The thread for evil, dirty, low-down strategies

[Dulce_et_Decorum_Est]

Post your most twisted, devious tactics and strategies, be they single player, or multiplayer. Here are some of mine:


1) Biological warfare: You've probably seen this one. Spies can both contract and spread plague. In fact, if properly managed, they can prolong it. An especially persistant case of plague is often the result of a hidden agent. Using a few spies in concert with assasins to destroy aqueducts can severely cut down on the enemy's tax base and garrisoned forces.

2) The Cataphract sneak: Attack an enemy city with a large number of archers, missile cavalry, and any other units with a skirmish mode. Keep one or two flags worth of cataphracts on hand as well. Camp outside until they sally (if your unit composition is spot on, they'll sally the first turn).

Keep all your units skirmishing so that the enemy gets drawn far, far away from their gates. Once they're back far enough, concentrate fire on a large unit. Once they rout, chase them back into town with the cataphracts. Use the cataphracts to stomp the remaining forces in the town square (if there are any), and win the battle via central capture without having to kill the main body of enemies.

I use cataphracts because they can fight if challanged for the center, but in practice any cavaly unit tough enough to follow the routers through the gate and kill them before they rach the center will do. This takes some doing, but it's a great way to capture cities with all cavalry armies or inferior sized forces.

3) The Seleucid Deathtrap live training center: Four words: Hatra, Armenia, Pikemen, bottlenecks.

4) The Instant Tennessee Williams Melodrama: If you've got some cash lying about and a tough enemy city with a good governor, send waves of assasins and spies at it. Destroy the temples, and make as many attempts against the governor as possible. The people will become unhappy over the loss of their municipal places of worship. The governor will become worried about security, then paranoid, and then insane. Prepare yourself for Gothic misery and Elizabeth Taylor monlogoues.

5) Any Pirate is my enemy: Need to butter up someone diplomatically, but don't have any spare cash? Easy. Promise to attack some rebels, with whom everyone is perpetually at war, then stomp some local pirates or uppity peasants or something. Mission accomplished. Rinse and repeat until they're eating out of your hand.

6) Drama Queen: Like number five, but less creative. Find an enemy's enemy. Offer them military assistance against your mutual foe every time you were about to attack them anyway. Rinse and repeat until you have an ally to do your wicked bidding.

7) Flaming onager rounds are a very good tool for getting rid of enemy generals. Unfortunately, enemy generals rarely hold still to get killed, so it's best to shoot at them when they're in some sort of brawl. Best bet is that they're in a brawl with allied troops, rather than yours, after all, onagers aren't exactly laser-guided. Best of all is when the enemy general is in a duel with an allied general. Two for the price of one...

8) Civil War Premonition Propery buyback: When playing as a Roman faction, buy up important properties from your estwhile allies to better situate your forces. This may require diplomatic softening to bring the prices to something reasonable, so see 5 and 6. As the Bruti, buy the Scipiones' only territory on Italy itself, shutting them out of the first stages of the scramble for the penninsula. As the Scipiones, buy off the Julii island possessions and anything they managed to grab in Spain, thus defending your valuable holdings in Carthage and Sicily. As the Julii, buy the Sciopiones off of Italy, and the Bruti too if you can manage it.

9) Lemon Law: If you have trusting, buttered-up allies (see 5, 6), and a city with immenant public order problems, see if you can sell it to them. Make sure to make it worth your while by destroying any police headquarters, temples or other public order buildings on the way out. Allies, are, after all, just delayed-action rivals. It's also funny to see them get knocked out on their asses. For extra evil points, don't take your army too far away, and reconquer it.

10) If you can't buy it, break it: Attack a city with a full stack of heavy onagers, just for the hell of it.

[Seppuku]

Haha! That's a helpful guide! Sneaky..

[rasputin753]

yep great ideas, how comes i never thought about that.. question about the diplomacy. can you do those tricks several times in one turn or is it only once per turn possible ?

one thing from me. when the defenders sally from the city, make sure you have an army with a lot of archers, and that they are close enough to kill the enemy as soon as he is getting out of the gate. they will always try to form a battleline before attacking you and before they have completed their organisation there won´t be any left of them.

[Mrtickles]

People are stupid: PO going down the tubes? Let an unimportant wonder city (I use Artemis Temple but personal preference really) rebel and then capture it again, hoorah you got the wonder everyone is happy.

Mooning: have your hoplites and pikemen turn their backs on the enemy, then when they charge you head on, turn around. This takes some timing but it isn't hard.

Blockade: Allow your enemies into the city, then when they all go down that main street which they inevitably will, sneak some troops (preferably a phalanx) around and close it off. They're not going anywhere.

[Dulce_et_Decorum_Est]

People are stupid: PO going down the tubes? Let an unimportant wonder city (I use Artemis Temple but personal preference really) rebel and then capture it again, hoorah you got the wonder everyone is happy.

Mooning: have your hoplites and pikemen turn their backs on the enemy, then when they charge you head on, turn around. This takes some timing but it isn't hard.

Blockade: Allow your enemies into the city, then when they all go down that main street which they inevitably will, sneak some troops (preferably a phalanx) around and close it off. They're not going anywhere.

I use the mooning one too! Usually, if they just raise their pikes from the phalanx, that's enough to provoke a charge.

The blockade is particularly evil, however. I shall have to try that one.



OK, #3 pertains to when the human player is Seleucid. You will start with the city of Hatra.

For some reason, the Armenian AI develops an unhealthy fascnation with the city. They'll attack it just about yearly if you let them.

Normally, this would be considered an unholy annoyance, and it is, but it's also an unprecedented opportunity to kill off scores of weak troops to improve their quality.

Once the city can produce pikemen, LET the Armenians (and sometimes Pontus will join in the fun too) attack the city as often as they please, which will be quite often. Make a box of pikemen around the gate, or on the town center, or wherever. It's quite easy to kill scores of Eastern infantry charging down a narrow bottleneck with pikemen no?

In a few years, they'll be up to ridiculous levels of experience, and any generals you left in Hatra will be similarly enhanced.

If you can operate it properly, it's truly quite underhanded.

[KarlC]

Hi.

An explanation for #3 would be nice. Some of us here can't read minds you know.

[Rickard R]

as KarlC sad : explain plz

[mrcrusty]

u can always make that phalanx box in the field, phalanxes facing outward in a box with archers and siege weapons inside, leave ur general and a few light/medium cavalry on the other side of the map (or at least reasonably far from ur box)

the AI will usually charge for the box, with decent pikemen it will hold.... then just charge ur cavalry into an enemy (flank or rear will work), unless the AI has sum sort of elite morale unit, it has a huge chance of causing a domino effect of routing.

i use the blockade quite a bit since i play phalanx factions a lot, but i usually use the phalanx to hold the line (its a narrow street, phalanxes are born to kill in that kinda situation) and use any kinda calvalry or heavy infantry to attack the rear (easier to move around then a phalanx)

also not sure if this works (actually pretty sure it doesnt but meh try it anyway) but if an enemy is sieging ur city and building up siege weapons (but doesnt have any made yet) then u can sally forth and come to a draw (just sit in town square for 45 mins), they dont go away but i believe the siege is broken for a turn and they gotta build those siege weapons again, buying urself a little time.

[Erwin Rommel]

Since you are allied with the 3 romans, you have a free hand in positioning you armies near the whole of italy without any war......... yet
being emperor is your future agenda. Position your armies in the capitals, rome, croton, capua, and Bribe those romans, not only do you get whole armies you get cheaper on them and maybe a few generals.

[Jubal_Barca]

If you have loads of cash on hand, this one's fun;

Get a high-level diplomat, walk him far into enemy territory. Bribe a random character, get him to wander around and get mercs in bulk, then attack enemy from both sides.

I do this LOADS in my Carthage campaigns. It works well.

As an alternative, take your kickass new merc army further into enemy lands, then divert their troops while you pick off their weakened garrisons nearer to home.

[NobleNick]

1.) Cav Sucker Bait. Easily my most-abused underhanded tactic is to post armies totally consisting of cav in the way of enemy armies, preferably on open and hilly terrain. The "superior" enemy army attacks. Enemy cav are killed with my overwhelming cav force. Then I just run my horses around with the enemy footmen chasing until they are exhausted, then pounce. Losses are typically less than 10% per battle, and can be much lower if friendly forces are carefully managed.

If no friendly town is nearby, replenish troops by building the exact same configuration cav and run them out to the field and merge them into the experienced units. By end of game, I usually have several half-stacks composed entirely of cav with 3 silver chevrons of experience or better.

This even works well with light cav against top quality phalanx, but does not work well if the enemy has elephants or heavy chariots.

2.) Cav sneak. Like Dulce_et_Decorum_Est, I like to have the enemy sally, though I have only once used Cataphracts (am just now playing my first eastern faction). I lure them out, pounce on one weak unit, then have my cav follow the routers through the gate, being careful not to kill them all until just inside. THEN I run the cav around all the nearside gates, capturing them, and only then, har, har, har, move to the center. The enemy AI gives out an electronic "Oh, ____!" and the army starts running back to town. Of course there is no way the footmen can make it to the far side of the city and then to the town square in 3 minutes and I can close off the rest of the gates to preclude cav from getting in; so the game is won, unless.... I wish to get more experience. In which case, I move off the town square before the 3 minutes is up and tease all enemy units back into the city before leaving to join my far off resting troops. Now the fatigued enemy has to make the long trek back to my waiting troops in order to have any chance of avoiding defeat. When they get there the exhausted enemy is slaughtered.

3.) Tactical Back-stab. This only happened once, but it was so-o-o-o delicious! I forget if I besieged a city that was already under allied siege, or if I besieged it just as an ally army arrived and was about to do the same thing. Anyway, I initiated the attack with almost a full stack against the approximately 16 units holed up in the city; and the ally (who I knew was about to become an enemy) joined in with their full stack, under AI control. I busted down some gates, but then held back forces. The ally army surged into the city and took the brunt of the ordeal. After the two armies had wasted themselves against each other, and the allied army was in full rout before a tattered defender, I moved my fresh army in to mop up.

I really need to learn how to do that more often.

4.) Bully's Reward. When winning against another faction, they will often sue for ceasefire. If it suits my tactical situation (need to bring fresh troops up, etc.) I will allow a ceasefire, but extract an exhorbitant price (like $500 per turn for 3 to 5 turns, or make them cede a territory). The $$ I get only help me (and hinder them) for the rest of the war. As soon as the X turns are up, I attack again.

5.) Pre-emptive Archer Sally. This *IS* abuse of the AI, but takes planning and does come with some risk (you can theoretically lose the city). Firstly, you must be defending stone walls or better. Secondly, you must have planned ahead and have lots of archers (6 units is not too many). Thirdly, you should have a fast unit like light cav. Initiate a sally from the campaign map. Use the light unit to bait the enemy into approaching the gates. Archers and wall defenses will slaughter the attackers from the safety of the wall. Often the entire enemy army will line up right under the wall defenses and patiently wait for the archers to slowly pick them off. Even if you do not run the entire army off, you should get a victory or a draw, which allows you to remain encamped and repeat the same wretched trick next turn.

6.) Fake Cav Sally. (Note this is for when your city has been attacked, not for a pre-emptive sally that you initiated from the campaign map.) This is an absolutely shameless abuse of the AI. When defending a city with stone walls or better, and the attacker has cav, I often position my cav near the front gate. run light cav out as if to harry the foot soldiers. Enemy cav will give chase. Run your cav around the side and into the side or back gate. Often the enemy cav will just stand there outside the gate waiting for your cav to come back out, and get slowly slaughtered by the gate defenses.

Hope you found that interesting.

[Jubal_Barca]

One I forgot;

Get LOADS of heavy onagers, and loads of archers. Have a few light cav handy too. Use all the onagers on units with rams, siege towers, sap points, and ladders.

When the rams, etc. have been destroyed, the enemy will just sit around and wait to get shot. When they run, charge out w/light cav. Mushy pea soup!

[rasputin753]

i experinced this the first time now, so i don´t know if this is a regular ai error. i was fighting 3 spearmen units with 1 archer unit and a general. i didn´t want to kill my general of so i did the hit and run game. my archers were hiding in nearby woods. i lured the spearmen on a parallel track to the hidden archers. then i ordered them to start a fire attack. the spearmen howerver got frightend but went on.. but still only behind my cavalry, they absolutly didnt care about the archers. so my cavalry run in circles the spearmen following then while my arhcers killed one after the other.

[Mrtickles]

That's more of a programming flaw than anything. I've noticed that phalanxes tend to chase any nearby units and become "stuck" to them for almost the whole battle, even cavalry. Of course this makes peeling apart the enemy formation easy as hell.

Oh and for people who need blockade clarification the enemy will almost ALWAYS move his entire seiging army down one main street towards your center, so you defend one end as you normally would and once the entire enemy is engaged, moved another unit to block off the street to catch any retreating units. Alternatively you could just retake the gatehouse and any towers you lost.

More underhanded tricks:

Broken Walls: This is more of an AI bug than anything. Whenever seiging a city in high risk territory, bust ONE hole in the wall (rams for wooden, sap points for stone) and then take the city as normal. If the city is seiged, the AI will just assualt right away and go straight for the hole with everything they have, which is a way better bottleneck than trying to keep 2-3 ladders and a tower under control. Repair the wall when you move on.

Speedbumps: When your city with 2-3 peasant garrison is seiged, which it inevitably will, and you think you have a fighting chance of holding, arrange all your fighting men in the town square and just dump all your peasants (not your general if he happens to be one) on your walls. They'll hold the walls, even if they rout they'll fight tot he death, kill some dudes, and most importantly buy the towers time to shoot some more guys.

Raid: In my opinion a legit tactic but pretty cheap. Any Eastern nation get 20 unit stack cavalry archer armies, attack, spend all your ammo picking the enemy apart, then withdraw. Rinse and repeat.

Corner Huddle: You can use the red battle limits to protect your flank in field battles. Just arrange your men in the traditional box but use the red liens to cover your rear, preferably use a corner.

Invulnerability: This works for phalanxes best but infantry in general can use this. You'll notice that even when hit front on weaker phalanx units will break apart and lost their defensive ability if hit hard enough (heavy cav usually). Stacking two phalanxes on top of each other will make your phalanxes MUCH more resistant to this, at worst one will break while the other continues to stab away. Also works decently with regular non phalanx spearmen cause of their anti cav bonus (triarii, eastern infantry, etc). Related, you can make choke points invulnerable by not just using one phalanx but crossing two phalanxes diagonally or using three to make a closed box around the opening. I'll take a screenshot if needed.

[Dulce_et_Decorum_Est]

Mrtickles, combine your missile cavalry raid with NobleNick's sucker bait trick. It's quite possible to defeat large seleucid armies as the parthians using nothing but horse archers. Even small numbers of elephants and chariots can be dealt with.

I also use the phalanx-box. Take three pike or hoplite units and make a recepticle around the gate. For about the first thirty meters or so, the pathing dictates that units moving through the gate must face forwards, or at least they have great difficulty engaging targets to their sides. This is really too bad, because there's phalanxes on either side. They usually suffer 70% casualties and then rout.

This little trick is why I almost never lose cities as the seleucids.

[Hex Khan]

Post your most twisted, devious tactics and strategies, be they single player, or multiplayer. Here are some of mine:


1) Biological warfare: You've probably seen this one. Spies can both contract and spread plague. In fact, if properly managed, they can prolong it. An especially persistant case of plague is often the result of a hidden agent. Using a few spies in concert with assasins to destroy aqueducts can severely cut down on the enemy's tax base and garrisoned forces.

2) The Cataphract sneak: Attack an enemy city with a large number of archers, missile cavalry, and any other units with a skirmish mode. Keep one or two flags worth of cataphracts on hand as well. Camp outside until they sally (if your unit composition is spot on, they'll sally the first turn).

Keep all your units skirmishing so that the enemy gets drawn far, far away from their gates. Once they're back far enough, concentrate fire on a large unit. Once they rout, chase them back into town with the cataphracts. Use the cataphracts to stomp the remaining forces in the town square (if there are any), and win the battle via central capture without having to kill the main body of enemies.

I use cataphracts because they can fight if challanged for the center, but in practice any cavaly unit tough enough to follow the routers through the gate and kill them before they rach the center will do. This takes some doing, but it's a great way to capture cities with all cavalry armies or inferior sized forces.

3) The Seleucid Deathtrap live training center: Four words: Hatra, Armenia, Pikemen, bottlenecks.

4) The Instant Tennessee Williams Melodrama: If you've got some cash lying about and a tough enemy city with a good governor, send waves of assasins and spies at it. Destroy the temples, and make as many attempts against the governor as possible. The people will become unhappy over the loss of their municipal places of worship. The governor will become worried about security, then paranoid, and then insane. Prepare yourself for Gothic misery and Elizabeth Taylor monlogoues.

5) Any Pirate is my enemy: Need to butter up someone diplomatically, but don't have any spare cash? Easy. Promise to attack some rebels, with whom everyone is perpetually at war, then stomp some local pirates or uppity peasants or something. Mission accomplished. Rinse and repeat until they're eating out of your hand.

6) Drama Queen: Like number five, but less creative. Find an enemy's enemy. Offer them military assistance against your mutual foe every time you were about to attack them anyway. Rinse and repeat until you have an ally to do your wicked bidding.

7) Flaming onager rounds are a very good tool for getting rid of enemy generals. Unfortunately, enemy generals rarely hold still to get killed, so it's best to shoot at them when they're in some sort of brawl. Best bet is that they're in a brawl with allied troops, rather than yours, after all, onagers aren't exactly laser-guided. Best of all is when the enemy general is in a duel with an allied general. Two for the price of one...

8) Civil War Premonition Propery buyback: When playing as a Roman faction, buy up important properties from your estwhile allies to better situate your forces. This may require diplomatic softening to bring the prices to something reasonable, so see 5 and 6. As the Bruti, buy the Scipiones' only territory on Italy itself, shutting them out of the first stages of the scramble for the penninsula. As the Scipiones, buy off the Julii island possessions and anything they managed to grab in Spain, thus defending your valuable holdings in Carthage and Sicily. As the Julii, buy the Sciopiones off of Italy, and the Bruti too if you can manage it.

9) Lemon Law: If you have trusting, buttered-up allies (see 5, 6), and a city with immenant public order problems, see if you can sell it to them. Make sure to make it worth your while by destroying any police headquarters, temples or other public order buildings on the way out. Allies, are, after all, just delayed-action rivals. It's also funny to see them get knocked out on their asses. For extra evil points, don't take your army too far away, and reconquer it.

10) If you can't buy it, break it: Attack a city with a full stack of heavy onagers, just for the hell of it.

you are as low down degenerated and as pityful as the come , but even as noble and chivalrous as I am, i must confess i've tried these tactics before and most of them work, though i do question what you mean by (3) is that the bridges and close quater mountains you men in the vanilla game fill up on the good old phalanx troops and guard?

either way every dirty tricks which are quite colourful

[Dulce_et_Decorum_Est]

you are as low down degenerated and as pityful as the come , but even as noble and chivalrous as I am, i must confess i've tried these tactics before and most of them work, though i do question what you mean by (3) is that the bridges and close quater mountains you men in the vanilla game fill up on the good old phalanx troops and guard?

either way every dirty tricks which are quite colourful

I've never tried holding up the geographical choke points. The city seemed a perfectly effective kill zone.

I'll keep that one in mind though.

[Hex Khan]

I've never tried holding up the geographical choke points. The city seemed a perfectly effective kill zone.

I'll keep that one in mind though.

I didnt notice until i reread the thread you explained number three the ever so devilish phalanx gate trap. Works like a charm.

clogging up mountain paths can be very useful in most games, like take the roman civil war event, you manage to beat out the julii but they have alot of provinces outside the alps start spamming out units they'll only ever get one army through at a time.

it works quite well in BI too sorta like a thermoplyae effect couples with the thin-red-line tactic aka border huging to save your flanks lol dirty stuff