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)

Penchant: I would mention as well making sure to know your army's composition well. You don't want to be making orders looking at your CS values and assuming an even split among unit types. It might seem obvious but it still seems like a good thing to mention

Learn Unit Settings and Unit behaviours

• Read through other guides offered by Wiki 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.

Penchant: Mention that you have links on the bottom in case they don't read the entire guide. As well, eventually adding this yourself should be planned.

Basics for General

Defensive

• Know how much resource your realm has. Gold/Combat Strength/Recruitment Centers/Food
• 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.
• Know the geography of your realm. If your realm has choke points, use them - put militia units to defend the region easily.
• If you can hit your enemies harder than they can, you should go offensive.
• Try to think ahead of your enemies. Where do they want to strike/what is their goal for their current campaign.
• 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.

Penchant: I feel like more depth could be added, but what is here seems good. Perhaps mention that while defensive battles are easier to win, without ever weakening the enemy, a war can be difficult to win. As well defensive battles can considerably hurt the region's production so repeatedly having battles in the same region can devastate so if possible try defending in your enemies territory. Aka, go to the border, cross the border, dig in and start looting so they attack.

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.

Penchant: Don't just know yourself, learn your enemy. This is important in war both offensively and defensively, but is certainly important offensively when you want to determine what your goals should be. If a realm is extremely rich, trying to make them run out of gold isn't a good solution to ending the war. If your enemy has some extremely good troops, try finding the recruitment center and making it a goal to destroy it. You hint at some of this, but make things more direct.

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.

Penchant: Looks pretty good, I will see if I can find something to complain about later.

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.

Penchant: State why some think skirmish settings should be archer's standard setting. It makes it much more clear why they shouldn't be. Don't assume they know the line settings.

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.

Penchant: It might seem obvious but mention their charge ability and how it works. As well mention that they travel 2 squares/lines per round. Also give suggestions on countering charges/surviving them.

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

Penchant: Define what they are, since it might not be obvious right away. So in other words, say that mixed infantry are infantry that also have short ranged weapons.

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.
• The cavalier class is the best class for using these as it can recruit the most.

Penchant: Seems pretty decent. Maybe add in that ranged infantry are also much better in melee than archers.

What not to do

• 1) Let's see what kind of game BM is. It is a turn based strategy game. You DO NOT chase after your enemies. Why? Here are some reasons why you shouldn't
  • a) 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 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. If you don't see a point of having a choke point, why are you even a general? You obviously lack any tactical sense.

• 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) Blaming others for your own failures. You don't yell at your marshals for your own retardation. If you did out of frustration, then apologize quickly before your marshals start doing their own things.

• 7) Changing orders too often.
  • a) Make your mind up before sending an order out. Don't change it four times a day. It only shows how shallow your plan is.
  • 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.

Penchant: All good points here but try to be less derogatory. Ex. End of 7a, the wording of 6, 4, and 1. What you are saying is fine, but the way you say it should be changed

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
• http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Formation (Must READ!)
• http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Unit_Orders

Penchant: I can't comment on their content since I haven't read them yet but its definitely a good thing you included links to other guides.

<note> Still under construction. If you want me to add something here, do mention under the discussion.

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