Battlefield set up and tactics?

[MythTrip]

Surprised I can find very liitle on this...maybe everyone add their tips here for us noobs.

Any particular battlefield advice on set up and tactics? Here are a couple I can think of, Ill add more. Also questions...
1 If facing lots of archers, sparse line formation and set up cav to attack rearmost units.
2 Wouldnt you always want your armies in a line so at to expose enemy to the max surface area of units to max damage? When is a box useful? Or a double line?
3 A lot depends on matchups and knowing your enemy and his weaknesses. Set up your army to exploit his weakness and really bring the wood. Scout beforehand or "ping" a province by sending a commander set on retreat.

[anaris]

box is narrow and has the largest side face, so is best for flankers/attack rearmost. Double line is slightly better against flankers and gives a narrower face for letting your own flankers through more easily. I suspect that either box or double line will give you a better defence against tramplers, too.

[LonePie]

One of the best advice I got from watching Youtube was to plan your army formation carefully.

Example:
The biggest one was to make it so that cavalry reached the flank of your enemy just as your infantry hits the front.
You do this by setting the cavalry to Hold Attack and putting their formation in the very back
with your infantry in the front set to Attack immediately.

Before I learned this I was wondering why PDs were killing my units so much and other players seemed to expand easily.
The combination of your units and the shock form cavalry is so synergistic that I would only lose a few infantry before the combined attacks made the enemy route.

2. The game doesn't tell you- but if you set flying units to Line/Double + Attack/Fire/Hold Fire and tell them to attack- they'll just walk to the enemy INSTEAD of flying

You should also set flyers to Box Hold Attack if fighting Rearmost so the infantry/archers move away from their commanders for a bit and you can get juicy Flying rear snipes. It's the opposite if you want to counter mage's casting spells- flyers Attack Rearmost immediately.


There are all these lil quirks about the game that is, unfortunately, not explained well.
THE BEST resource I found for this is illwinter's wiki for their Dominion games.

https://illwiki.com/dom5/

All of the things I said about flying units can be seen at
https://illwiki.com/dom5/flying

[anaris]

WRT to simultaneous attack timing: I am under the impression that the arrow keys move a selected unit exactly one AP worth of movement/one square. I haven't checked precisely, but one can in theory do the same trick with any type of unit - a fear causing monster is even more effective than cavalry sometimes, and you can set them apart by the difference between their combat speeds exactly.

[anaris]

for hold and attack combined with an attack order you'll need 2 whole combat speeds of the faster unit and 1 difference-between-the-two, and if they both hold and attack (eg ur infantry are sacreds) I believe you'll want 3x the difference between the two speeds bc units take turns at different rates.

[Flashman]

If you are playing with economic troops, ie. chaff, and can choose to Double Line I could see it being useful as a Tetsudo vs. getting instantly killed. Vice versa if you were superbly confident in having maximal combat ability against what you face, then you could even Sparse Line your superior elites that were maybe a little less numerous to get a similar bind length for the battle field as with double the troops in Line formation.

[boozermonkey]

For this you need to understand the different types of troops and their uses. There are a lot so you can break it down to tanks/frontline holders. Support troops, flankers like cav annd flyers, and then there is the oddballs, which kind of fall in between the lines.

So first, determine what you want your general strategy to be and then start recruiting the troops and mages to make that a reality. There is such a vast variety in this game that it’s difficult to generalize, so that’s why most people tend to discuss specific national strategies. For example, the troop lineup for EA Ermor is vastly different from EA Arco. You really can’t compare the two. Or trying to compare MA Ermor with Ashpodel or MA Pangea.

Night and day, so you really need to study your nations troops, mages, national summons and spells, analyze your opponents weaknesses, and then go from there.

You will switch around your troop setup and formations in almost every battle to deal with different threats or to maximize your attack strategy based on so many things - what is the enemy bringing to the fight, do they have mages and what types, do they have archers, do they have giants or monsters, do they have cav, and so on.

[Bumc]

Part A is "what do I want my units to do".

I.e. against heavy infantry + archers you want your own ranged units to target their archers and be in skirmish formation to minimize damage from enemy arrows.

If you have legionnaire type units (a mix of heavier and lighter infantry with shields, spears and javelins) you want heavier troops closer to front in line on hold and attack and lighter ones a bit behind in a line with hold and fire. Then front ones don't break their formation and back ones use their javelins before engaging and patching the holes.

Cavalry as mentioned above, hold and attack rear somewhere in the back, let enemies engage infantry before surgically removing commanders.

You don't really need to move stuff around against indies that much, with some exceptions against cavalry or barbarians.

Part B is "how do I counter what enemies do"

That one is borderline impossible to cover and you'll learn more and more as you play on.

[MythTrip]

wowww what a great community thanks everyone!!!

[Uncle Al]

Line formation is generally very good, which is probably why you need a superior commander to use it, but it's not always better than box, depending on what you're trying to do.

Troops in a line move slower than in a box.

A squad in a line formation will try and maintain the line, and won't push forward into the enemy just because there's a gap in front of them. That means an entire line squad can get stalled by a small enemy squad hitting somewhere along the length of the line. The whole line will stop while only the section facing the enemy squad engages. The line also won't wrap around the enemy if the enemy are a small squad relative to the length of your line.

Flyers in line formation won't fly, they stay on the ground and march forward. This can be an advantage or a disadvantage.

Generally I find lines are good defensively, to keep squishier troops and commanders safe and protect against getting surrounded. They're also good if you just want to steadily chop your way through the entire enemy army and don't care about prioritising particular targets. Box formations are more mobile and good if you want to go after certain enemy units.