Tactics: Principles, Tips, Tricks, and Traps

[Shovah32]

Corwin, in most maps (unless your stuffed in a corner or against the sea) you have plenty of provinces connected to your castle (even if you dont you could always expand a little more, just keeping it compact) and, by capturing all the provinces round his castle he will have alot of resources coming to where they are needed to produce useful troops. Unless the enemy takes a very long amount of time to reach you there shouldnt be a problem with expanding too far away from your castle and, if you do expand far out you can 'bust the dam' on some indies, finding the enemy with the nice units you produced at your castle.

Another nice little trick (that can fail very easily) is trapping enemy armies, when the enemy attacks you (and gets into your empire) use stealthy, flying and summoned armies to cut off their retreat, use some sort of assasination/spell (dreams of rlyeh, seeking arrow, recruited assasins, summon tupilak, stealth units with black hearts ect) to take out all the commanders (you need to REALLY do this en mass to make sure ever commander is dead) then you can march in with a single unit and rout the entire enemy army (hopefully a very large, expensive one) and have then destroyed because they are cut off.

[Gandalf Parker]

Dam Burst is a tactic I would use on small maps against above average players. It has been a good surprise against players who are so deeply tactical that I had no chance. But they also tended to figure their resources so closely that a big surprise threw them into a fit. It worked much better than me trying to meet them on their ground.

Gandalf Parker
--
If you cant beat 'em, join 'em.
If you cant beat em or join em,
then at least try to surprise them.

[KissBlade]

Haha shovah ... that's actually a very cute trick. Requires A LOT of setup but still, it can have the chance to catch someone offguard and really cripple them =).

[Gandalf Parker]

I used to love using that tornado spell to snatch commanders out of a moving army and bring them to a lab full of charmers.

A) he is down one commander

B) the units that he lead might get left behind when his army moves

C) his units rout easier

D) I get a new commander

E) I get any equipment he had on him

[Shovah32]

Thanks KB, its also not very risky aslong as you dont send in a big ammount of troops and he cant reach any valuable mages/troops. Basically if he has any commanders left at all alot of the troops will be left behind if he moves allowing you to kill them while they are split up, if he dosnt have any then he wont move and you will rout and kill them all and if he has the majority of his troop leading commanders left then either you have killed a hell of alot of mages/back-up commanders(leaving him vunerable to a repeat) or you didnt attack enough. The biggest risk is the fact that it used alot of gems.

Thats a nice idea gandalf, i'll actually consider trying that with some-one (probably man, it has the right paths) and see how it works for me.

[FAJ]

The problem is, the payoff for that tactic (assassinate + cutoff retrest) is very low. Against weak armies it works, but if the target is juicy at all, it is probably led by some beefy commanders, who would laugh in the face of assassination attempts (Especially with bodygaurds).

It has low risk though, as he would have attacked you to get in that position anyways, so you know his commanders and you can probably see if he has troops with "gaurd commander" as well.

Just watch out for any of HIS flying commanders to swoop in and a big boost of PD. The plan could backfire into forcing the enemies hand to create a big fortified province in the center of your lands .

[Shovah32]

Yes basic assasinations are poor (though en-mass they can be ok) but other things arent. Extremely massed seeking arrows, that tornado spell, mind hunts, Strong(void spectres, heliophagi ect) stealthy commanders with black hearts, summon tupilak (kick *** long range assasination), dreams of rlyeh (very kickass long range assasination of doom) and of course, pimped out assasins (a demonbred slayer with boots of strength, robe of shadows, girdle of might and ring of the warrior is nasty, huge strength (above 20 atleast), great attack, 2 strongly poisoned attacks, ethereal AND flying (so he can strike the first blow).

[dirtywick]

An alternate on cutting off a retreat is to take the province or provinces directly behind the enemy with fliers and/or stealth units. That way when the big army routs the survivors will retreat into your or independant territory and die without a fight.