Dominant strategy in ATW: “Sniping groups of armies”
After having played a dozen games with ATW-Great Campaign and ATW-AoC (and earlier in R2TW) I’ve come up with the dominant strategy which makes the game really boring (not to mention un-historical).
Features of R2TW and ATW that enable this strategy:
· Limited number of armies per faction (depends on imperium level) – the number of armies a faction fights against depends on the number of factions it is at war with but not their strengths (ie one faction with 20+ provinces is much weaker than 3 factions with 3 provinces each).
· No manpower limits (like in M2TW units’ refill rates, DeI mod for R2TW alleviates the problems) – if your army is destroyed, you just set up a new one: the speed depends on the recruitment slots, which are usually not a serious barrier.
· Cheap units in comparison to the economy: most of the armies are 20-units armies. This is better in the AoC DLC, but still, the result is the same.
· Automatic refill of the battle loses (if not enemy territory) – if you inflict losses on an enemy, he will come again in full numbers soon.
· High movement ranges: long moves per turn possible what enables “catching” of enemy armies (I mean attacking twice: one attack may be avoided, but the second has to be fought to death).
· Close-to-perfect knowledge of the enemy: where it’s positioned, how strong it is (only sometimes restricted by armies hiding or by having not enough agents) – also enable catching of the enemy armies.
· Auto-resolve skewed to benefit the numerical superiority: even a small advantage in numbers produce effects when one army is wiped entirely, and the winner suffers very small losses.
Implementation of the strategy:
· You get several full-stacks (2+) and tries to initiate the battles with higher numbers (2-1, 3-1,3-2 or more). The AI will flee but can do it only once. You get your army group on it again (what's enabled by the movement ranges), then autoresolve. The result should be the total annihilation of the enemy army(ies) with very low loses on your side - you can continue sniping immediately.
· If the AI has more armies than you, you need to do it patiently – snipe one army, then another one, then you dominate.
· It is sometimes employed also by the AI: it's not bad at positioning several of its armies around your army and attacking you. So the essential issue is to keep your armies together so that the AI cannot snipe by itself (and also to enable sniping by yourself). Perfect knowledge on the map enables it.
· After you’ve annihilated the AI in one province you go to another one and do the same. It’s really a war of annihilation. To prevent AI from spawning again you’ve got to “raze” settlements in the ATW or take them in the AoC.
· The result: playing the battles by yourself is really a worse option. Autoresolve is better plus battles with higher numbers are boring. You've got always lower loses and you can continue sniping. The composition of the armies (units), the quality of the leaders - matter much less.
Summary:
With unlimited manpower and automatically replenishing armies what you need to beat the AI is to wipe completely his armies. It doesn't make any sense just to win a battle - the AI would replenish and come back soon. You really need to wipe the armies. You can do it with the numerical superiority (ie more armies to attack 2-1 or 3-2) and then attack two times in one turn, preferably on the autoresolve (otherwise they flee, now wiping). What follows, the superior tactics is "sniping the armies": you make a battle group of 2 full stacks and take enemy armies one-by-one. You also take and raze the AI settlements quickly as a follow up (especially as the WRE - you need to raze constantly the neighboring settlements, letting the AI to spend money on rebuilding them, and then razing them again).
The interplay between a few elements (1. relatively low prices for the units, both recruitment and upkeep; 2. no-limit of recruits (as it was in the M2TW, 3. automatic replenishment) makes it the superior tactics. Otherwise you face a constant flow of enemy armies. Thus for the ATW to be playable a mod would have to introduce a kind of strong mechanism counteracting this mechanics. How to do it, I don’t know.
Age of Charlemagne is slightly better, I admit. First: lower movement ranges combined with some terrain features (loses in the mountain passes, much slower movement there). Second: less money from the buildings. Third: no razing (unless you're Asturia). However, all this doesn't prevent this strategy to be effective and superior, to my mind. Interestingly, I've seen the AI in the AoC also using this tactics: kept 2-3 armies together and then attacked together in two-phased attack, wiping my armies.
What do you think about this strategy? Am I wrong at some details?
JoC
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