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

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Basics

Basics for Marshal

Marshal’s tasks can be divided into two, Keeping orders up to date and executing your general’s plan. Depending on what kind of general you have, there might not be any difference between general and marshal as most generals will do the job of their marshals. However, a general who follows the recommended playstyle will trust their marshals and let them decide on the tactical details while the general focuses on the strategic goals. Upon being appointed as a marshal of an army, your first task is getting to know your army members. You need to find out quickly who is responsive and who is not. Depending on what kind of army you are tasked with, your job can range from encouraging less active nobles to follow basic orders to leading highly active elite army which requires you to simplify your general’s complex orders so everyone is on the same page.

  • Simply checking on everyone should teach you a lot. Send each member a letter or two to get to know them. Move your army around to see who can keep up and who cannot. Sometimes it is better to send people who can’t handle the activity to a different army which may not require them to move as often. Remember behind every noble, there is a player who might be busy in real life. You need to work around their schedules not force them to work around your orders.
  • Check to make sure everyone has what they need. 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 make everyone carry 1 scout per 15 men, 1 healer per 15 men (max of 6~8), and 1 banner per 20 men (for melee). If you need to besiege a fort, then make sure to order your men to carry 1 siege engine per every 15 men (only for infantry, mixed infantry, and melee special force units)
  • Know your army composition. See which unit type is the most dominant. You need to set your settings around the unit type which makes up the bulk of your force.
  • Learn Unit Settings and Unit behaviours – You need to know how units behave on the field to be effective with your unit settings. You can find them in detail below
  • Read through other guides offered by Wiki (I've handpicked 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 okay but they are usually not flexible so keep that in mind when you are using them. They are mostly there to unify unit settings since people often make mistakes on following unit settings.
    • 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

Your job as the head of military is to set long term goals which will lead your realm to victory. It is not your job to win battles. It is your marshal’s job to win battles. If you are in a 1v1 war, your job is rather straight forward. Set long term goals that your marshal can achieve. If you have more than one army, you will need to coordinate them. It gets more difficult as you have to work with more armies. Often in BM, you won’t be fighting 1v1. You will often multiple enemy realms along with your allies meaning you will need to communicate with your allied generals to coordinate with them to attack your common target. This is quite difficult and often tempts you into just ordering your armies directly but you should try to resist this temptation as you will eventually burn yourself out by doing too much. You should focus on communicating with other generals to set common goals and focus on guiding marshals on achieving that goal.

  • Your main priority is to set up objectives. Usually it is good to set up 1 main objective and several minor objectives to achieve the main objective.
  • Secure resources for your armies so they can function like well-oiled machines.
  • Coordinate armies if you have more than one.
  • The only time you need to come up with unit settings is when you need two or more armies about to fight in a pitched battle and your marshals can't agree on which settings to use.

Defensive

  • Know how much resources (gold/recruits/paraphernalia) you have at your disposal.

- Gold: This is the lifeblood of your army. Knowing how much gold is available will help you plan your campaigns better as it will give you a good estimate on how much loss your army can take. If you take more damage than you can afford, you will need another week (you only get gold once every week) to refit. - Recruits: Poor small realms usually lack these as it takes time to build RCs. Even if you have a lot of gold, if you don't have recruits, you can't refit. - Paraphernalia: You always want healers and scouts to be available. Without healers, you will lose most of your wounded.

  • 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. You will need to learn to let go of regions that are strategically less valuable and focus on the regions that need to be protected
  • Know the geography of your realm. If your realm has choke points, use them - put militia units to defend the region. Choke points are important since you can force your enemies to travel around the region. Since you can only move 1 region per turn at most, if you force your enemies to travel around few regions, you can be that many turns ahead of your enemies. Depending on how you use this, you can either outmaneuver your enemies or surprise your enemies by looting their vital regions.
  • If you can hit your enemies harder than they can hit you, you should be aggressive.

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

  • Try to think ahead of your enemies. Where do they want to strike?

- Knowing ahead what your enemy is planning will always give you an edge over your enemy.

  • It is always to easier to defend. However, the longer you fight on your land, the more time it will take for your regions to recover. Try to slowly take the fight to your enemies.
  • Don't try to win big battles. Fight skirmishes to check the performance of your TLs. Beating small enemy groups with your overwhelming force can save you a lot of time and gold. You can sometimes wipe your enemies even before they reach you. Only fight big battles when winning them will lead you to achieving a major goal.
  • 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.

Offensive

  • Similar to the above. Know your available resources, capability, etc...
  • Know where you need to attack in order to achieve your strategic goals. Targets to prioritize are:
    • 1) Important RCs in the region
    • 2) Highly productive (gold or food wise)
    • 3) Undefended Choke Points
    • 4) Good for boosting morale - region symbolizes something - hitting your enemy’s capital etc
  • Try to force your enemies to attack where you are. Attacking is almost always more difficult.
  • Use takeover to your advantage. If you get to your enemy’s fortified region first, then start a takeover to deny them 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 might be able to catch your enemies by surprise if you can find yourself a nice short cut.
  • 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. Either shut them down by taking the region housing the RCs over or loot the region to the ground to turn it rogue.
  • 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 reduce their numbers before your cavalries arrive.

Battle Procedures

It is important to know when units attack and move. All battles follow 3 phases.

  • Preparation (Before the battle starts. Loads formations, randomly decides weather - affects ranged damage, considers diplomatic relations to decide who becomes attacker,defender or neutral)
  • 1) Ranged Phase
  • 2) Movement
  • 3) Melee Phase

Since the ranged phase comes before movement, if your enemies are out of range for the turn, you will attack them in the following turn. This also means you can attack with range attacks and get into melee on the same turn (good for mixed infantry and ranged special force units since they can attack twice on the same turn)

Fortification (for both General and Marshal)

  • It is highly RECOMMENDED that you bring enough SIEGE ENGINES to breach fortifications. Usually, you need at least 10 per level of fortification you wish to siege. If you can bring double the amount, you won't have any issue scaling the walls.
  • 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. (You will need to use custom unit settings to force your units to leave the walls)
  • 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.
  • When defending, don't forget that you cannot use your ally's fortification unless they have at least one unit in the region. You can join your ally on the walls but you cannot use the fort while there is no one from the region owner in the area.

(Non-Military means to damage fortifications)

    • You can use hammerfall scrolls to destroy walls quickly but remember, scrolls are hard to get and the amount of gold you need to spend to get them might not be worth it.

Landing in a hostile region from a sea zone

  • If you want to land in a hostile region, you need to be able to overwhelm the defenders. If your army's strength is less than that of the defenders, you will most likely lose all your men.
  • If you land with a bit more than the defenders, you will suffer heavy losses.
  • You need to land with enough men to completely overrun the region.
  • Generally, since you can't scout from sea, you want to land in a rogue region or a rural region which usually is undefended to prevent unnecessary losses.
  • If the region you are trying to land has attackers but they are not the region owner and they are not running a take over, you will land unopposed.

Hunting Enemies

  • Hunting enemies is a useful tool you can use to reduce your enemies beside a battle.
  • Archers should avoid using this since they are not very good at it. You may end up losing more than your enemies
  • Usually you want to do this with a cheap unit. You are essentially exchanging your cheap unit for your enemy's expensive unit. Meaning you don't want to do this when you are commanding a well equipped unit. Only do it with a unit that is expendable.

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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.
  • (2016) Due to the bug fix on archers, infantry can hardly reach archers. Archers will shred infantry before they even get near. Infantry is used to soak up archer fires for now.
  • RC building guide for infantry:
    • Shock Trooper: If you want to use infantry to dish out damage, then you will have to have high stats on all three categories(training, weapon, armour).
    • Anti-Cavalry: You want to soak up as much damage as possible so focus on high armour. Preferably >80%.

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 since they will be placed behind usually, 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.
  • Update: Currently archers are quite powerful. There used to be a bug that crippled archers but ever since that got fixed, archers became quite powerful. Archers excel because you can damage your foes before they can get to you. If you use this fact well, you can mow down your foes enough for your melee units to finish them off.
  • Your damage is divided by how far you are shooting from. If you are shooting from 4 ranges away, it will be divided by 4. The closer your enemies get to you, the harder you will hit.
  • As of July 26 (2016), many realms are using archers by putting them in the middle while infantry and other melee units are placed in the rearguard to maximize archers' fire power. Archers are your main source of damage.
  • Update(2018/7/31): Archers now target a random unit within their range.
  • RC building guide for Archer:
    • Primary Damage Source: High training and high weapon. Other types will soak up the damage for you so armour is not needed as much.
    • Cheap but Effective: Low training and armour, high weapon. Training will go up overtime. Avoid losing too many men.

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.
  • Cavalry Charge is rather random. Sometimes you will land your charge, sometimes you won't.
  • (2016) Just like infantry, cavalry is not used much. You will melt before you get to archers.
  • (2018) With archer nerfs, cavalry is rather good against archers.
  • (2018) For some reason, attackers usually gain the upperhand in getting the charge attack off. Defenders tend to walk into the attackers' charge attack.

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.
  • (2016) Along with archers, MIs are the most reliable.

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.
  • (2016) Ranged SFs are worth getting. Melee ones are not.

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.

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.

Siege - Variation

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

If your enemies know you will use the settings above, you will need to adapt accordingly to prevent your archers front getting slaughtered.

Siege - Variation 2 (Complex)

Against heavily fortified region - High infantry / low archers

-Assuming enemies have no idea what you are doing you can set your archers to the front do maximize your damage against enemies' infantry units which will move forward to front on turn No.2 -Your infantry should be placed in the rear to delay their advance as much as possible. Result: You will hit enemy infantry while only taking archer fires. This will slaughter most infantry enemies before your infantrymen attack the walls.

Against heavily defended region - Low infantry / High archers

-Place your archers in the middle. -Select 3 smaller infantry units. Put one in each row - front, middle, back -Put the rest of your infantry in the rear Result: Enemy archer fires will be only focused on those single small units you've selected for 3 turns. You probably will be able to take out all the infantry by then and will most likely be hitting your enemies' archers.

Against many archers and infantry

There are really dirty options to bring a city down especially against a large city like Oligarch which can hold and sustain many militia units.

For example, let's say Oligarch has just archers so they can't leave the walls even if they wanted to. Their militias will stay behind the walls as long as there are infantry units on your side. If you abuse this fact, you can do some serious damage to Oligarch.

What you will need.

1) Lots of archers 2) Expendable infantry

So here is what you do. When you attack Oligarch, you don't hit the city with everyone you have. You attack the city with these units.

1) All your archers 2) 1 Infantry unit

Put your archers in the rear with the infantry unit.

-Why?: Because militias start in the middle as well. To hit their infantry only, you put your archers in the rear. There won't be any exchange of hits for the first round. But when the second round comes, your units will move to back and their inf will move to their front. your archers will shoot their infantry in the turn 2.

Turn3: your infantry will die but you will hit their infantry again without getting hit.

Turn4: their infantry will leave the walls and move to the center line. your archers will hit them even harder. their archers will not leave the walls.

Turn5: their infantry will advance to your front. your archers will hit them even harder.

Turn6: their infantry will advance to your middle. you should have taken out most of their infantry by this point. you will hit even harder and probably finish their infantry off.

Turn7: your archers will advance to middle and get hit by their archers.

Turn8: your archers and their archers will exchange hits until one side wins or the battle will end in draw.

Since you've cleaned out their infantry militias, you can hit them with everything you have in the following battle and won't have to worry about their infantry. You will still have to worry about Garas dumping more militias though. In case this happens, you can probably repeat the previous tactic of sending archers and 1 infantry if you want. Or you can risk it and hit them with everything you have. It would be really good if you have pain and suffering scrolls or accident scrolls to take Garas out to prevent him from dropping militias.

With 0 infantry militias, you can just storm the walls with everyone in the front or put archers in the front with everyone in the rear to take out as many archers as possible.

Open Field

High Risk High Return

Requirements: 1~2 units of cavalry || Lots of ranged units with at least range of 3 Settings:

  • Cavalry: Back or Front / Wedge
  • Ranged: Front / Skirmish
  • If you have infantry: Middle

Putting them in the front will allow them to engage with enemies ASAP. If enemies are using front archer, this will surprise enemies greatly, damaging their archers off the start. If their infantry was in the front, your cavalries will keep enemies' infantry in check. Your middle infantry can then follow up.

Putting 1 infantry in each row can prevent enemy's archers from doing too much damage to your archers.

How to mix with low Range RCs (or prevent your range from falling)

Let's say you have a 50 R1 archer unit. As you know well, R1 archers are useless. You need to increase the range. You want to get to R4. From here, you only need to recruit 50 R4 archers to reach R3. From there, you need to recruit 100 more archers to reach R4. The game takes the average of your range to determine your final range so if you mix well, you can turn your R1 into R4.

You can use this to prevent your range from falling from R4 as well. If the RC center you are trying to recruit from has only the difference of 1 range, you can simply recruit 1 less man than what you currently have to maintain it. So if you want to double your unit size, you can recruit 49 R3 archers to your 50 R4 archers to maintain your R4. However, if you want to recruit from R1, you can only recruit 20% of what you have. So if you have 100 R4 archers, you can only recruit 20 R1 archers to maintain your R4. If you recruit anymore than that, you will end up with R3. As for R2, you can only recruit 33% of your current unit size to avoid losing your R4.

Mixing R5 SF with other SFs

Start with 50 SF if you want to recruit R0 and R1 since you can't recruit less than 5.

  • R0 - Melee SF = 10%
  • R1 = 14%
  • R2 = 20%
  • R3 = 33% = Not exactly. 33% of your current # of men subtract 1 to be safe.
  • R4 = 100%

Designing your army

  • You cannot order someone to get a specific unit type. However, you can tell your realm that you need more of x type and you need volunteers to fill the types you need.
  • Or you can seek help from your dukes and other rich nobles to reform your RCs to limit people's selections in the first place.

Infantry Heavy: Used to be good. Melee units can hit multiple units at once so your damage is less likely to be wasted

Archer Heavy: The current favourite. You can mow down enemies before they even get to you. Doesn't work that well when your enemies bring a lot more units (Not necessarily more men).

Mixed Infantry Heavy: Flexible. They are archers without the melee penalty.

Cavalry Heavy: If used well, you can dismantle your enemies quickly and crush their archers. Archers do not do as much damage to cavalry as infantry so they are good at soaking arrows as well. Their main problem is people's inability to recruit enough of them as they are not as numerous as other unit types.

Special Force: Big guns. Expensive and rare, but powerful. You don't really see SF heavy armies often. But when you do, you better have enough men to soak up their damage.

Questions and Requests

If you have questions or want me to add something, do leave a comment under here.