Help fighting battles

[Dfens]

Hey everyone, since some days i've been playing M2TW and i've enjoyed it so far. Unfortunately i am not really a commanding genius so I find myself winning few battles without losing many men and ending up with a giant chaos on the field of battle. Could someone give me some tips on improving my skills as a commander.

Example of my worse commanding :

Scotland (cpu) vs England (player) in normal-mode with England fighting downhill and the following line up: 3 units pike man, 2 units heavy inf., 2 units archers and 2 units heavy cav. each
ending in a chaos and a victory for England (player) with 430 kills and 130 loss . For such a small battle this is really a mare victory I wouldnt stand a change fighting real battles.

please help me

(ps which mod would you recommend for the campaign mode?)

[Zhou]

I'm not sure what you need help with, it seemed like you did okay in that battle against Scotland (although I don't know what type of troops that they had). However, try the following thread for some ideas:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=76287

You can try all the suggestions in the posts and see which one works best for you personally.

As for the mod...I like to use the Darth Mod.

[Divinehammer]

I like the winningcombomod , also added Sinhuets and heraldry mods .
You did okay at least you didnt lose.

[Guderian]

430 kills for 130 loss doesn't sound so bad...You are going to take casualities, theres no way to avoid that.

As for the chaos part, well there's not much you can do after you've commited your troops.

If you want to feel more in control, I suggest you take advantage of the grouping system. For example group your entire army into one group to get them into position, once in position, group your archers into a seperate group to your melee troops and remove cav from the group. Now your basically prepared for anything that the AI can throw at you, if they rush cav move your archer group back, let the inf take the force of the charge then flank em with your cav. If the AI wants to engage in a skirmish let your archers keep em busy while you charge thier skirmishers with your cav. If they rush thier melee troops at ya, then pull your archers back and counter charge em with your own melee troops, etc.

As for tactics,

My battle formation usually looks like this:

................*Rear*...................
HK__________LC___________HK
____AS______G_______AS
____DK______AS______DK
____SP__AS__SP__AS__SP
____RL___RL___RL____RL
................*Front*..................

HK = Heavy knights (cavalry)
LC = Light Cavalry
AS = Armoured Swordsmen (or Dismounted feudal knights)
G = General
DK = Dismounted English knights
SP = Levy Spearmen
RL = Retinue Longbowmen

I find that this formation is usefull for almost any situation against the AI (obviously the exception being sieges). In earlier periods I use the same formation but my frontline consists entirely of levy spearmen, and I have billmen on the rear flanks instead of dismounted english knights.

[Trajan]

Moved to the Battle Planning sub-forum.

[Dfens]

Thx for the replies everyone

[garion333]

Play customs battles over and over and over and over again. Get use to using grouping formations.

I always flank with my (some of) cavalry. Hitting their general from behind really kills the opponents morale.

Also, I almost always put my foot troops on Guard mode so they don't start chasing a routing group of peasants and then get hit from behind by some armed swordsmen.

Practice makes perfect. I suck at sieging, but I'm great at defending. Just play the hell out of some custom battles is the best thing you can do. That way you won't be wasting money in your campaign.