnage. It's like an Assyrian royal inscription: "I dammed up the river with the corpses of my enemies", you get the picture

[Publius Quirinus]

If you are later in the game, onagers help. They don't kill all that many enemy troops, but it makes them rout faster.

(Also, seeing a flaming missile land in the middle of a mass of horsemen - a mass of anything - is always awesome.)

[Total Roach]

I have recently fought a few defensive bridge battles in my GCS campaign against Parthia, which has similar if more heavily armoured units to Scythia and one thing I would add to the comments above is I doubled the 1st rank of Phalangites at the end of the bridge, this helped really stopping those Cataphracts from breaking through the line too quickly, my defense looked something like this:

= 2 Phalangites overlayed
\ - / Phalangites
( ) Thorakitai
+ General
* Hoplites
^ Archers
B bridge
R River
B
B
B
B
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRBRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
=
\ /
-
* * * ( + ) * * *

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

Anyway hope that makes sense. The Hoplites would wait to see where the enemy would swim or ford the river and then rush to that point and form shield wall, The Thoratikai would go behind the \ and / Phalangites so the could fire their missiles from the sides but I left fire at will off and only let them fire at the critical moment, net result was over 8000 dead Parthians after 3 battles

Using BI.exe


P.S can't seem to get it lined up properly on the post, the centre should be in a vertical line down from B,=,-,+

[gaius_caesar]

onagers are helpful in bridge battles, and they serve you best when against hordes of HAs especially when you disable their swimming ability..

besides, I really love to hear enemy units agonizing when hit by a flaming rock... It makes me happy when I'm hearing those screams of pain!!

[Sextus Molestus]

I was lucky enough to encounter a bridge with no river ford nearby. The ensuing carnage:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Granted, it was on Easy difficulty, but I think the statistics are still impressive (or horrifying, take your pick).

[Spartan198]

I like to exploit the swimming bug whenever I can, but it only works when all or most of the units in the enemy army can swim. I'll take a single non-swimming unit (Hastati, Hoplites, Hypaspists, etc.), then I'll continue running it back and forth across the bridge. Units that can swim won't go onto the bridge even when they're ordered to and instead swim the river. So I just keep running back and forth across the bridge until the enemy soldiers all drown...

Cheap? Yes. Shady? Yes. But who's standing victoriously at the end of the battle? That's right, yours truly is.

[Carnead]

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions!