Newbie needs some help

[thegrip]

Hi, I just purchased Field of Glory 2 and love it. That said, I am getting schooled by the AI. Right now I am trying the Hannibal campaign on the II setting and the enemy Warband troops chew up my African Spearman. The Spearmen are offensive but lose dearly when I charge. Should I allow the Warband troops to charge instead?

I've tried Hannibal's classic tactic of retreating in the center to envelop enemy troops with little success as well. I can get past the first battle but that's it.

Any help is appreciated!

[melm]

If you want to replicate Hannibal's tactic, you can let the AI charges you and pushes you back to create the chance of flank attack. If you charge instead, the result is that either you are beaten to fall back or push the enemy if winning.

[thegrip]

Sorry, I don't quite understand what you mean. My main question is if African Spearmen should charge Warband troops? It doesn't seem to typically go well. Sorry if I wasn't clear

[melm]

Sorry, I don't quite understand what you mean. My main question is if African Spearmen should charge Warband troops? It doesn't seem to typically go well. Sorry if I wasn't clear

It depends. Generally speaking, African Spearmen have disadvantage against warband at impact phase, impact POA is 100 vs 200. I say it depends because sometimes it may be beneficial if you gamble the result of impact.

[Karvon]

Against the AI, you can break up the warband lines by sprinkling light troops in their path. Two or three light horse, well spread out, can cause the warbands to advance in a jagged line. If you position these on the extreme flank you may lure a single warband away from the main advance. This can then be encircled and destroyed by a combination of horse, heavier foot and elephants.

Against the Gallic AI, you should be able to flank the main body of warbands fairly easily. You should hold off on engaging the main body until you have flanked it.

Naturally, this is much more difficult to pull off fighting a human opponent, but still doable.

[thegrip]

Thanks Karvon! I actually just did what you suggested before reading your post - I noticed that warbands will pursue, so I held my main force back and used a bunch of light javelin horses and javelins to pick away at the warbands until they had scattered out and then encircled and defeated them. Such a cool game!

A couple of follow-up questions:

1. What are some typical garrison strategies? It seems like this is to increase your point selection in the next battle, so perhaps trading out some forces to pick up different ones in the next fight. Is that about it?

2. Waiting on reinforcements vs. calling Spanish allies... what is the effective difference?

Thanks again for the help!

[rbodleyscott]

Sorry, I don't quite understand what you mean. My main question is if African Spearmen should charge Warband troops? It doesn't seem to typically go well. Sorry if I wasn't clear

It depends. Generally speaking, African Spearmen have disadvantage against warband at impact phase, impact POA is 100 vs 200. I say it depends because sometimes it may be beneficial if you gamble the result of impact.

However, the disadvantage is the same whether you charge them or they charge you. This is because, as the game is turn based, to mitigate the unrealistic effects of this, it assumes that the charged troops will take the appropriate action - in this case they are assumed to countercharge. So neither side gets a special benefit for charging.

The warband advantage is only in the impact phase. If your spearmen survive the impact phase intact, they then have the advantage because the warband's swordsmen POA is halved vs steady spearmen.

Hence, in this matchup it is better to let them charge you. This is because if you charge them and lose, you will bounce off, allowing them the chance for a second round of impact combat when they charge you next turn. Whereas, if you let them charge you, there will only be one round of impact, because if they win the impact they will follow you up and stay in contact

[rbodleyscott]

Thanks Karvon! I actually just did what you suggested before reading your post - I noticed that warbands will pursue, so I held my main force back and used a bunch of light javelin horses and javelins to pick away at the warbands until they had scattered out and then encircled and defeated them. Such a cool game!

A couple of follow-up questions:

1. What are some typical garrison strategies? It seems like this is to increase your point selection in the next battle, so perhaps trading out some forces to pick up different ones in the next fight. Is that about it?

Later in the campaign you may decide that you don't need veteran light troops, for example, and putting them in garrison allows you to rotate them out. (This is because the system is points based, so as your army gets more veteran, you will have less men, and be at more risk of being outflanked)

2. Waiting on reinforcements vs. calling Spanish allies... what is the effective difference?

Waiting on reinforcements means you can choose the units, but you get less points of them. Taking the Spanish allies means that you will get more points of reinforcements, but you cannot choose the units and (in this particular campaign) your own units will not get reinforced back to full strength. If you do take the allies, they will carry forward to the next battle unless you put them into garrison.

[Karvon]

1. Study the point value of your units. As their morale improves, the value increases. Sometimes you just have to sell high and buy low ln order to meet your garrison requirements or get new or more troops. Dumping unwanted allies is helpful in this way too.

2. You get more points taking the allies, so I've usually opted for those over natives. The downside is you don't have any choice over what troops you'll get when you take allies. Consider the points and what you could get from the allied list. On the other hand, if your native troops suffered heavy losses, it is wiser to go with reinforcements from home to refill your ranks as understrengthed units are less effective.

[rbodleyscott]

On the other hand, if your native troops suffered heavy losses, it is wiser to go with reinforcements from home to refill your ranks as understrengthed units are less effective.

It is worth mentioning that this partly depends on how homogeneous your forces are. If you have a lot of units of the same type, the units are likely to have been automatically brought up to close to full strength by disbanding one or more of the units and using the men to replace the losses in the remainder. If you only have one or two of a unit type, this won't happen. You can see how close to full strength each unit is in the army review listbox.

Pike phalanx units are the worst affected by being below full strength, because their impact and melee POAs are affected by being below full strength. They lose 100 POA steadily between 1 and 25% losses. Other unit types are less affected because their impact POAs and combat strength are unaffected by previous losses. (As only the men who make contact can fight, so both sides fight with the smaller unit's strength at Impact.). They will then, however, have less combat strength than a full strength unit in melee.

[thegrip]

Thanks all, makes perfect sense

[Hanny]

A couple of follow-up questions:

1. What are some typical garrison strategies? It seems like this is to increase your point selection in the next battle, so perhaps trading out some forces to pick up different ones in the next fight. Is that about it?

2. Waiting on reinforcements vs. calling Spanish allies... what is the effective difference?

Thanks again for the help!

1, Always each battle check the garrison, after every battle, it tells you how many points your going to get, so you know how many points over you will receive, but if you want a higher point unit, you may need to disband something to get it/them, buy cheap on the first battle as they get better over time.

2. Save before choosing and look at the garrison report, it will tell you what points you have for each option, along with whats in the two options info text.

Your right cool game, as much fun losing and working out why as winning and understanding why .

[MVP7]

If you have extremely high quality units you might want to disband them and get new ones. This mainly concerns units like the legionaries who are typically good enough to beat almost anything out of the box and after a few battles the low total number of units will hurt you more than the excessive performance will help.

[rbodleyscott]

If you have extremely high quality units you might want to disband them and get new ones. This mainly concerns units like the legionaries who are typically good enough to beat almost anything out of the box and after a few battles the low total number of units will hurt you more than the excessive performance will help.

Think of it as giving your veterans land-grants and forming a colonia rather than actually putting them into garrison.

[Hanny]

If you have extremely high quality units you might want to disband them and get new ones. This mainly concerns units like the legionaries who are typically good enough to beat almost anything out of the box and after a few battles the low total number of units will hurt you more than the excessive performance will help.

Yes that works well, so does changing the type/number of units you have as you face different nations, to give you a better mix, rather than keep better than vanilla troops who are the wrong type, swap out to get the ones you do want, for the second nation you face.

What would be nice is if the army units point cost is displayed in the garrison info text box, so you know how many points to detach to afford what you want rather than consult a hand written copy of the army list.