Question: Defense Dilemma

[Ironhawk]

As I get deeper into the game I often find myself playing "wack-a-mole" when forced to defend my area against incursion. By this I mean that I have a force sufficient to defeat the enemy force but they continually skip to another province. And yes... sometimes I can predict where they will go and ambush them, but this depends to a certain extent on luck which is just terrible.

And its just a fact that there are some geographies that have no bottlenecks and are thus really hard to defend. So its seeming to me that in these cases you would need to keep a defense force that was substantially larger than the attackers. That way you could corral the enemy and attack them in proper fashion.

Am I missing something with regards to area defense? Without an order like "intercept this army" I cannot imagine that I am the only one who is encountering it. Additionally, I can't believe that it is appropriate to say that the *defender* must have numeric superiority. Please let me know your stratgies for dealing this problem.

[Esben Mose Hansen]

You generally have 5 options:

1) Blanket the area with armies, each large enough that local defence+army will be enough to defeat
2) Use traps or guessing methods to predict the next move and squash his army with your biggie.
3) Spam the you provinces with castles
4) Use a magical attack spell to jump the defence (the ghost spell seems effective for this)
5) Counterattack, devasting the oponents provinces just as he devastes yours.

Playing catchup is almost never worthwhile.

Disclaimer: I'm certainly no veteran.

[Stormbinder]

Originally posted by Esben Mose Hansen:
You generally have 5 options:

1) Blanket the area with armies, each large enough that local defence+army will be enough to defeat
2) Use traps or guessing methods to predict the next move and squash his army with your biggie.
3) Spam the you provinces with castles
4) Use a magical attack spell to jump the defence (the ghost spell seems effective for this)
5) Counterattack, devasting the oponents provinces just as he devastes yours.

Playing catchup is almost never worthwhile.

Disclaimer: I'm certainly no veteran.

Esben have described it well. What he said can be applied to both SP and MP. Since you didn't mention what type of game you are playing, I'll add 2 more options that are very effective for dealing with AI but much less usefull for MP.

6. Passive defence against AI:

"channel" the enemy forces by using your PD and local defenders. The enemy hoard will almost always attack the most weakly defended province (based upon total number of defenders there including PD). By using it you can make them attack specific province, but before they arrive, you can orginize "welcome comette" by moving all your nearby troops into threatened province. (remeber your movement between friendly provinces will happen _before_ enemy's movement).

7. Active defence against AI:
The best defense is a good offence. If you have enough armies, go after enemy's capital. When you'll arrive most of AI's troops will drop whatever they are doing (most likely raiding your countryside) and will run to rescue their besieged capital. Just make sure you have enough forces to withstand their continious attacks and/or can bring more reinforcements when needed.

[Gandalf Parker]

Use real world tactics. If he is at the edge of your domain then boost defences in two provinces and build units there (archers are usually helpful to defence militia) while leaving the middle one weak. Attack the middle one and see if he doesnt attack it also in the same round.

[PDF]

There's one simple solution : play the Cradle map, it has lifelike bottlenecks and access routes, it makes the game more enjoyable than the usual "runner wars" where you chase the crappy IA armies invading from everywhere

[Wauthan]

As it sounds like you too favor singleplayer then I can also recommend creatinf a mod were you upgrade the province defence a wee bit. It's an easy and fun mod to make.

Machaka and Pythium, my favorite nations, are a lot more relaxing to play when their frontline defence don't rely on militia.

And I agree with PDF that the map makes a big difference. The Cradle of Dominion rewards a good defence but it can also be very frustrating when it's the AI who's turtling. Kingdom of Karan is a bit more open but still sports various bottlenecks that can fought over. So does the Middle Earth map.