Help me about Dominions 2

[Yhan Yhan]

Yeah, i have the demo for Dominions 2. So I figured out w\how to play. So I built a decent army of 50 heavy calvary and 30 or some crossbowmen. I attack with this army an indepentdant nation with about 20 light infantry. My archers went in for the 1st wave of attack. That killed 3 or 4 light infantry. My heavy calvary charged and killed a good 10 more light infantry. Then all of my heavy calvary ran away from the battle. The few remaining light infantry scared my archers away. I lost the battle. How is this possible? 80 good against 30 crap lose? WTF?

Help!

[PvK]

You're right that that is a very unexpected outcome. Several things could have happened - like for example if you had only a single commander leading the army, and something happened to him, like a spell, flying attack, arrow through the head, or something. Or, something terrified your men. It's possible it was an extremely unfortunate morale check, but more likely magic of some sort.

PvK

[PhilD]

Originally posted by Yhan Yhan:
Yeah, i have the demo for Dominions 2. So I figured out w\how to play. So I built a decent army of 50 heavy calvary and 30 or some crossbowmen. I attack with this army an indepentdant nation with about 20 light infantry. My archers went in for the 1st wave of attack. That killed 3 or 4 light infantry. My heavy calvary charged and killed a good 10 more light infantry. Then all of my heavy calvary ran away from the battle. The few remaining light infantry scared my archers away. I lost the battle. How is this possible? 80 good against 30 crap lose? WTF?

Help!

I noticed that Heavy Cavalry tend to rout very easily. I don't know whether this is for poor morale, or because some obscure mechanism makes them lose morale quickly, but I think they don't work as your only shock troops; they don't cause enough demoralization to make the opposition rout.

Maybe try to have other heavy troops (Heavy Infantry) charge right behind the Cav, to share the burden of breaking the opposition? Still, if your Cav rout, you'll have to pick the remnants up in various provinces...

[PDF]

Well, first, sending the archers as 1st wave isn't a very good idea They should sit on a flank (NOT directly behind the shock troops !! ) and be ordered to fire.

As for the hvy cav/knights, it depends : what nation did you play ? Ulm knights are quite trustworthy, Arco "hvy cav" isn't ...
And how many Groups did you had ? 1 only group can rout if its sole leader get killed ! Spread the troops into several, such as :
R Wing : 15 archers, fire closest
R Centre : 25 cav, attack closest
L Centre : 25 cav, hold and attack
L Wing : 15 archers, fire archers

Normally you should have won with the archers alone... the 1st cav wave then would have mopped up the routers. If ever it didn't work there was the 2nd wave.

But maybe a strike of bad luck struck you !

[General Tacticus]

As a general rule, don't back up heavy cavalry with crossbowmen - you risk heavy losses from friendly fire...

As for what happened, what would make the most sense is that your leader(s) died (or routed), and all your army routed.
It is, I suppose, barely possible that some extremely unlucky dice rolls caused your cavalry to rout. What cavalry exactly are we speaking of ? Did they use spear, or did they use swords ? In the latter case, the light infantry, on an incredibly lucky day, might use their longer spears to successfully repel the cavalry, causing moral loss and eventually rout...

[PhilD]

Originally posted by PDF:
Well, first, sending the archers as 1st wave isn't a very good idea They should sit on a flank (NOT directly behind the shock troops !! ) and be ordered to fire.

OK, this isn't the first time I've read that archers should not be placed directly behind the shock troops, but I still don't see why.

Is it because stray shots tend to be either too short or too long, not to deviate to the sides? So that it's better to have your own troops not between the archers and their targets, but more to the side? (I haven't noticed such a trend...)