How do you make your army?

[KenR7A]

What units do you use and in what groups do you put them in? To be more clear, what units work the best mixed together in the same groups? Do you even mix? I want to utilize as many units as possible, but there are so many options.

Is it good to group all cavalry together? Would you put the horse archers in with your foot archer group? How about light and heavy infantry together? Do you separate groups according into similar powers or create a bunch of "mixed" groups?

How do you initialize and control combat? Do you pick out an enemy unit and then right click with the group you have made that counters it? Or do you hit "A" and then click on empty groud behind their army and then watch everything go?

[Inverse Icarus]

orginized formations of mixed units by class.

IE:

control group 1: Main Infantry
2 mid-sized lines of pikemen, in front of 2 lines of Rifle Infantry, with some archers on the sides of the latter line. behind that, 2 generals and 2 supply wagons.

control group 2: Cavalry
mixed cavalry units, 2 generals, no supply wagons (too slow) usually in an "envelop" formation, often used as flankers. IE, after my main infantry line (above) engages the enemy, my cavalry will go around to the side of the battle, and attack the enemy from the side. this also allows me to slash at their hind lines (assuming they actually use formations), to take out key units (supply wagons, artillery, ranged infantry).

3rd control group: Siege
4 or mroe siege units, and a supply wagon, on manual deploy. if have an extra general i'll throw him in there. this is always behind my main infantry line.

Control groups 5-7 (i dont know why i chose 5-7): Spy Wh0res
small groups of 4 or so spies, often used as informers, but sometimes used to bribe key units.

do you have any idea how funny it is for me to bribe all your siege weapons before you begin firing at my town? HA!

not to mention the fact that i can see you comming the second you start moving. that helps too.

my main navy is assigned to 8, assuming i have one.

bombers or helis, whichever i use more of, is 0, the less is 9.

4 is empty, and i rarely use all spy slots, and if i create smaller detachments, thats where they go.

[Carch]

I've taken to bringing a detachment of commandos with my main infantry. They stay behind the front line, and you can easily bring them up to snipe. Eight or ten of them can be devastating, especially used against a cavalry flanking maneuver.

I can't imagine using artillery on manual deploy ... I have a hard enough time managing the rock paper scissors micromanagement.

[KenR7A]

what just found out that I reeeeealy like is if you have a group of spies or commandos, if you right click one enemy, then a different one right after, and so on, it picks a different commando/spy so as not to interrupt the others. its great!

[Sarxis]

Throw up some towers and some of your own archers. This will take down cav-archer rushes/raids of all sorts.

[KenR7A]

Originally posted by Carch
I've taken to bringing a detachment of commandos with my main infantry. They stay behind the front line, and you can easily bring them up to snipe. Eight or ten of them can be devastating, especially used against a cavalry flanking maneuver.

I can't imagine using artillery on manual deploy ... I have a hard enough time managing the rock paper scissors micromanagement.

But I just hate it when youre working on your formations and it takes them 5 seconds to move because theyve already deployed.

[Harpoon]

manual deploy just makes it so they wont deploy after 5 seconds by themselves. If you make them attack a city or something they'll deploy as soon as they're in range anyway.

[Carch]

Originally posted by Harpoon If you make them attack a city or something they'll deploy as soon as they're in range anyway.

Aha, so the only time you'd need to manually deploy them would be if you needed them set up in a defensive position.

[Madine]

The next time uberkrux runs over my base with 15 tanks I'll think of all his control groups

[Inverse Icarus]

Originally posted by Madine
The next time uberkrux runs over my base with 15 tanks I'll think of all his control groups

hush you. some haven't felt my wrath yet.