Tactics: Principles, Tips, Tricks, and Traps

[Corwin]

Gandalf Parker said:
Bursting Dam:
in a game with many people who tend to play barbarian horde armies sweeping across the map..
Take only the provinces that connect to your castle. Build up and build up and build up. Everyone will stretch thin coming your direction. When they finally reach you then burst forth like a dam breaking.

IMHO this is a bit dangerious tactic Gandalf. It may work, or it may fail big time, costing you the game. It higly depends on when excactly some other nation would bust your "bubble" around your capital. If it'll be early in the game, and the incoming army is on its last breath, than you can steamroll through it and took bunch of enemy provinces before they are able to orginize effecticce resistance.

But if it happens a bit later in the game, by that time nations that expand quickly may have much more resources than you, which they can use to raise armies quickly. You will still likely to defeat the arpochanig army, and may even take few provinces if you are lucky. But once your oppoent would use the whole might of its large empire against you, you are likely to be squeshed, since you only have frw provincces and one castle to build reinforcements.


Basicaly this tactic, while certainly interesting, depends a bit too much on your opponents and has too high random factor for my tastes.

[Uh-Nu-Buh]

I'll try to collate these into a coherent document, including some additional notes I've since made. I'll include some of the proposed alternatives (disagreements? exceptions?)as well. I will not attrib, as that gets too complicated after a short time. Besides, anybody who cares can do a search to see who said what first....

[Morkilus]

If you would like to put it in the Wiki when you're finished, feel free.

Strategy Wiki

[Nerfix]

I like to put Agarthan Troglos on the flanks.

[Shovah32]

Corwin, in most maps (unless your stuffed in a corner or against the sea) you have plenty of provinces connected to your castle (even if you dont you could always expand a little more, just keeping it compact) and, by capturing all the provinces round his castle he will have alot of resources coming to where they are needed to produce useful troops. Unless the enemy takes a very long amount of time to reach you there shouldnt be a problem with expanding too far away from your castle and, if you do expand far out you can 'bust the dam' on some indies, finding the enemy with the nice units you produced at your castle.

Another nice little trick (that can fail very easily) is trapping enemy armies, when the enemy attacks you (and gets into your empire) use stealthy, flying and summoned armies to cut off their retreat, use some sort of assasination/spell (dreams of rlyeh, seeking arrow, recruited assasins, summon tupilak, stealth units with black hearts ect) to take out all the commanders (you need to REALLY do this en mass to make sure ever commander is dead) then you can march in with a single unit and rout the entire enemy army (hopefully a very large, expensive one) and have then destroyed because they are cut off.

[Gandalf Parker]

Dam Burst is a tactic I would use on small maps against above average players. It has been a good surprise against players who are so deeply tactical that I had no chance. But they also tended to figure their resources so closely that a big surprise threw them into a fit. It worked much better than me trying to meet them on their ground.

Gandalf Parker
--
If you cant beat 'em, join 'em.
If you cant beat em or join em,
then at least try to surprise them.

[KissBlade]

Haha shovah ... that's actually a very cute trick. Requires A LOT of setup but still, it can have the chance to catch someone offguard and really cripple them =).

[Gandalf Parker]

I used to love using that tornado spell to snatch commanders out of a moving army and bring them to a lab full of charmers.

A) he is down one commander

B) the units that he lead might get left behind when his army moves

C) his units rout easier

D) I get a new commander

E) I get any equipment he had on him

[Shovah32]

Thanks KB, its also not very risky aslong as you dont send in a big ammount of troops and he cant reach any valuable mages/troops. Basically if he has any commanders left at all alot of the troops will be left behind if he moves allowing you to kill them while they are split up, if he dosnt have any then he wont move and you will rout and kill them all and if he has the majority of his troop leading commanders left then either you have killed a hell of alot of mages/back-up commanders(leaving him vunerable to a repeat) or you didnt attack enough. The biggest risk is the fact that it used alot of gems.

Thats a nice idea gandalf, i'll actually consider trying that with some-one (probably man, it has the right paths) and see how it works for me.