Principles of Defensive Play

[nyczar]

I want to leave aside the debate on "camping" in a formidable defensive position on the back of the map that offers little or no chance of a successful assault and the defending player is content to do nothing, leading to a draw in competitive league play, or a foolhardy assault and loss by the attacking player.

I want to focus this topic on those scenarios where a player decides to take up a defensive posture but where there are avenues for the battle to be brought to a hard fought conclusion; the chosen defensive position has weakness. In these cases a player who choses a defensive posture likely must take action or (likely) slowly be crushed. My wonder is on the principles that should guide the decisions to break from defense to assault. Here are my thought starters to get this going. I am hoping that other will contribute theirs.

• Be prepared to move to support your skirmishers should you be in danger of losing the skirmish fight in the early game. If the defensive position faces a lot of skirmishers, it will be picked apart

• Make one side of your defensive posture weaker than the other and hope that the other player is in a balance line. If so the attacking player will likely redeploy to attack the weaker side. If this happens, openings in their lines MAY develop allowing the defender to move aggressively, ZOCing a portion of attackers troops and/or opening opportunities for mismatches or "gang ups". This of course has "hopes" and "mays" so if the attacker is set up for an oblique attack or if they move VERY slowly (or they in some way don't do as you plan), this approach will need some reserves to meet the threats you see

• Given the defensive set up, where would you attack it? Does terrain allow you to spring an ambush along the attack route should your opponent do as you would? If so, set the trap and be patient. The best ambushes are the ones that are sprung after the opponent has moved and will be hampered in his response

Others, please share.

[SimonLancaster]

It seems to me that in this game with the way things are set up, and the kind of armies that are on the battlefield, there is often little need for defensive play. What I mean is that often armies are quite balanced and similar on both sides with the same kind of units or units with potentially equal potency. Pikes v pikes, Romans v pikes, Romans v Carthaginians, and so on.

I think you really begin to see more defensive play when the battles become more asynchronous. Try taking the Thracians out for a whirl. Use a hoplite army in Classical. Try out the Persians.

You make some good points. You are often waiting for the opponent to make a mistake or to push him into making a mistake when playing defensively. Tempt the enemy to attack you on the hill. Grab any higher elevation ground. I also think gambling comes into it. You don’t mention gambling but when I think back to close games that I won I often took some risks that had a large impact on the game. Taking the chance to engage a superior quality unit in order to lock it down and then flank with something else.

Probably the best kind of defense is when you can offer some kind of counterattack or at least the possibility of counterattacking in order to keep your opponent off balance.

[vakarr]

I find there usually isn't enough space for the entire army to act defensively. I recently put half my army on a hill in a nice formation - light bows on the steep slopes with massed bows or other infantry on the rough ground above. This just meant that my opponent was able to concentrate on the other half of my army, and he never attacked me on the hill. Eventually I had to take all my troops off the hill and won the game on the last possible turn. I think that it makes more sense to think defensively in one part of the battlefield and offensively in the other, so you can concentrate for an attack. FOG2 rewards aggressive play, as I was recently reminded, when I charged some cavalry uphill at an equal enemy unit, knowing the combat would be at a disadvantage. Result? The enemy general was killed and a huge number of enemy units failed their reaction tests. The course of the entire game turned in my favour.

[CyberHetman]

I see 2 problems with defensive posture that can be exploited:
1. usually defensive troops are immobile and hard to maneuver(not much space) - you can properly match your troops to your opponent, you can predict defender's moves very well, all initiative is on attacker's side. You can concentrate most of your skirmishers in one place and shoot out the defender (even though he is on a hill).
2. such defense usually leads to encirclement and since the defensive lines are not round (due to the shape of terrain) you can find a place (corners) where you can make a flank attack.