Battle Tactics
Topics
--- Reconnaissance - http://forums.2kgames.com/showthread...s-Reconnaisnce
--- Mini Game - http://forums.2kgames.com/showthread...72#post1484072
--- Fodder troops
--- Taking the field for the first shot
--- Leaving the field
--- Dancing
--- Shielding
--- Flanking
--- Sniping
--- Trapping
--- Battle Wonder (pending)
--- Event Wonder (pending)
--- Collateral damage (pending)
Many of these tactics rely on the theory of shot predictability to work. At least one senior member with strong powers of observation disagrees with the theory of shot predictability. Never-the-less, I stand by these tactics and leverage them to good effect.
Fodder Troops
Fodder troops are the single most powerful weapon in a warrior’s bag of tricks. Fodder troops are stacks of one unit placed to take hits when the enemy gets a shot. Late in the game when shots can be eating hundreds of hammers of damage from fortified troops, the loss of a single 50 hammer troop is a boon. Although absorbing hits cheaply is the primary function of a fodder troop, they have a secondary function of preventing the enemy from flanking you. It only takes one snow pony to prevent that stack of 500 knights from getting an additional 2500 power from flanking.
Never, ever… ever… go to war without a stash of fodder troops or at least the ability to replace a fodder troop.
The classic definition of a fodder troop is a 50 hammer troop for the opposite combat. So a single spearman is fodder when attacking and a single Man-at-arms is fodder when defending. 75 hammer troops are viable fodder in most cases. More expensive troops even qualify for the fodder role if their individual powers can make a significant contribution. (Think single catapult attacking in fog).
All fodder troops will die if they are targeted. This means they are always heroic. It also means you have to keep an eye on them, because they will need to be replaced fairly often, especially when they are protecting a flank.
You field a fodder troop by ctrl-clicking your stack of fodder troops. Replenish a killed fodder troop immediately; do not wait for the next round.
Taking the field
The first step is to field fodder troops in as many slots as possible to help defray the risk of taking a hit on one of the big stack. The second step is to fortify the stacks. The next question depends on the size of the battle.
Let the opponent take the first shot if you are likely to lose just one unit. You can then storm the field in heroic and up the damage. It is a different story if the first shot carries significant damage. It is all the more desirable to try for the first shot if the damage is resulting from heroic troops. Under no circumstances should any of your troops take the field in heroic, but you can take the field in a normal stance if that yields the potential to hit a heroic stack as a result.
No section on taking the field is complete without addressing Call-to-Arms and/or Secret weapon. All civilizations are likely to be waiting to cast that event wonder if it has been around for a while. If one exists and it can damage your troops (melee/ranged) you have only two choices. Build the wonder yourself, or limit the Ranged and Melee troops you field until the event wonder no longer exists.
Leaving the field
I realize, nobody attending battle school wants to learn how to retreat, but retreating is a very important skill that is integral to many war strategies. Hold at All Cost is only a winning strategy for the final battle for the final era of the game.
The first thing to understand about retreating is that it is not instantaneous. Stacks larger than 20 units will likely need more than one round of combat to escape. The fact that their power does not count while they are retreating means that you will probably be taking hits every round that you retreat. The goal of your retreat is to minimize losses.
The best timing is to begin the retreat immediately after having taken a predictable shot. This means you have 160 seconds to retreat before ceding a shot that you did not have to. If you are not able to predict when your next shot is coming, you are correct; it’s time to retreat… immediately.
The first task is to fortify all of your troops. I am not sure this is necessary, but it is important that you don’t forget about a stack on heroic, so I do it out of habit at this point. Then start to retreat your largest stacks. Make sure that you have one unit that is not retreating in each combat type, because retreating troops do not protect you against flanking. Do not retreat fodder until the very end.
Stop the retreat and fortify all your retreating stacks If you are retreating when the next round is about to begin. Recommence your retreat once the round clock recycles.
Finally, congratulate your opponent for falling into your trap… unless you really are setting a trap.
Dancing
This is a basic technique that marks the transition out of newbie status. This is the core tactic of the Attrition stage. The rule is simply stated.
--- Fortify your stacks (not fodder) after your side has taken the shot
--- Switch your troops to heroic when the other side has taken the shot.
This is a core rule and tactic that should be your default behavior in every battle. You should override the default behavior with more advanced tactics as appropriate.
Dancing ceases to apply when you can no longer gain a power advantage by adopting heroic stances. Blind adherence to the dance will leave you susceptible to traps. If you are losing more troops than the enemy with each round of the dance it is time to adopt a different tactic. Retreat comes to mind.
Shielding
Shielding is a risky version of Dancing. You continue to dance with your larger stacks, but you leave your smaller stacks on heroic. It is risky, because your smaller stacks will disappear if they get hit. It is only effective if the fortified stacks have significantly more units that all of the units in the small stacks. For example, you can hide a stack of 10 legions behind 50 Men at Arms, but you cannot hide 6 stacks of 10 legions behind one stack of 50 Men At Arms. The odds are small that any one stack of legions will be hit, but the odds a likely that a stack of legions will be hit, none-the-less.
Flanking
Flanking can be an ambiguous term. The Flanking bonus only occurs when there are no troops opposing you in the corresponding troop type (Melee, Ranged, Naval, and Mobile). When a green box appears around your units, they are officially flanking the enemy and receiving the flanking bonus. All flanking troops should be set to heroic stance, unless you fear a trap.
Flanking is also used to mean the process that occurs prior to the green box and is extremely effective against absentee opponents or untrained opponents who fail to supply fodder. It is even occasionally effective against opponents who do supply fodder.
The idea is to focus your attack on a single combat type until that combat type is completely eliminated, and then leave your flanking troops on heroic to transition to the ‘Push the Bar’ stage in the battle life cycle. You can leave your troops on heroic as soon as the numbers of opposing troops in that combat slot are negligible relative to the total number of troops opposing you. It is only worth going heroic when any number of troops opposes you if doing so creates uncertainty in the next shot.
It is important to be aware that flanking can work against you if you are in the ‘Attrition’ stage of the battle life cycle and your flanking units are taking all of the shots against fodder units. You either need to utilize the ‘Sniping’ or the ‘Retreat’ tactic when this occurs.
Sniping
Sniping is similar to flanking because it is attempting to isolate a target class to take damage. While flanking relies on natural game mechanics to effect the behavior. Sniping manipulates the attacking power balance to change where the shot is likely to come from.
Sniping reduces your total power to create this behavior, so you can only employ sniping when you have excess strength to concede. Never snipe if you can no longer predict who takes the next shot.
Basic sniping utilizes stance changes to shift the power balances when it is your turn. For example, if your flanking units are only eating fodder, do not set them to heroic. Maybe even fortify them. This will increase the probability that something else will get hit. A more advanced version of sniping utilizes your fodder troops. It involves loading your fodder reserves when it is your turn to take a shot, and then retreating them before your opponent takes a shot. This form of sniping is high maintenance and high risk (one missed retreat can cost you your reserve), but sometimes it can tip the scales.
Avoiding fodder is the primary motivation for sniping, but hitting unprotected heroic units is another frequent reason to apply the tactic.
Self sniping is a tactic where you load a large stack of expensive units for your shot and then retreat a portion of them so that a cheaper stack gets hit when your opponent shoots. Self sniping is useful when defending on foreign soil. You can use it to ensure both primaries in a battle are bled white. A teammate and I used it during a world war involving 4 civilizations and lasting 10 hours by ‘helping’ the weaker civilizations out against a superior force. Our hammer losses tallied in the thousands, the global losses tallied in the hundreds of thousands. (That was a good day).
Trapping
Simply stated, a trap is any mechanism that enables you to take a shot when the opponent switched stance to heroic expecting to take the shot themselves. Traps can range from relatively safe operations to high risk last ditch efforts.
The relatively safe traps involve dropping a large stack of heroic troops into a slot that is unlikely to get hit even if you do not take a shot. The riskiest traps involve leaving all troops on heroic with just a slight chance of getting the shot. If you are contemplating a high risk trap, retreat is probably a better option.
A battle school graduate rarely utilizes traps. Either the graduate is using all their troops to gain an advantage, or they are retreating. The primary reason for studying traps is to watch out for them. That said there are occasions when trap opportunities will present themselves as other players log in.
An effective trap requires a massive influx of power to offset the influx of power the opponent is about to register. The most reliable is the counter trap (they were going to try and trap you) as you were already were switching.
An active trap involves converting hammers to troops and then fielding the troops so that you take the shot. A passive trap occurs when the battle transitions from one battle stage to another. For example, you have completed flanking the enemy so your flanking troops will now stay heroic. The heroic bonus transitions the battle from the Attrition Stage to the Pushing the Bar stage, as you now have a slight power advantage even when the opponent is all heroic. You will eventually take a second consecutive shot eating a large number of heroic troops. Once the passive trap succeeds, the battle often progress much more quickly as the shift in power resulting from a hit to a heroic stack is often sufficient to provide multiple consecutive shots.
Passive traps are easily spotted although, if you spot one, it means you took too long to retreat. Active traps require vigilance. If civbucks are going down but no troops are appearing, as trap is coming. If market prices suddenly surge up across the board, a trap is coming. You can gauge the nature of the trap by scoping out the reserves to see exactly what types of troops are massing for a surprise.
The last type of trap is the sleeper trap. This trap occurs when you retreat your troops and then retake the field later. There is the bush league reason for doing this, and an advanced reason for doing this. The bush league motivation is the hope that the other side will assume you have quit and log off. I never retreat for this reason. If I retreat, I expect to be done with the battle unless circumstances change. I often promise folks that I won’t refield even if they log off. I never renege on that promise. But I don’t promise if there is a chance that I may want to retake the field.
The advanced motivation has to do with the mini-game. You can retreat your troops, goose up your mini game score, and then retake the field with an army that made a sudden jump in power as opposed to the incremental increases that would have occurred had you not retreated. You are draining your enemy’s mini game bonus while you are building yours up. The impact can be devastating to an unskilled foe. It is ultimately ineffectual against a skilled one.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by ShuShu62
