Basic Battle Tactics?

[Akela]

I've searched through the forums, looked in the Strategy Index thread, been to the Strategy Wiki and I can't find a good article or thread on basic battle tactics. Is it really a mythical beast, or am I just a lousy "site searcher"? (hahaha)

As a new player, playing solely against the AI (I'm currently playing my 2nd and 4th games) I am still mystified by art of troop allocation, squad positioning, orders, buffing, blessing, etc.

Of course, each battle is going to have special strategies and counter-strategies depending on what you expect to be facing, but there must be some kind of common or base strategies that make these the exceptions that they are.

So let me start with something simple, troop allocation.

Clearly units get separated into squads based on purpose. So you probably have your ranged units separate from your armored units and furthermore with cav. But do you have a few large squads, or many small ones? Do you try to gather lots of troops under few commanders, or few troops under many commanders?

Squad Placement?

Front of the field? Back of the field? Everyone in one clump in the center? I have no idea. What I started out doing was to put my heaviest infrantry (Carnute Nobles) all the way forward in the center, plop a bunch of ranged units directly behind them, and split the horse on the far left and right flanks with orders to attack the rear. This resulted in the infrantry engaging the enemy, with the horses joining in on the brawl as soon as they got there. Despite how much room there is to get around an enemy squad they will never pass one by to actually attack the rear units, they pretty much just charge diagonally to the middle and engage.

For the most part I'm having trouble seeing the point of cavalry at all, except for the fact that their defence is higher which seems to make them actually better at being front-line troops than anything else. What I've been doing lately is massing a bunch of cavalry in the center to block an advance, then putting my ranged units behind that. Seems to work better.

What do you guys think?