Most effective army make up

[godfather]

I am used to playing ACW and organizing my divisions using different types of units. I am curious as to what is a good make up for a "division" ( I realize that this is the wrong term) in AJE/BOR.

[Erik Springelkamp]

1) Legions.
2) if you don't have enough of them add Ala.
3) if you are not Roman, just the heaviest infantry you can find, and a very good general.

[Hister]

1) Legions.
2) if you don't have enough of them add Ala.
3) if you are not Roman, just the heaviest infantry you can find, and a very good general.

Hah, you sure number 3 is true? That sucks if it's true.

[Jagger2013]

I have wondered just how important are the javelinmen, the archers and the cavalry when in a battle.

[James D Burns]

Ranged combat isn't very lethal in AJE/BOR. That said it is of course better to add the units to top off command ability than not I would guess, but that debate all comes down to frontage. Too many light units and you’ll see fewer and fewer heavy units selected for the front lines based on the frontage limits for the battle.

Cavalry can really mess up a routed stack, I’ve seen some pursuits destroy twice as many hits as the battle itself did. But again too many and you’ll see your front line weakened, so they too are a trade off. I generally try and add one cavalry, one skirmisher and one or more auxiliary unit per stack.

Non-Romans see a lot more non-heavy units than that due to necessity of course, but with their big armies I try and fight in the clear terrain if possible to allow their numbers to make a difference. If I’m defending or in difficult terrain I try and remember to pull a lot of the light units out of the army temporarily to get the front line to be as heavy as possible.

Hold at all costs is also a must for non-Romans in any kind of battle, your numbers won’t count for anything if your army flees before you have a chance to rotate everything into line during the fight. There are a couple great stickies at the top of this forum on frontages and melee combats, read them several times over, their chock full of good info though some of it is perhaps a bit out of date.

Jim

[godfather]

So a legion plus cav, skirmisher and an auxiliary or two would be a good effective stack? What about multiple legions under one general or does the command points limit this option?

[James D Burns]

It's up to available command points. I generally stack as many legions as I can then add the extras to top off available command points. One star generals can usually only afford 1 legion and 1 auxiliary unit and they're maxed. Two star generals can go with two or three legions and the extras mentioned above.

[bob.]

So a legion plus cav, skirmisher and an auxiliary or two would be a good effective stack?

No, absolutely not! Have you played a lot of ACW?

In ACW, having multiple smaller stacks to cover an area is a viable strategy because defense is a lot more effective than offfense and stacks can support each other.

You're talking about "divisions", but they don't really exist in AJE. You can assign one unit to one general, and I generally do that whenever possible but other than that...

the rule is: make the biggest stack possible, with the best general and the best, heaviest units.
The End.

[Narwhal]

Having the biggest stack possible is NOT the best solution at all. Actually, it is bad strategy. Better to have 2 large armies that maximize frontage than 1 large army can won't be able to deploy due to frontage.

Ergo, 2 armies 4-5 legions plus supporting troops (including cavalry) better than one 10 legions army. Just avoid the woods and the clear terrain, where frontage will be enough for your opponent to field all his superstack. Those lands are rare, so it is very easy.

I ll show screenshoot of smaller forces beating forces with 2 or 3 times more legions, just because the battles happened in Hills.

[bob.]

Obviously you can limit the frontage by fighting in non-clear terrain.

But - am I mistaken here? - I always thought that there is no disadvantage to having more troops than there can be in an area. With other words, if you have more troops than can fight the units that can't participate will stay in reserve and exhausted units can retreat to make room for fresh ones in reserve.

I honestly haven't really taken a look at the in-depth combat mechanics, I can only say "from experience" that it will in 90 % of the cases be one main army on each side fighting it out.

And if your opponent lets you defend in hilly terrain... isn't that kinda your opponent's fault anyway? There are nearly no important objectives that can't be reached over a non-hilly path IIRC.

EDIT: Here's a map of the terrain for reference:
http://abload.de/img/terraing9l6m.png
Light green - CLEAR
Dark green - HILLY
As far as I can tell, if your opponent doesn't want to fight you in non-clear/hilly terrain it is very easy for him to just stay out of the other ones.

[Narwhal]

But - am I mistaken here? - I always thought that there is no disadvantage to having more troops than there can be in an area. With other words, if you have more troops than can fight the units that can't participate will stay in reserve and exhausted units can retreat to make room for fresh ones in reserve.

No disadvantage, but you have one stack while your opponent has one stack to block your way and one stack to wage war in your turf.

And if your opponent lets you defend in hilly terrain... isn't that kinda your opponent's fault anyway? There are nearly no important objectives that can't be reached over a non-hilly path IIRC.

All the war does not happen in Italy, plus you fail to take into account cities blocking the way, river behind which you can protect, ...

Once I am home, I will send a screenshoot or 2 to illustrate my points.

[Narwhal]

To be honest, for quite a long time, I thought that it was a game of "biggest stack" wins. After some playing with the latest patch, I discovered that good manoeuvering can allow you to beat armies with 1 to 2 ratio.

[bob.]

I guess I'm just not that far yet then
I have read the AAR you wrote for Rise of Prussia and you certainly know what you're doing in AGEOD games!

I have played against a few opponents already that tried to fight with multiple smaller armies and they always got annihilated by my bigger armies - from my experience, especially in the Caesar vs Pompey with equal troop composition the side with more staying power (= the side with more stuff to let die) nearly always wins and more importantly has a huge casualties advantage.
Maybe I'm just haven't really worked out the smaller armies strategy yet.

[James D Burns]

But - am I mistaken here? - I always thought that there is no disadvantage to having more troops than there can be in an area.

The problem with over-large stacks is excess pursuit casualties if you are forced to retreat can really chew up your replacement pools and cost you a fortune to repair. It would be nice if more info was out there on how the tactical battles unfold, but it isn’t, so it’s pure guesswork on what kind of extra formations may or may not have a chance to enter the fight in limited frontage battles.

And of course as mentioned the more stacks you have the more options you have, so creating over-large stacks can really hurt you, especially in the scenarios that use the entire map. If your opponent is running around with one large stack then you should be out scooping up everything you can get your hands on with small 1 or 2 legion forces. Huge stacks are also very hard to keep fed, so raiding behind the enemy to burn his depots is also a good strategy.

Most games do not end in sudden death if a strategic location is taken, so it is a mistake to let a player who likes to use one large stack bait you into a fight just to try and hold a location. Let him grab what he wants and zoom back in behind him to take it back later. Force him out to fight on your terms or at least on even terms if you can.

And one final thought, you don’t have to fight big battles to win in most scenarios, so don’t feel like you have to get into a battle if you feel the cost of confronting some huge army would be unrecoverable within the scenarios timeframe. Once the force pools are maxed out, the game is all about holding onto as many victory point locations as you can, so the more effective stacks you have the easier your task is. Finding the sweet spot of just what is an effective stack is the true art of the AGEOD engine.

Jim

[Narwhal]

Also large stacks are less mobile. If you do a march in difficult land with a massive stack, you will receive 200 + or 300 + hits. That will do a drain in your economy.

[dpt24]

I am not sure I agree. Generally in the game, at least against the AI, larger stacks are better. For instance in most BOR scenario's if the Roman's don't combine the consular armies they have a very tough time beating their opponents. Unless those opponents divide their armies up. If you're playing the larger scenario's (Rome in the Mithridates War, Sulla against Marius, 4 Emperors, 5 Emperors) obviously you must divide up your forces some, but I've generally found large armies are needed to have any hope of winning. Otherwise you're like Otho and you'll face armies that outnumber you greatly. That said supply's and command points are two limiting factors. It is useful to have some smaller forces in a game like Caesar Vs. Pompey, but I've found as Pompey to have a hope against Anthony or Caesar you need a very large force, preferably defending behind a river.

[James D Burns]

I just had a battle occur in my new game that is a perfect example of how army size doesn’t matter in close terrain with limited frontages. Here you see me defending with Pompey and three legions almost 35k men vs. Sertorius and his almost 74k men, which I assume is most of his forces. Both leaders are very good and basically cancel each other out, so the only thing that matters here is terrain and frontage.

The battle was a long bloody affair that had 7 engagements occur total over a 6 day period. I won 6 of the 7 fights, the last was a stalemate. I assume so many battles were fought because both armies were in tip-top shape with near perfect cohesion. I was in wooded hills terrain behind a river, so I assume frontage for the fights was very limited, which utterly negated the large quantitative advantage Sertorius had here.

In the end I’m left with around 14k men and Sertorius has about 19k men left. Neither one of us is in any shape to fight again next month, but I didn’t throw all my eggs into one basket, you can see I have two other stacks a bit north. One has 3 legions the other 2, so my options at this point are wide open and this may be the beginning of the end for Sertorius in Hispania.

Jim

[James D Burns]

LOL, well I gotta give it up to the AI, he showed up the next turn with another fresh stack and kicked Pompey’s arse. Each of the hard fought victories the turn before gained me just 1 NM each, this single loss took back 4 of those lol.

The only thing that saved Pompey from a total route was 2 recently built legions from Italy marching in right as the battle began. Had they not shown up it would have been a total disaster since all the battles from the turn before saw Pompey begin the turn with zero supply. The battle was lost by default due to no supplies, but I guess the two legions with supplies prevented a forced retreat and I ended the turn still in the region with about 35% supplies on hand now.

Jim

[James D Burns]

Here is one more example, I just wanted to show it wasn’t the Roman qualitative edge that made a difference vs. all of Sertorius’ allied troops. This is a totally non-Roman battle (except for the leader) with almost a 3-1 disadvantage and I still carried the day in rough terrain with its limited frontage.

My troops were set to hold at all costs in both battles, but I suspect a sustained multi-battle fight like the one Pompey fought would have saw my eventual collapse here. That’s where the quality of Roman troops comes in, they take fewer casualties when facing non-Roman troops. Here I took about even casualties, so my numbers will dwindle a lot faster.

Luckily I already had a decent chit pool of replacements for this ally and I was able to replace enough losses over the next two turns that I won 2 more attempts by Mithridates to take the region before he withdrew.

I should note I think there is a bug in the event scripting for this ally in the game. The stack was attacked very early in the scenario by the pirates and they became unlocked. Now that the Mithridates war has been raging for a bit I would have expected an event to bring these guys into the fight so I could build more of their units, but none has occurred and it looks like I’ll only have their on map starting units to play with.

I can provide a save if needed, but the pirate attack that unlocked them occurred well over a year before in game so I don’t think there is a way to go back that far.

Jim
[ATTACH]23383[/ATTACH]

[James D Burns]

I decided to go ahead and upload a save as there is another issue that might need looking at in this save besides the scripting issue I mention above. A while back pirates landed in Italy and I forced them to retreat a few times and they eventually went into the region of Beneventum. Maybe 2 turns after that a legion was built in Rome and I sent it there and left it there on attack for many turns.

Eventually it ran totally out of supplies and had to return to Rome for refit and repairs. The whole time it was in Beneventum it never located a unit nor changed military control at all away from the Pirates. I have added a few extra units to the legion and given it orders to march back, so if you execute a few turns you can quickly see what might be the trouble.

Jim

[James D Burns]

I am uploading a save of a new game started under the official patch 1.02b that has a re-occurrence of the problem seen in my last uploaded game where the pirates controlled a region and I could not find them or reduce their military control in the region. In this game it’s the slaves that have taken control of many regions in Spain. Only two of which (Subur and Oretum) I have confirmed have the same issue.

At Subur Marc Anthony has been trying to move south into Spain but gets stuck and has to withdraw every couple turns for supplies (he just withdrew again this turn and is back in the town just north). He’s controlled by the AI so I don’t have specifics, but I did see some military control switch early on but he never got control of the region long enough to move beyond it.

At Oretum I moved a stack of about 400-600 power into the region and had no effect on military control and never located a slave unit to fight. The 3-5 other regions in Spain under slave control have not been moved into yet as far as I know so I can’t confirm the issue is happening in them as well, but I suspect it is.

On a final note, I’d like to mention an exploit regarding slave units that I think needs to be addressed somehow. I tested it in the region of Samosata. I used requisition and then slave options to eventually generate a slave unit and then attacked it with Antiochus I’s stack (his name is spelled Antiochos in the bottom right text display), which unlocked him and made him available for use.

If it’s possible I’d like to see a change to the engine so combat vs. Pirates, Slaves, Rebels, etc. does not unlock fixed stacks. It would be very easy to unlock any/all fixed stacks in any scenario using this exploit. That or possibly just have spawned units spawn randomly adjacent to a region if it has a large stack of units with a power of 100 or above in it.

Jim

[Franciscus]

I decided to go ahead and upload a save as there is another issue that might need looking at in this save besides the scripting issue I mention above. A while back pirates landed in Italy and I forced them to retreat a few times and they eventually went into the region of Beneventum. Maybe 2 turns after that a legion was built in Rome and I sent it there and left it there on attack for many turns.

Eventually it ran totally out of supplies and had to return to Rome for refit and repairs. The whole time it was in Beneventum it never located a unit nor changed military control at all away from the Pirates. I have added a few extra units to the legion and given it orders to march back, so if you execute a few turns you can quickly see what might be the trouble.

Jim

Hi James

Indeed there is a "Pirates IV group" in Beneventum, but roman forces cannot "see" it. I believe it has to do with respective detect/evade ranks, but I have forwarded your save to Master Pocus. Nevertheless, for sure he will not have much time right now to check into this (due to CW2)

As to the exploit of using RGD cards to raise rebels and unlock units, it's a known "cheat" indeed. I believe there is no easy way to avoid it. One good point is that poor AI does not use it, AFAIK. In PBEM, you can perhaps use a house-rule prohibiting it...

Sorry for the inconveniences

Regards

[James D Burns]

Understood, no rush just wanted to report it. The Beneventum example is ok to use for debugging, but in this newest save Marc Anthony has a huge stack yet he can't seem to get past the slave controlled region. I'd have him look at that save instead as it's extreme that anything would delay a stack that large from advancing. He made at least 3 maybe 4 attempts so far to come forward and has had to go back for supply every time.

but roman forces cannot "see" it.

Shouldn't military control still switch over if the Roman's are larger even if the Romans can't see the enemy unit?


Jim

[Franciscus]

Hi Jim

I tested your Pompey save, with AI off. Moving your legionary force (detection 3) in Gades to Oretum sometimes triggers a battle with the slaves, sometimes not, but it's possible to gain MC. The same in Subur, I moved the army that is in the region just south, there, and although the "Plebis" unit is "invisible", I can gain MC (see attached save). Playing as CAE the huge Marc Anthony stack is also capable of gaining control of Subur, although the slaves are "invisible". The problem is that this AI stack has some serious supply problems...

I think that it is by intent that pirates and slaves have probably very high evasion rank, but there may exist some problem in detection vs evasion calculations... (this reminds me also of a past little "bug" in NCP).

Let's wait for the Ageod Masters.

Thanks for your report

Regards

[Highlandcharge]

I had a similar incident in a Pompey v Caesar pbem, me and my pbem partner found a work around... I had a large stack that could not move into a region because of some unseen enemy light cavalry, me and my opponent talked about the problem and we tried a few solutions, we found that if I moved a force of cavalry or light troops ahead as a kind of scouting force/vanguard that they were able to detect and sometimes engage the blocking enemy cavalry or light troops pushing them away and allowing the large stack to advance....

[Franciscus]

A fix for this issue is on the works for next patch. The major probable cause is a too high hide value for some models, one of which is used by pirates

Regards

[Highlandcharge]

Are there any workarounds (see above) for this problem until the next patch is released?

Thanks

[Franciscus]

Hi

For pirates, theoretically you can open Models folder, search for mdl_CMN_lightinf, open in in notepad, change the entry "hidevalue" from 5 to 2 and save.
You will then have to delete the model.cache file in the Models folder and start a new game.

Anyhow a beta patch (not public) with this fix and other stuff will be probably released tomorrow, so you as beta will have access to it

Regards