General tips for a new guy

[TheJay13]

So I discovered this game not too long ago and it piqued my interest as this represented an often ignored but incredibly interesting period of history. I have been playing the game for the last few days with mixed results. My main problem is that I am having trouble getting my head around just what each unit type is best and worst at. So far it seems to me like the only good units are pike and shot or tercio units as they cant really be flanked and they are competent in a melee. From what I can tell, skirmish units do almost nothing and cavalry is useless against infantry so there seems to be no real point to their exsistance. There was also one battle where my units were actually finding some success against the enemy but suddenly began to fall apart for no appearant reason that I could find. I also have a total war background so I was a bit surprised when I rear charged a p&s unit that was already engaged and the unit obliterated my cav rather than taking some form of morale hit as I would assume they should. I assume that I am just going about this with the wrong mentality but any help would be appreciated.

Also if someone could explain the proper way to use all of the unit types I would be very greatful

[rbodleyscott]

If the pike and shot unit was a Later Tercio, it is, as you say, immune to flank attacks. It is not immune to rear attacks (but Early Tercios are) but the rear attack has to start from less than 45 degrees from directly behind the rear, and the charge has to contact the rear edge of the unit. (Contacting the rear corners counts as a flank attack).

Ordinary pike and shot units (that aren't Later Tercios, Early Tercios or Keils) can be flanked. To count as a flank charge, the charge has to start from behind the flank, and contact the flank edge or rear corner. Contrary to some "let's play" videos you might see, hitting a front corner does not count as a flank attack.

Cavalry are primarily for fighting enemy cavalry, and then coming in on the flank or rear of the enemy infantry. They are however, also good for charging Disrupted pike and shot. They will usually eventually win against these. If you can disrupt the enemy infantry with musketry then charge them with cavalry, that is a good tactic.

Some people feel that skirmishers are in fact over-powered, but they aren't likely to win one on one against pike and shot. They are better for ganging up on individual cavalry units, capturing the enemy guns and so forth.

[TheJay13]

Thank you for the response. So I should mostly focus on driving away the enemy cav and then attacking from almost directly behind for the best effect or alternatively disrupting a unit with skirmish units and shot and following it up with a charge?

I did just fight a battle where I ganged up a bunch of commanded shot on some cav and absolutely shredded them before they could react. I have also seen something about putting cav next to skirmish units to protect them from charges. Does this work?

I would also like to know how the different cavalry types stack up against eachother.

[rbodleyscott]

I have also seen something about putting cav next to skirmish units to protect them from charges. Does this work?

For commanded shot, yes, not for other skirmishers.

I would also like to know how the different cavalry types stack up against each other.

You should check out the manual, which you can find here:

http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam ... 1441640420

Check out the POA charts in sections 11.2.1 and 11.2.2

As a general rule, cavalry with distance shooting capability usually lack an impact capability and are therefore disadvantaged at impact against the sorts of cavalry which do not have distance shooting capability, but have an impact capability instead e.g. Lancers, Impact Pistol or Impact Mounted.

Of the latter, Impact Pistol beats Lancers at impact, Impact Mounted beat Impact Pistol and Heavy Lancers beat Impact Mounted. (Light lancers are equal to Impact Mounted).

However, all bets are off if the cavalry are charged in the flank, any non-light cavalry will usually win if it hits the enemy cavalry in the flank. (Once again, a flank attack must start behind the flank, and contacting a front corner is not a flank attack).

[TheJay13]

thanks for the responses

I just played the 4th tutorial mission and won but not by much (although my casualties were much lighter) I managed to route some of the curiassers with my boyars by disrupting the cav first. Unfortunatley they overwhelmed me and I accidentally opened up some of my cav to flank charges. I persisted despite my lack of melee cav and to my surprise absolutely dominated with my skirmish units. The infantry and cav couldn't even touch my musketeers in the forest and their p&s formations were shot to death by my hussars and musketeers. Overall I really enjoyed the skirmish fighting style but I still need a lot of work on my cav. Ill try getting a printout of that section of the manual to use as reference. Now that I'm learning how to effectively use units I'm enjoying this game much more than before

[lk2500]

Try playing the historical battles by yourself once or twice and then search the forums for tips on that particular battle. You'll gradually pick up the proper tactics like which troops to pit against which troops. etc.. by seeing how others did it.

[jomni]

My best tip:

Turn On detailed tool tips. It tells you what attacks will work and what will not work. Then you learn the different Points of Advantages and will get used to it in due time.

[TheJay13]

I have turned on the detailed battle reports and this has helped some but I also have been having some difficulty with finding any form of consistency in my battles. It seems that at times, my units will be crack shots gunning down men left and right but then suddenly they cant hit anything. It is really irritating me but I suspect that, once again, I am doing something wrong.

I was also wondering if there was a way to stop the AI from spamming cav and cheap infantry. In nearly every skirmish the Ai simply buys absurd amounts of soldiers and routs my forces with sheer numbers rather that picking quality units and using tactics. It is becoming very frustrating to constantly have to fight this.

[deadtorius]

Light horse are good at running down enemy skirmish units, start in close so when you charge them you will catch the skirmishers in the rear. Setting up on a flank will help keep your shooting casualties down.
Turning or moving your shot units will reduce their shooting effectiveness, they generally do best if they stand still and shoot.

Med foot shot units in the open are prime cavalry targets. They take an extra - to their morale check if they are in the open, I have seen them hit and drop to fragged more often they will disorder. Lancers are really good at this. If the foot is in rough ground or in trees etc they will likely win versus your cavalry, just stay more than 4 tiles away and they should not be able to shoot at you.
Light foot in terrain like rough or woods are also harder to kill. Pike and shot and Kiels are open ground units, they fight melee best in the open. Send them into the woods and you will find your fights last forever and even dragoons or light foot can hold out or even win versus a Pike and shot or Kiel unit.

Reiters, ride up stop adjacent to an enemy and shoot them. Works best against Kiels who cant shoot back. The enemy will charge you and normally charge you and take more hits. Reiters will fall back. next turn move up and repeat. Eventually they will run out of horses but hopefully if you can add in foot shooting as well you can shred the Kiels over time before you yourself are broken. Not always so good versus other horse though, but sometimes they can be. Turkish horse is very similar, ride up shoot let yourself be charged and then fall back. Repeat process again as long as you can and get other horse on the enemy flank and shoot as much as possible into a single enemy.

For flank charge mouse over your target and check to see if it says flank/rear charge, if it does you will drop your enemies morale on contact and have a better chance of dropping him again after melee. No guarantees though.

Just a few thoughts hope they help.

[TheJay13]

thanks for the help but I still find myself getting destroyed. I have noticed that whenever I play as the Spanish, my infantry get anhiliated. Is this a gameplay feature denoting poor troop quality or am I just shit. I am getting really frustrated right now as there are next to no resources or guides for this game to help me and I feel like I am banging my head against a wall. It seems like my soldiers can never manage to kill anyone but my enemies just mow my men down dozens at a time. I am really starting to regret spending money on this game. I just cant seem to figure out what I am doing wrong.

I really want to like this game but I'm struggling a lot

[jomni]

Maybe lower the difficulty level. Are you playing a historical scenario? They can be really tough and severely unbalanced. That's why I skip them.

If skirmish, just keep playing. My win loss record is almost 50:50 vs the AI.

[TheJay13]

Ive been getting better luck in skirmish by massing my cav on one wing to turn the flank and it, so far, has been met with some success (so long as my infantry is performing well). I am playing on the standard difficulty it starts you out at. I tried the historical campaigns but quickly switched to the skirmish as they were the usual sort of unbalanced "challenge" scenarios strategy games seem fond of using. I guess I just assumed that the standard difficulty was one that was set easier to make the game more palatable for newcomers and that I was intended to soon be smashing the AI and upping the difficulty.

[awesum4]

I am wondering about your earlier comment that your guys can't seem to kill but are getting mown down by the enemy. Are you talking about getting outshot or beaten in hand-to-hand combat. Infantry are very different to those of earlier and later periods as most units have a mix of pike who fight in close combat and shot of various types who do the shooting. If you look at the unit description it will tell you the proprtions of the different types in the unit. If it has lots of pikes it designed to rush up and charge, lots of shot it prefers to hang back and shoot. So some armies, especially the Swiss are designed to rush in as quickly as possible, Later armies kill with massive firepower. Its getting the various troops to work in the best way that makes battles so interesting, but also frustrating at times. Possibly a way to help would be to have someone set up a multiplayer game and then explain whats happening each move. I'm happy to do that if you want to try it

[rbodleyscott]

I guess I just assumed that the standard difficulty was one that was set easier to make the game more palatable for newcomers and that I was intended to soon be smashing the AI and upping the difficulty.

It is impossible to get the default difficulty level right for everyone, as people come to the game with different levels of experience with similar games, and indeed the tabletop version of the game. If we make the default difficulty level too easy, experienced players may be put off the game, thinking it is too easy. That is why the game offers you the option to lower the difficulty level when you lose a battle and raise the difficulty level when you win one. There is no shame in lowering the difficulty level until you have more experience.

[keyth]

After getting smashed in the historical scenarios a few times, I lowered the difficulty to whatever the second one is called and played a lot of skirmishes. This (with the detailed combat results switched on) gave me the breathing space to really understand the basic interactions between units, effects of terrain, etc, allowing me to go from a poor to very indifferent player I then put the difficulty back up and didn't really notice things being very much harder. Play lots of people too - you'll probably lose a lot at first (I did, still do!) but you will also learn more than just fighting the AI.

Good luck!

[TheJay13]

I am wondering about your earlier comment that your guys can't seem to kill but are getting mown down by the enemy. Are you talking about getting outshot or beaten in hand-to-hand combat. Infantry are very different to those of earlier and later periods as most units have a mix of pike who fight in close combat and shot of various types who do the shooting. If you look at the unit description it will tell you the proprtions of the different types in the unit. If it has lots of pikes it designed to rush up and charge, lots of shot it prefers to hang back and shoot. So some armies, especially the Swiss are designed to rush in as quickly as possible, Later armies kill with massive firepower. Its getting the various troops to work in the best way that makes battles so interesting, but also frustrating at times. Possibly a way to help would be to have someone set up a multiplayer game and then explain whats happening each move. I'm happy to do that if you want to try it

Someone actually pointed out to me that one of the reasons my infantry was doing poorly may have been because I was using a post 16th century Spanish army and they apparently have poor quality infantry.

I tried looking at unit compositions more and it seems to be working so far so thank you. I was also wondering if it is a viable strategy to pin a unit and then use light cavalry with decent melee to swing around and flank. I did this against some curiassers once where I pinned them with my horse and then used some hussars to quickly pull off a rear charge which immediately disrupted the curiassers.

I also found that the whole chasing a routing unit mechanic can be used to great effect if you put a strong unit on a flank and get the enemy to rout, there's a good chance that my unit will chase the routing unit straight into the flank of another enemy unit. I actually got two units to rout in one turn once like this and disrupted another which was fun.

I would most definitely be interested in the multiplayer teaching session I would just need to find a time that works.

Oh and one more thing, I noticed that this game and Field of Glory are basically the same so if I look in the FoG Rennissance forum for tactics and army composition will it still be applicable or do they have enough differences that they wont work out?

[rbodleyscott]

Someone actually pointed out to me that one of the reasons my infantry was doing poorly may have been because I was using a post 16th century Spanish army and they apparently have poor quality infantry.

They are not poor quality, in fact some of them are Elite, but they are in inefficient formations.

[TheJay13]

They are not poor quality, in fact some of them are Elite, but they are in inefficient formations.

Out of curiosity what makes the formation less efficient? Is it having too many pikes?

[awesum4]

I've sent you a private message....you should have 1 new message highlighted up above, just click on it and reply and we can play a game

[rbodleyscott]

They are not poor quality, in fact some of them are Elite, but they are in inefficient formations.

Out of curiosity what makes the formation less efficient? Is it having too many pikes?

To some extent, but mainly just being in a deep formation. The extra ranks give the unit extra resilience, and stop it having to worry about its flanks, but can't do anything to the enemy because they are deeper than the number of ranks required to reload when firing in rotation. But the unit costs almost as much as 2 normal pike and shot units, so the enemy will have more firepower.

Maurice of Nassau's reform of the Dutch army made formations shallower and hence more efficient, albeit somewhat less resilient.