In manual battles during the Grand Campaign i actually do really well as Greenskins, Vampires, Dwarves, Wood Elves...
I am familiar with how to use cavalry, flying units, magic, artillery, infantry and other types of units n heroes.
But when i play as the Empire my manual battles are usually very close to defeat and overall excruciatingly difficult to win.
I know Empire has:
- Great cavalry that must be used to flank and backstab the enemy, repeating the charges as needed
- Quite decent ranged attackers like Outriders and Handgunners (mustn't obstruct line of fire)
- Awesome artillery that also usually benefits from a clear line of fire.
- Useful technologies to research and powerful skills on lords to help units/armies
- Very diverse and powerful magic to buff/heal your own units or debuff/harm the enemy
- Probably the worst infantry in the game, with the fragile Sword/Spearmen, overpriced/underperforming Greatswords and a lack of high-tier shielded heavy armor unit like Ironbreakers or even Graveguards.
My main problem in battles as Empire is that my infantry wall/front-line either flees or dies WAY too quickly.
I always try to put my Infantry in a narrow choke-point so enemy infantry can not surround my infantry.
My awesome cavalry and artillery/ranged DPS does not get enough time to do its job before the Empire infantry line fails.
Empire magic is good and diverse but often even it is not enough to turn the tide.
The low tier swordsman/spearman(shields) lose morale easily and overall die rather quickly due to lower armor.
Flagellants are very brave but even with magic buffs they die really quickly to any higher tier front-line melee.
Halberdiers are very fragile, with only 30 armor and obviously lacking a shield they die very quickly to any melee infantry or ranged damage.
Even using only the expensive Greatswords is not enough, since they still quickly die to other high tier units like the Black Orcs or various Monsters or ranged damage units like armor-piercing archers/gunners.
I tried using all the various lores of magic that Empire has to help my infantry, but often even that is not enough to buy enough time for my Cavalry and Artillery/Ranged DPS to do its job.
As i said before i make sure my infantry is not surrounded by enemy infantry, so that they are only getting attacked from the front.
I make sure that my artillery/ranged DPS is in a safe and elevated position so they can free fire all the time.
And i make sure that my Cavalry is able to flank the enemy as soon as the enemy melee starts fighting my infantry wall.
Magic is of course used whenever appropriate to heal or buff my infantry or debuff enemy melee.
But even with all that positioning, strategy and high tier units my armies more-often-than-not lose to melee armies like Greenskins with a simplistic mass of high-tier melee units, or similarly high tier melee-focused armies from Chaos and Vampires.
Every battle i lost was because my front-line infantry wall got owned before my cavalry/ranged/arty could do enough to secure a win.
In comparison, when i play as Elves or Dwarves using similar tactics pretty much always wins against the AI because my Treekin/Dwarven infantry are able to hold the line long enough VS enemy melee armies so that my ranged DPS can kill them.