Question: Defense Dilemma

[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.

[PvK]

Follow the raiders, and heavily defend only the valuable provinces.

A large raider army that gets cut off will starve (unless it doesn't need food), and one that is followed will only occupy one of your provinces at a time.

Small raider armies can be worn down efficiently by PD combined with small forces.

PvK

[Firebreath]

Raiders have always (historically) been a problem to those being raided, and they still are (spec. forces). The best way to beat raiders is not (as suggested) to follow them around until they starve and slowly die out (as this will cost you lost income and time) but to trap them. There are many ways of doing it. Uncastled temple provinces make an excellent trap. The enemy will be drawn to your uncastled temples like flies to honey. What the enemy doesn't know is that you're moving lots of flying units, or you're building lots of province defence, or you have lots of hidden units, or your pretender is flying in. Of course, one way to effectively beat raiders is to cripple their leadership. Seeking arrows (air 3) are optimal for this, as you know that the enemy doesn't have any dome of protection in a province without a lab. As mentioned by norfleet, ghost riders also work quite well against weaker armies (armies not heavily protected by priests, wizzards, SC's). Assassins also work well, as they force the enemy to divert some of his forces to 'guard commander' - which means that you will have fewer enemy units to fight on the front line. If you're fighting mages, equip your assassins with elemental protection. Raiding will always be a problem, so make more of a problem for the raiders than it is for you

[HJ]

Originally posted by 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

I wholeheartedly agree.

[Vynd]

If you really hate raiders, you could try playing one of the death based nations like Ermor, whose dominion kills off all of their population. No population equals no supplies, so its much more difficult to raid these nation's territory. That's not to say it can't be done. Just that it is more difficult and costly, especially if the raiders want to head deep into your territory instead of staying along the fringes where their forts might provide them with some food.

Obviously this doesn't address the problem when it comes to normal nations. But if you find raiding really frustrating then maybe the death nations would make for a more enjoyable experience for you.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Vynd:
If you really hate raiders, you could try playing one of the death based nations like Ermor, whose dominion kills off all of their population. No population equals no supplies, so its much more difficult to raid these nation's territory. That's not to say it can't be done. Just that it is more difficult and costly, especially if the raiders want to head deep into your territory instead of staying along the fringes where their forts might provide them with some food.

This doesn't really address the underlying problem of random parties sacking and burning down unprotected temples, or the fact that provinces now instantly switch to enemy control and you have to send a clean-up crew to deal with this nonsense. Ermor, of course, has fewer problems with this than other nations, having troops everywhere usually sitting around gathering dust, but the loss of the site income and temple is aggravating....and it really IS necessary to build temples everywhere.

I have a game going where I'm a sizeable power on the map, and have temples in every province...yet for some reason, enemy dominion continues to get in. Clearly, this is unacceptable. I must build more temples until this goes away.