Does the enemy have more or better cavalry than you?.If two or more enemy armies combine, will they end up with a more dangerous army?.How many heavy infantry units do they have and are they better/more numerous than yours?.How many spear/pike units does your enemy have?.How many cavalry units do they have and are they better/more numerous than yours?.Does the enemy have well balanced armies or armies composed of mainly one unit type?.Does the enemy general have a lot of stars?.There may be more than one army so click on them all. It takes only two seconds to right click on the enemy general/captain portraits to see what the enemy unit disposition is and how it compares to yours. There’s nothing worse than watching my dad accept a battle without even looking at the forces arrayed against him. Surround the enemy and you can defeat even superior units.

My dad does dumb stuff like attacking melee units with two units and both are attacking head on. Using this method, you can use two inferior units to rout a single superior unit. You can beat inferior units in head-to-head conflicts but it’s messy and with a little thought, you can get them to rout much quicker by also attacking them in the rear. For the unit shown, the defence at the rear is nearly one third of defence at the front. See the last page of the Faust Faction and Unit Stat Table by Brandybarrel for details on why flanking is so important. If you can do it successfully, you will be able to defeat larger & “superior-on-paper” armies.

Attack units from side or behind = higher chance of successįlanking is the most important part of the game.

Dead general = massive morale blow to all those troops.

Tired units = less effective units & more likely to rout.

One routing unit in melee mosh pit = possible chain reaction of routing units.

Cavalry vs unprotected missile infantry = routed missile infantry.

Melee units chasing missile cavalry = exhausted units.

Heavy infantry toe to toe with light infantry = dead light infantry.

Unarmoured slow unit = vunerable to missile fire.

Cavalry charging spear units head on = dead cavalry.

There is a large element of paper/scissors/stone to Total War games which anybody new to the games needs to become familiar with very quickly. There are a number of steps you need the break the battle down into before you begin:

Mebertus has written an excellent guide for sieges if that’s what you need help with. This is purely for campaign battles on open fields but you need to know these basics before you play multiplayer. Therefore I’m writing this guide for my dad but also for people who have never played a Total War game before and lose huge numbers of soldiers in what should be straight-forward battles. Watched town militia get slaughtered in a vain assault on dismounted knights.Leave archers be run down by enemy cavalry while heavy infantry were immediately adjacent.He had never played a Total War game before and was having terrible trouble with the battles. I spent a frustrating morning watching my dad play M2TW a few weekends ago. Search Search for: General Strategy for Newbies to Total War Games

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