PBEM game: The first step (Running)

[Agrajag]

Molog said:
Things haven't gone exactly the way I wanted them to go. I'm still going to go on till the end and if I fail I can always start chanting the loser mantra "I might not win, but I can surely influence who does win".

How about "I had a chance of 1:8 in the first place"?
Maybe "I knew I was going to lose from the get-go"?


EDIT:
A question for the experts:
Which is more dangerous, a province of Tribal Warriors + Tribal Archers or a province of Heavy Cavalry + Heavy Infantry?

[Saber Cherry]

Agrajag said:
EDIT:
A question for the experts:
Which is more dangerous, a province of Tribal Warriors + Tribal Archers or a province of Heavy Cavalry + Heavy Infantry?

Knights / Longbows or Heavy Cav / Heavy Inf are very dangerous.
Tribals are not dangerous at all. You might want to use archers against them, as they have little armor and no shields. They also use daggers so any melee units can repel them, even units with axes or shortswords.

[The Panther]

The heavy cavalry provinces are one of the hardest ones to take, especially early in the game. There are three level of HC provinces where they have increasing levels of armor. The only way to know which you are up against is to attack with a scout on retreat and examine the armor on the cavs during the battle.

The lowest level of armor is not that much harder than the standard Heavy Infantry province. The middle level is getting very tough, and the highest level is even tougher than the knight provinces.

On the other hand, tribal warriors and tribal archers is quite easy. They suffer from the usual low morale problem of barbarians. Try to get them to retreat with your own archers guarded by high protection infantry spaced around the battlefield as targets for the enemy arrows. It is not unusal to take such provinces with 0-2 troops lost, especially if your infantry comes equipped with a shield (which protects from incoming arrows).

[Agrajag]

Thanks for all the tips, almost everything you said was useful, and now I have a much more sound attack plan.
I think I'll have to submit my turn tomorrow though (to the disappointment of everyone, Im sure) since its pretty late and Im pretty busy :\

[Oversway]

This is what I usually do to go after knight or calvary provinces earlier on in the game:

The army
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A group of militia or otherwise cheapo troops (one of the few times I buy them). I put these near the front of the tactics box. Have them attack closest or hold and attack, doesn't matter.

A group of good line troops. Slow, high armor, decent morale.

Crossbowman set to fire calvary (or fire closest, it usually doesn't matter since mounted independant troops are almost always at the front due to high movement). You can count on 1 or 2 volleys

The concept
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The militia are there to absorb the lance attacks and maybe slow the calvary down a little. They'll pretty much get mowed down and you can have a good laugh. You want just the right amount - the best is when the calvary kill all of them, because its annoying to have them retreat all over your provinces.

Your line troops are there to hold the calvary in place while your xbows hurt them with . The more the better. Having a priest with sermon of courage or fanatacism helps here. If you have some spare battlemages with armor piercing/armor negating spells (stellar lights is a good one with evoc 1), or poison or fear spells, it can only help.

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Again this is more for early game. You can do a lot more nasty things to calvary once you get some high powered magic going, or assassins, or whatnot. But I find that calvary provinces are usually high gold and that can really help early on.

Also, there are many ways to augment this. Sometimes I try to set it up so some weak prot but heavy hitters (like barbarians) attack the calvary after they hit the line. I'd say it the barbs help about 50% of the time. Although even when it does work, the barbarians are just useless fodder. Better to have more line troops if possible.


I'd be interested if others do things differently.