Lapallanch Family/Guide + Thoughts + Etc on the Military Aspect of the Game

Basics for Marshal

Know your army

• Simply checking on everyone should teach you a lot. Send each member a letter or two to get to know them. Order your nobles to move to a certain location to see how active they are. You need to know who you can count on.

• Check to make sure everyone has what they need to have. Any campaign requires people to stay on the field for a certain period of time. Make sure everyone is carrying enough gold to pay their men for the duration of the campaign. You don't want your troopleaders(TL for short) to lose their men even before they fight their enemies. - wasted gold/time/opportunities

• Make sure to have your active nobles well equipped for anything. They should be the ones most well funded.

• Make sure to make everyone carry 1 scout per 15 men, 1 healer per 15 men (max of 6~8), and 1 banner per 20 men. If you need to besiege a fort, then make sure to order your men to carry 1 siege engine per every 20 men (only for infantry, mixed infantry, and melee special force units)

• Know your army composition. See what unit type is dominant in your army. You need to set your settings around whichever unit type that has the most CS and men.

Learn Unit Settings and Unit behaviours

• Read through other guides offered by Wiki(I've hand picked some at the bottom of the page so do check them out) to learn more about unit behaviours of each unit type. Melee special force units act like infantry while ranged special force units act like archers. Once you learn how they work, you can either use custom settings to create your own unit settings or you can just use marshal settings offered by the game. Marshal settings offered by the game are generally good so if you are not familiar with all the settings, just remembering a few basic settings can help you organize your army better.

• • Tip: CS isn't everything. Sometimes having more men over CS is better. You need someone to soak up as much damage as possible so your shock troops can survive the initial clash.

Basics for General

Defensive

• Know how much resource your realm has. Gold/Combat Strength/Recruitment Centers/Food

- Gold: This is what sustains your army. Along with recruits, it is the life blood of your military machine. Knowing how much gold is available will help you plan your campaigns better as it will give you a good idea on how much loss your army can take.

• Know what regions you can and you can't hold. Don't just chase after your enemies whenever they show up to loot your border regions.

- Don't get greedy. You can't defend everything. People will panic once enemies starting looting your regions but it is your job to ensure them that losing a few border regions means nothing unless you are in a tiny realm.

• Know the geography of your realm. If your realm has choke points, use them - put militia units to defend the region easily.

- This is related to the previous point. Choke points will make your job 10 times easier and make your enemies job 10 times harder. War is about who endures the longest. Be patient and try to force your enemies to attack your well defended choke point.

• If you can hit your enemies harder than they can, you should go offensive.

- If your enemies are sending multiple weak raiding forces, don't try to chase them down. Go straight for their neck. Make them come after you and when you catch them off position, crush them.

• Try to think ahead of your enemies. Where do they want to strike/what is their goal for their current campaign.

- Knowing what your enemy is planning to do will always give you an edge over your enemy. Try to think in your enemy's position.

• Prioritize vital regions. Try to keep them defended. If you can't then try to either make your enemies pay or focus on defending what you can.

- This is related to some of previous points as well. Regions you want to defend should have a purpose. What does the region offer? A good recruitment center? an important food producing region? or a choke point?

• It is always to easier to defend. However, the longer you fight on your land, more time it will take for your regions to recover. Try to slowly take the fight to your enemy.
• Don't try to win big battles. First try winning small battles to see how your armies perform. Also, winning small battles will help you strengthen your armies more easily in the coming refit. It will easier to build up from 20k CS to 25k CS than from 10k CS to 25k CS.
• Be careful on using the dig in option. Depending on your enemy's army composition, you may end up with a disastrous outcome. Know what kind of army you are facing. Against infantry-heavy armies, it is generally good to dig in but against archer heavy armies, it is a horrible idea.
• Use the 'sentries' setting when you are fighting within your territory. It may slow your army down but it will boost your army's capability by a noticeable margin(It only works within your own regions meaning you can't use this in other realm's regions even if you are allied or federated to that realm).

Offensive

• Similar to the above. Know your resource, capability, etc...
• Know where you need to attack and your goal should have a purpose.
  • 1) Important RCs in the region
  • 2) Highly productive (gold or foodwise)
  • 3) Geographically important
  • 4) Good for boosting morale - region symbolizes something
• Try to force your enemies to attack where you are. Attacking is almost always more disadvantageous than defending.
• Use takeover to your advantage. If you've arrived in a fortified enemy region first, then start a take over to deny your enemy of the fortification.
• When you are attacking a fortified region, MAKE SURE to bring enough siege engines. If you don't have enough, don't bother attacking. You will only get slaughtered unless you outnumber your enemy's infantry 3 to 1.
• As you tread through your enemy's territory, try to write down travel hours between the regions. You maybe able to catch your enemy by surprise if you can find yourself a nice short cut.
• Remember to scout constantly. You are in an unknown territory meaning it is good to know where your enemy is planning to strike you from.
• Know your enemy. Find out what they lack the most. Food? Gold? Recruits? Once you find their weakness, exploit it.
• Try to make it as fun as possible. Remember, winning is good but you want your nobles to focus on the war and the only way to keep them excited is making things interesting. Take risks if you can as long as it doesn't lose you the war.
• Don't try to destroy RCs. They are quite hard to destroy. Instead, either take over the region the RC is located and appoint a lord to shut it down. Or you can simply loot the region to the ground.
• With newly buffed peasants, be very careful with looting. If you spawn too many peasants, your enemy may actually attack with them to defeat your army. Militia units are very good at soaking up a lot of damage, especially cavalry charges, so make sure to try and wither them out before your cavalry arrives.

Fortification (for both General and Marshal)

• You need SIEGE ENGINES to attack a fortified region. You can still attack it without any siege engines but be prepared to suffer a high casualty rate.
• Defenders won't leave the fortification until all of attacker's infantry units are defeated. There are a few rare exceptions but don't count on them as they are very difficult to execute.
• It is recommended to take 10 siege engines per level of fortification you want to siege. It is better to grab as many siege engines you possible can to minimize your loss however. You will want to take at least 50 siege engines again a level 5 fortification so if you want to besiege a city or a stronghold, do plan ahead and slowly increase your siege engine count.
• When defending, do make sure to put as many infantry as possible on the fortification to stop your enemies from breaching the walls. The longer you keep them off the walls, the more damage they take.

Opinions on Unit Types

Infantry

• Infantry units are most reliable as they are not affected by any weather (archer) nor are they affected by more complicated unit behaviours (Mixed infantry). Also they are relatively cheap compare to other unit types.
• The simplest and easiest way to form an army would be just massing infantry units. They are reliable and you won't have to worry much about coming up with a good formation when you are leading the army.
• When you are recruiting an infantry unit, make sure to go for more armor. Infantry hits harder than mixed infantry but they do not hit harder than archers on a good day or any other unit types. The main purpose of having a lot of infantry is to swarm your enemies until they break as infantry units can soak up a lot of damage before they scatter and retreat.
• When setting the casualty rate for infantry, try to maximize their casualty rate so they stay on the field longer. (Basic maximum casualty is 75%)
• Use either box or line for infantry.

Archer

• Archer units are least reliable due to this unit type being heavily influenced by the random weather pattern of the game. There is no way of predicting what weather is going to be like on the battlefield and depending on what weather you encounter, your archers will either be deadliest or most worthless unit on the field. With no wind to reduce your hits, your archers will decimate even heavily armored infantry units.
• Archers are the most fragile of all unit types. They panic more easily than any other types when they enter a melee combat so it is VERY IMPORTANT to keep them away from your enemy's infantry line as long as possible.
• Due to their fragile nature, most of the time these units won't lose much, resulting in their high survivability. This means archers will usually end us as most well trained, most cohesive, and most consistent damaging units on the field - unless you are fighting in a horrible weather condition in which case they will be as good as peasants.
• Set your casualty rate to minimum so your units ditch the field fastest as you do not want to risk losing all of your well trained archers in one failed battle. If you think the battle is going to be close and you want to absolutely win the coming battle, then set it to maximum.
• Despite some people's beliefs, skirmish settings should never be archer's standard setting. If your enemies ever reach your archers, they will slaughter your archers even before they get a chance to retreat. However, when besieging a city, use skirmish and put them in the front line to soak up enemy's archer fires.
• Skirmish: Some people think archers will just get slaughtered once infantry units reach the archer line. But you need to remember archers are usually very well trained due to them being staying at the back in most battles. They can actually hold their own quite well as long as you've weakened them enough. Skirmish does nothing on the field except dodging some ranged attacks which your infantry units will take care of. The option should only be used for offensive siege battles so archers take hits for infantry units.

Cavalry

• Cavalry units are one of the most expensive unit types, second only to special force units. They are also one of the hardest hitting units. With enough cavalry units, you can even tear through strong infantry walls.
• Cavalry units are also the most worthless unit type when it comes down a siege battle. They are ABSOLUTELY USELESS so don't even bother bringing them to a siege battle unless you want them to soak up damage.
• As for the defenders, you still want them around since as soon as the attackers breach your walls, your cavalries will start to charge toward them to push them out of the walls.
• The cavalier class is the best class for using these as it can recruit the most.
• The most important characteristic of Cavalry is their ability to charge. Cavalry units will move 2 columns per turn until they hit their target, doing massive damage. To maximize the charge damage, it is important to use the 'wedge' setting.
• After the initial charge, cavalry units will work like a very expensive infantry until they have at least one column between them and their next target. Once they have the space required to charge, they will charge their next target.
• In order to counter the charge attack, you will need to either isolate the cavalry units(which will be very difficult due to the fact most realms putting their cavalry units in the back or in the rear) or have meatshields to soak up the damage instead. You need to first predict where these cavalry units will be charging from and place your meatshields accordingly. This requires very delicate positioning troops which is hard for even the best marshals. The simple way would be to have your own cavalry units to deal as much damage as your enemies to negate their damage.

Mixed Infantry

• Jack of all trades, master of none. They are not as good as infantry in melee battles but can't shoot as far as archers. But at the same time, they don't die as easily and can be used in any formation.
• Generally, people just put them beside infantry units. I personally, however, prefer putting them before archers but after infantry as they can buy more room for archers while able to still hit. Or put them by the archers so your archer line doesn't collapse too quickly.
• They are probably one of the best units against rogues along with archers and ranged special forces
• Max range for Mixed Infantry units is 3. Meaning they should probably be placed with your infantry line.
• Along with archers, they are probably the best monster killing units. They seem to grow stronger as you have more of them. If you have considerable number of these units, you can probably replace your infantry with them.

Special Force

• Special Force (SF for short) units are the most expensive unit type. In terms of quality, there is no equal to these guys. They hit hard, last longer, and have a random special ability (nobody knows what they are. There are some guesses like built in siege engines, one additional ranged - giving them up to 5 range). Although they are powerful, not many people can command enough of these guys. You will see people with 100 or more infantry, archer, or mixed infantry more easily than see someone with over 70 SF units. You will be lucky to see even two sizable SF units in your army. Their weakness also is their advantage. Since they can reach higher CS easily with less men, they tend to be smaller yet powerful. This means they suffer less from overcrowding effect which most melee types suffer greatly. This means they can hit harder than anyone on the field exception of cavalry. Also, they come in two types, melee and ranged. Ranged SF units act like archers but they hit much harder than archers. This makes them decent even on bad weather days - very deadly on good weather days. Usually, in a long battle, these guys will out damage even cavalries.
• They are also ridiculously expensive. If you are not a duke or a rich region lord, you shouldn't even be bothering yourself with these guys. Also, if your honour isn't high enough, you won't be commanding a big enough unit to make any difference.
• If positioned well, they hit quite hard. Try to maintain as many of them as possible since they are quite expensive.
• You don't want to let new nobles commanding these. They can hardly recruit 10 and won't be making any difference. The best way to deal with new people who want to command these is by not funding them.
• Unlike archers, ranged Special Force units are good in melee as well. Of course ranged SF units are not as good compare to melee SF units in melee combat but they can hold their ground pretty well. There seems to be MI type SF unit as well so be aware if your enemy's SF seems to hit too hard in melee as well.
• The cavalier class is the best class for using these as it can recruit the most.

What not to do

• 1) BM is a turn based strategy game which limits all characters' movement to one region per turn meaning it is impossible to catch up to your enemies. Here are some reasons why you shouldn't chase your enemies.
  • a) I repeat: You can only move one region per turn. Meaning if your enemy is running away from you as well, you will NEVER catch them.
  • b) If you start swapping locations with your enemies, you are doing something seriously wrong.
  • c) The attacker is always in disadvantage in this game. It is easier to have people sit in one region than to make them move. Also, the defender has some good options to boost themselves - dig in/sentinel.

• 2) Not bringing siege engines to a siege battle. Doesn't matter if you have 17k CS and defenders only have 12k CS. The fortification of the region will break your men.
  • a) If you don't have siege engines you better have brought at least x2 of your enemy's CS with x3 of your enemy's infantry.
  • b) Besieging any fort is a major investment unless you are attacking an empty region. If you want to deny your enemy from using the fort then start a take over.
  • c) If you are cavalry or archer heavy, don't even bother attacking a well defended fort region.

• 3) Sending orders out too late.
  • a) Some people are not as active as you hope them to be. Your job is to fit your plan around the activity issue not to force it on people.
  • b) Suggest people to act according to scenarios so you don't have to send out orders every time. It is good to remind people which scenario to follow.

• 4) Abandoning choke points. Abandoning these will only make your war harder. There are handful of strategically important regions in this game and you really need to learn to use them.

• 5) Using the same settings for every battle. Different situations call for different settings. If you only use one setting, you will quickly find yourself without an army to lead.

• 6) Do not blame others for your own mistakes. Try to explain to them and discuss to not repeat the same mistake twice.

• 7) Changing orders too often. CONSISTENCY IS THE KEY!
  • a) Make your mind up before sending an order out. Don't change it four times a day. People can't adapt to your plans as quickly and as often as you might think.
  • b) People don't check as often. By the time they check again, it might be too late.

• 8) When you have too many units in one region (this won't happen for most players. You will need a lot of people in one region like something close to 40-50k CS worth of troops), don't order people to attack it over a day. Even a two turn move will reduce your CS by quite a lot since your road will be overcrowded. You want to have 20k CS each in two regions. That way you won't crowd the road as much.

• 9) Encourage people instead of pointing fingers at people.
  • a) Anyone can make a mistake or two. Complement people for doing well but do not point fingers for people's mistakes.
  • b) People will actually perform better if you keep on encouraging them to do better.

Other Guides and helpful pages

Note: Some of them are somewhat outdated but not by much. The general ideas are pretty much the same.

• http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Dwilight_University/Military_Studies
• http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Aristoi_Atamarism/Academy/Military_Studies (Somewhat outdated but VERY good. Should definitely READ!)
• http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Formation (Must READ!)
• http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Unit_Orders

Other factors that may change the outcome of a battle

1) Overcrowding - Too many melee unit in one square prevents some of your other melee units from engaging enemies (unconfirmed: when there are over 1700 men in one square, cavalries cannot charge into that square)

2) Overkill - Happens when a big unit hits a small unit. % hit loss is determined by the difference of unit size between two units.

Contributors

• Penchant - Penchant Family
• Ta|i - Bluelake Family
• Myself mwuahaha ;)

<note> Still under construction. If you want me to add something here, do mention under the discussion or on the page directly - that will get my attention faster!.

I will go over some battle reports. Also will try to explain custom unit settings vs marshal settings.

Battle Report Analysis

• Note: For more details, you may want to actually ask Anaris or Tom since as a player, my understanding is limited to my experience. I will mainly be using reports I myself have stored for my personal storage purpose.

First

Let's start with smaller battles. The first battle we will look is Battle of Bruck. It was a battle between Westmoor and Sirion in a rural region. 'Rural Battles(RBs for short)' or 'Open Field Battles(OFBs for short)' are battles where cavalries thrive. Most of your battles will be RBs or OFBs. As you can see from most maps in the game, rural is the most numerous region type in the game. This region type lacks fortifications meaning unit compositions of armies can vary unlike siege battles where infantry units are considered the best while other types are considered less effective or useless. Enough talk, let's get into the real thing.

• note: It is harder to calculate exact values for this battle since this battle had a peasant unit which is nothing more than a meat-shield.

The first thing I'd do is to calculate hits for each round. Here is the suffered hit/casualty progression for the battle. This will give us a brief idea on how much damage each army suffered throughout the rounds.

Westmoor:

Hits suffered: [1] 1824(Ranged) - [2] 9921(Ranged:1338/Close Combat:8583) - [3] 9742(752/8990) - [4] 5314(0/5314) - [5] 4747(881/3866) - [6] 3960(1167/2793)

Casualties: [1] 49 - [2] 274 - [3] 198 - [4] 143 - [5] 149 - [6] 266

Hits taken per man(hits suffered / casualties): [1] 37.22 - [2] 36.2 - [3] 49.2 - [4] 37.1 - [5] 31.86 - [6] 14.89

Sirion

Hits suffered: [1] 1818(Ranged) - [2] 6284(Ranged:1434/Close Combat:4850) - [3] 5109(0/5109) - [4] 3380(0/3380) - [5] 1697(0/1697) - [6] 145(0/145)

Casualties: [1] 40 - [2] 153 - [3] 125 - [4] 86 - [5] 42 - [6] 3

Hits taken per man(hits suffered / casualties): [1] 45.45 - [2] 41.07 - [3] 40.87 - [4] 39.30 - [5] 40.40 - [6] 48.33

Hits taken per man = This will tell you how much damage each of your men took before going down. This gives you an idea how long your men lasted on the field.

Let's compare the two realms.

Round [1], they fired arrows at each other doing about the same damage.

Round [2], both realms collided with each other. Both realms took about the same ranged damage but Westmoor took twice as much damage from Sirion's close combat units. This was mainly due to some of Sirion's cavalry units landing their charge attacks on Westmoor's infantry units.

Round [3], Sirion's biggest cavalry unit lands its charge attack on Westmoor's only cavalry unit which couldn't even engage due to having too many men in front of it. The attack wiped the unit out completely before it could land its charge. Also, due to all of Westmoorian archers being engaged in a close combat, they couldn't shoot arrows. Archers were pretty much used to soak up what little damage they could soak up.

Turn No. 1

5 (30-C)

2 (45-I) 4 (52-I) 6 (50-I) 7 (908-P) 9 (70-I) 10 (30-S) 11 (37-I) 13 (70-I) 14 (49-I) 15 (75-I) 18 (40-I) 19 (61-I) 20 (52-I)

1 (38-A) 3 (34-A) 8 (69-A) 12 (40-A) 16 (43-A) 17 (49-A)

21 (79-S) 22 (37-I) 24 (57-I) 25 (45-I) 26 (22-I) 27 (32-I) 28 (40-A) 29 (44-A) 32 (52-I) 33 (45-S) 35 (38-A) 36 (80-I) 37 (52-I) 38 (30-A) 39 (113-I) 40 (69-I)

23 (40-C) 31 (55-C) 34 (34-C)

30 (45-C)

Let's go through the battle turn by turn. When a battle starts, you will see the formations of both sides. You can check different formations from my recommended pages. Formations are very important when two armies similar in size clash. Each formation emphasizes a certain type of unit type in your army. For example, Wesmtoor in this case is using 'Archer Opening' putting ARCHERS in the FRONT, INFANTRIES in the MIDDLE, and CAVALRIES in the REARGUARD. It is important to understand the purpose of each formation(They are all briefly explained in the formation page so do check it out).

The advantage of this formation is that when enemies put their infantry in the front, on turn 2, your archers will attack twice. They will shoot first - because enemies are still within the range.

Note: Range units will always act first. Melee units move when it is their turn to move. They move after the range phase and once they are in the same column as their enemies, they start to attack.

Turn No. 2

5 (30-C)

1 (38-A) 2 (45-I) 3 (34-A) 4 (52-I) 6 (50-I) 7 (908-P) 8 (58-A) 9 (70-I) 10 (30-S) 11 (37-I) 12 (30-A) 13 (70-I) 14 (49-I) 15 (75-I) 16 (27-A) 17 (37-A) 18 (40-I) 19 (61-I) 20 (52-I)

21 (69-S) 22 (37-I) 24 (57-I) 25 (45-I) 26 (22-I) 27 (32-I) 32 (52-I) 33 (39-S) 36 (70-I) 37 (45-I) 39 (106-I) 40 (69-I)

23 (40-C) 28 (40-A) 29 (44-A) 34 (34-C) 35 (38-A) 38 (30-A)

30 (45-C)

31 (55-C)

After the ranged attacks ended, Sirion's infantry advanced to engage Westmoor's archers. Westmoor's infantry also advanced from C4(Column 4) to C5 to fight their enemy. Westmoor's archers are forced to enter melee combat. If you check the hit exchange, Westmoor's archers barely did anything to Sirion's infantry. Their only job here was pretty much absorbing hits for their infantry. Sirion's archers continued their range attack in the following turn.

Some Useful Settings

Siege

Infantry(Rear) || Cavalry(Back) || Empty || Archer(Front) ||

Archer: Front/Skirmish or Line
Infantry: Rear/Box or Line
Cavalry: Back/Line or Back/Box - You do not want Wedge as they won't be able to charge that well. But if you want to risk it you can go for Wedge as well. (Must put it in either Front or Back. Cavalries checks 2 columns ahead excluding the column they are in to see if they can charge or not. If they there is a fort 2 columns away, they will stop and wait for the fort to be breached in the front column. In this setting they will stay with the archers until the infantry units breach the fort. If you put cavalries in the back, they will go with infantry units but they won't do anything but absorb archer fires which is a bad way to waste expensive cavalry units.)

This setting allows you to deal as much damage as possible to the defenders before your infantry units can scale the wall. If your army has a high number of archers, this is a viable tactic to use. Softening enemies before hitting them hard with siege engines.