Cloak of Molten Metal, can´t win that battle.

[Don Cool]

Let me rephrase, I can win it every time, just not within the 12 minutes given. I am a natural born turtler in battles, being the mediocre strategist I am I rely on the AI to make mistakes and exploit them. Yes, I am a terrible player and it shows when I have to attack.

I have tried with various army compositions well aware of that I need heavy cavalry.

Last time I had :

6 demigryph knights ... all anti large to deal with the cavalry they have and rear charge once cavalry is out.

2 steam tanks to take the brunt of the infantry attack

1 sniping siege to take out the giant and hero.

4 gunmen to help out with the infantry, need piercing ammo for that.

2 pikemen to cover the flanks of my gunmen and to help out once flanks are secured.

4 swordsmen units to support the steam tanks.

Gelth debuffs mostly.


I can do the battle with almost no losses, but there is always two or three AI stacks almost intact when the 12 minutes have passed. Done this 4 times now with various compositions including demigryphs more suited for infantry.

When I try to attack ... I get wasted, I am no good when it comes to taking the game to the AI.

[Golf India]

The following is the most basic attack tactic ever but it will give you the basis for elaborating on that and eventually have fun attacking ;)

The game is a rock paper scissor with cool sprites and nice animation. Each unit is weak to another one, even the mighty dragons, and therefor, like in defense, the whole point is to make sure your troops are going to face what they are best at defeating. Remember that the objective number one of the battle is not to kill everyone but to rout everyone. Actually, most of the killing is done once the enemy army is routing.

It's more complicated than that and you really need the read the troop card to know which unit they are best at defeating but, in a nutshell, we could sum up this way:
Use cav against shooters and arty
Use artillery against heavy infantry
Use heavy infantry against heavy infantry
Use lance / hallberd infantry against large (cav and monsters).
Use shooters against damage dealers (light infantry, cav, damage oriented heavy infantry, monsters, other shooters).

So, to jump in it. Basic, balanced field army in Empire is:

2-4 artillery,
6-8 infantry,
4-6 cavalry,
4-6 shooters,
1-3 heroes,

I don't know in which diff you play but the AI tends to always do the same anyway. You'll face a frontline of infantry, a backline of shooters and artillery and flanks of cavalry. Sometimes you'll have slight variations but that's the typical super classic formation and most of the time at the beginning you'll do the same because it's a very reliable formation.

Make a frontline with your infantry, all of it, if your artillery is tank, put the tanks with the frontline. Behind the frontline center you put your arc shooters and behind the frontline on the flanks you put the gunpowder shooters and further away on each flank, the cav. Above the frontline, the flying heroes, between the frontline and the shooters, the casters and in front of the frontline, the general and melee heroes.

Make a nice and beautiful formation, lock it with ctrl G, and move them to the ennemy. A Total War battle is not different from an RPG battle. Tough, resistant units need to "tank" the frontline, dps unit needs to go in the back and deal damage. Same here. So you need to make sure your frontline of infantry engage the maximum number of the ennemy frontline they can and hold them in place. Your frontline is not here to do the killing, they are here to create a point of fixation for the ennemy army. You need to win the flanks, so your cav is going to engage their cav and your flank shooters (usually Handgunners or powder based unit) will help your cav. Given you are using demi gryph knights and handgunners, the combination of the two should wreak havoc on almost anything they'll face on that flank. Don't pursue routing flank units, you need to fold your flanks on the back of the ennemy main force so you can't waste time pursuing the fleeing things. They will come back but mostly be harmless. Winning the flanks means that you rout their flank giving you access to their backline from the back. So once you win the flanks, you send the cav on the ennemy backline (shooters and arty) and you tell your flanking handgunners to shoot in the back/flank of their heavy infantry. Once the cav has teared apart the shooters, send them to finish the job on the back of their frontline. While all this was happening on the flanks, your frontline is engaged with their frontline and they just bash at each other. The whole idea is not to win the frontline battle with your own frontline but with your flanks. Your frontline is the tank in an MMORPG: it holds the line while the damage dealers are doing the damage dealing. What about your arty and backline arc shooters? Make them shoot at the approaching heavy infantry first and once engaged with your frontline, switch to the ennemy shooters to soften them up for your cav later. Always focus fire. Don't tell your 4 shooters to shoot at 4 different targets, they should focus the same unit, destroy it and move to the next one, it's much more efficient.

Once your flanks fold on their back, it's game over, the ennemy army should rout very fast. Then you'll have the victory message and the "press finish battle". Don't do it. Pause the game and assign to each of your cav regiment an ennemy regiment to annihilate to make sure they'll actually die. Obviously, it's better to finish off elite ennemy units. See that fleeing almost full regiment of dwarves iron breakers? Send one reg of your cav to run after them and annihilate them.

Again all of this is very basic but it will give the foundation for elaborating and trying more sophisticated approach to attacking. That technique is called a pincer move, it's basic, very easy to implement and extremely efficient. Once you master that, you can try having fun with fake retreats, splitting ennemy armies in half, hit and run, shock attack etc etc etc.

Oh and read the cards of the units. Everything is there. A unit that is anti large means it's very good against cav and monsters so use it for cav and monsters, etc etc etc. All the clues you need are there.

Have Fun ^^

[Don Cool]

Originally posted by Golf India:

The following is the most basic attack tactic ever but it will give you the basis for elaborating on that and eventually have fun attacking ;)

The game is a rock paper scissor with cool sprites and nice animation. Each unit is weak to another one, even the mighty dragons, and therefor, like in defense, the whole point is to make sure your troops are going to face what they are best at defeating. Remember that the objective number one of the battle is not to kill everyone but to rout everyone. Actually, most of the killing is done once the enemy army is routing.

It's more complicated than that and you really need the read the troop card to know which unit they are best at defeating but, in a nutshell, we could sum up this way:
Use cav against shooters and arty
Use artillery against heavy infantry
Use heavy infantry against heavy infantry
Use lance / hallberd infantry against large (cav and monsters).
Use shooters against damage dealers (light infantry, cav, damage oriented heavy infantry, monsters, other shooters).

So, to jump in it. Basic, balanced field army in Empire is:

2-4 artillery,
6-8 infantry,
4-6 cavalry,
4-6 shooters,
1-3 heroes,

I don't know in which diff you play but the AI tends to always do the same anyway. You'll face a frontline of infantry, a backline of shooters and artillery and flanks of cavalry. Sometimes you'll have slight variations but that's the typical super classic formation and most of the time at the beginning you'll do the same because it's a very reliable formation.

Make a frontline with your infantry, all of it, if your artillery is tank, put the tanks with the frontline. Behind the frontline center you put your arc shooters and behind the frontline on the flanks you put the gunpowder shooters and further away on each flank, the cav. Above the frontline, the flying heroes, between the frontline and the shooters, the casters and in front of the frontline, the general and melee heroes.

Make a nice and beautiful formation, lock it with ctrl G, and move them to the ennemy. A Total War battle is not different from an RPG battle. Tough, resistant units need to "tank" the frontline, dps unit needs to go in the back and deal damage. Same here. So you need to make sure your frontline of infantry engage the maximum number of the ennemy frontline they can and hold them in place. Your frontline is not here to do the killing, they are here to create a point of fixation for the ennemy army. You need to win the flanks, so your cav is going to engage their cav and your flank shooters (usually Handgunners or powder based unit) will help your cav. Given you are using demi gryph knights and handgunners, the combination of the two should wreak havoc on almost anything they'll face on that flank. Don't pursue routing flank units, you need to fold your flanks on the back of the ennemy main force so you can't waste time pursuing the fleeing things. They will come back but mostly be harmless. Winning the flanks means that you rout their flank giving you access to their backline from the back. So once you win the flanks, you send the cav on the ennemy backline (shooters and arty) and you tell your flanking handgunners to shoot in the back/flank of their heavy infantry. Once the cav has teared apart the shooters, send them to finish the job on the back of their frontline. While all this was happening on the flanks, your frontline is engaged with their frontline and they just bash at each other. The whole idea is not to win the frontline battle with your own frontline but with your flanks. Your frontline is the tank in an MMORPG: it holds the line while the damage dealers are doing the damage dealing. What about your arty and backline arc shooters? Make them shoot at the approaching heavy infantry first and once engaged with your frontline, switch to the ennemy shooters to soften them up for your cav later. Always focus fire. Don't tell your 4 shooters to shoot at 4 different targets, they should focus the same unit, destroy it and move to the next one, it's much more efficient.

Once your flanks fold on their back, it's game over, the ennemy army should rout very fast. Then you'll have the victory message and the "press finish battle". Don't do it. Pause the game and assign to each of your cav regiment an ennemy regiment to annihilate to make sure they'll actually die. Obviously, it's better to finish off elite ennemy units. See that fleeing almost full regiment of dwarves iron breakers? Send one reg of your cav to run after them and annihilate them.

Again all of this is very basic but it will give the foundation for elaborating and trying more sophisticated approach to attacking. That technique is called a pincer move, it's basic, very easy to implement and extremely efficient. Once you master that, you can try having fun with fake retreats, splitting ennemy armies in half, hit and run, shock attack etc etc etc.

Oh and read the cards of the units. Everything is there. A unit that is anti large means it's very good against cav and monsters so use it for cav and monsters, etc etc etc. All the clues you need are there.

Have Fun ^^

Thank you Golf, I might use your ideas in the future but its hard to change the nature of a man. I will always be a defensive minded player, hence why I never play games where you have to rush ... plenty of those around.

I actually did the mission for a 5th time and this time I nailed it with 3 minutes to spare. I was trying to run rings with cavalry to give my artillery time to do some work, that was wrong of me. This time I used my cavalry gunners to speed their army up into my defensive blob, worked wonders, with a time limit I shouldnt have given it too much thought. I still played defensively, I just had to make their army run into mine.

The rest was easy.

[wwolf69]

I'm sorry, what is exactly a problem? I don't remember any quest battle to have timer at all... do you mean that one with "Boo-boo scary Kholek comes"? Some arty did fine for me.

[Golf India]

Attacking is actually of a lot of fun especially when you can collapse an entire enemy army in just a couple of seconds if your attacks are well synchronised. I'm trying this at the moment with the DE and it's wonderful. When I succeed in it, from the moment my troops are all engaged with the ennemy, it takes 5-10 seconds to see the entire ennemy army rout. Then you just kill them all while they flee. Very funny.

Just try attacking sometimes, when you feel very confident, or when you outnumber the ennemy, and try a couple of attack tactics like the pincer move. You never know, you might become fond of it. Now the ultimate dream is to recreate the battle of Cannes in which Hannibal encircled the Roman army while having much less troops then the romans. Sometimes it works, sometimes it's a disaster but it's always fun ^^

[peremptor]

Good luck. I'd give tips but I haven't played empire yet.

[lump0815]

You certainly didn't mean the "cloak of molten metal"-questline, but the "staff of Volans" one (which is the only 1 /w a 12 minutes-timelimit).

That mission goes vs Chaos;
1x Chaos Lord (on horse),
1x Chosen (halberds),
2x Chosen (great weapons),
5x Chaos Warriors,
1x Chaos Knights,
3x Chaos Knights (Lances),
2x Chaos Trolls,
1x Chaos Giant.

The quest battle preset for Gelt's army is:
1x Gelt (how surprising, ikr...),
4x Greatswords,
2x Halberdiers,
1x Crossbowmen,
3x Handgunners,
2x Empire Knights,
2x Reiksguard Knights,
2x Outriders(grenade launchers),
1x Hellblaster volley gun,
1x Hellstorm rocketlauncher battery,
1x Steam Tank.

The landscape is /w Gelt seated inbetween a minor hill in his back and a large plateau on which chaos waits. the left side of that plateau holds a massive obstruction , forcing a passing army to blob up while passing it.


Just did a quick playthrough, took me 9 minutes /w the preset.

Proceeding was to:

- form a defensive line on the small hill in the rear,
(Greatswords in centre, halberdiers on the flanks. Knights (1 unit each) behind the halberdiers. Handgunners behind the Greatswords (some more steps so that they wouldn't get obstructed fast), artillery behind the handgunners. Steamtank infront of the Greatswords.
(I guess dedicated Empire-players might've built different, i find them to be the true vermin in wh tho (=not playing them usually))
- send in outriders to make Chaos attack, and let them (=the outriders) fall back again,

(from hereon, things go a bit chaotic; which tends to happen when several things happen simultaniously)

- monitored Chaos host for when it entered hellstorm-range, targetted an infantry unit inmidst the blob; same for the Hellblaster, threw in a golden hounds of gehena for personal entertainment purposes,

- let the Outriders sweep infront my infantry line to make pursuing Chaos Knights follow up infront and in range of my handgunners (worked only for 1 unit tho. QQ. 2 stayed on my right flank, 1 more charged into my Greatsword line)

- sent the Steamtank to engage the linecharging Chaos Knights, the right Halberdiers onto 1 Chaos Knight unit on the right flank ("inner"), the 2 Knight units onto the 2nd ("outer"),

- focussed fire of handgunners and crossbowmen on the giant (it dropped within ~15 sec's; didn't even get close to my line),

- laughed abt the brilliant AI use of the trolls. (running into the handgunner zone of fire, getting broken, running away; 1 trying to get away to my left flank (getting wiped by the Empire Knights on that side), 2 turning around,

- got shocked by my own noobness; while laughing abt the chaos trolls, i let the right flank unattended; the chaos knights that originally had charged into my greatswords had retreated there and instead charged my halberdiers/pummeled them,

- "nothing of interest happened"; noticing the Chaos Lord charging into my greatswords now, assaulted him(?) /w 1 unit of greatswords and the steamtank. focussed fire of my handgunners onto him as well (cav = "large target" = handgunners can occasionally land a shot),

- sent the other 3 units of greatswords forward to engage the Chaos infantry, Outriders to work out a bit on the enemy's flank, the left-flank Reiksguard to circle around the enemy host and wait in their back for the melee to start, called the left-wing Empire Knights back (the pursuid Troll unit was down or had escaped, dunno), cast transmutation of lead onto the battlezone /w the enemy general engaged (plus the chosen(halberds), 2 chaos warriors, the by now returned 2nd chaos trolls in range),

- noticed the Chaos lord to break, sent the "now-free" Greatsword unit to assist my right-wing cav, focus-fired the opposing general down /w all 3 handgunners. Sent the Steamtank into the infantry brawl (for obvious reasons not on the chosen(halberds)),

- "would have" sent my left-wing cav to cycle-charge the opposing infantry from behind. Was not necessary tho, enemy army shattered altogether shortly after the general went down due to "army losses".


Could've been faster, however, i only started setting up my line of defense after the battle had started (instead of using placement phase), and only sent outriders in once i had finished the line-placing (cost ~2 minutes altogether. I'm slow.).

Which ultimately makes me wonder - what exactly is your problem /w winning this battle, when using a customized army? Please elaborate for better-suited tips...


p.s.: Yes. i could have simply uploaded a replay vid. But a felt like writing this down instead. Cope /w that.

[Don Cool]

Originally posted by lump0815:

You certainly didn't mean the "cloak of molten metal"-questline, but the "staff of Volans" one (which is the only 1 /w a 12 minutes-timelimit).

That mission goes vs Chaos;
1x Chaos Lord (on horse),
1x Chosen (halberds),
2x Chosen (great weapons),
5x Chaos Warriors,
1x Chaos Knights,
3x Chaos Knights (Lances),
2x Chaos Trolls,
1x Chaos Giant.

The quest battle preset for Gelt's army is:
1x Gelt (how surprising, ikr...),
4x Greatswords,
2x Halberdiers,
1x Crossbowmen,
3x Handgunners,
2x Empire Knights,
2x Reiksguard Knights,
2x Outriders(grenade launchers),
1x Hellblaster volley gun,
1x Hellstorm rocketlauncher battery,
1x Steam Tank.

The landscape is /w Gelt seated inbetween a minor hill in his back and a large plateau on which chaos waits. the left side of that plateau holds a massive obstruction , forcing a passing army to blob up while passing it.


Just did a quick playthrough, took me 9 minutes /w the preset.

Proceeding was to:

- form a defensive line on the small hill in the rear,
(Greatswords in centre, halberdiers on the flanks. Knights (1 unit each) behind the halberdiers. Handgunners behind the Greatswords (some more steps so that they wouldn't get obstructed fast), artillery behind the handgunners. Steamtank infront of the Greatswords.
(I guess dedicated Empire-players might've built different, i find them to be the true vermin in wh tho (=not playing them usually))
- send in outriders to make Chaos attack, and let them (=the outriders) fall back again,

(from hereon, things go a bit chaotic; which tends to happen when several things happen simultaniously)

- monitored Chaos host for when it entered hellstorm-range, targetted an infantry unit inmidst the blob; same for the Hellblaster, threw in a golden hounds of gehena for personal entertainment purposes,

- let the Outriders sweep infront my infantry line to make pursuing Chaos Knights follow up infront and in range of my handgunners (worked only for 1 unit tho. QQ. 2 stayed on my right flank, 1 more charged into my Greatsword line)

- sent the Steamtank to engage the linecharging Chaos Knights, the right Halberdiers onto 1 Chaos Knight unit on the right flank ("inner"), the 2 Knight units onto the 2nd ("outer"),

- focussed fire of handgunners and crossbowmen on the giant (it dropped within ~15 sec's; didn't even get close to my line),

- laughed abt the brilliant AI use of the trolls. (running into the handgunner zone of fire, getting broken, running away; 1 trying to get away to my left flank (getting wiped by the Empire Knights on that side), 2 turning around,

- got shocked by my own noobness; while laughing abt the chaos trolls, i let the right flank unattended; the chaos knights that originally had charged into my greatswords had retreated there and instead charged my halberdiers/pummeled them,

- "nothing of interest happened"; noticing the Chaos Lord charging into my greatswords now, assaulted him(?) /w 1 unit of greatswords and the steamtank. focussed fire of my handgunners onto him as well (cav = "large target" = handgunners can occasionally land a shot),

- sent the other 3 units of greatswords forward to engage the Chaos infantry, Outriders to work out a bit on the enemy's flank, the left-flank Reiksguard to circle around the enemy host and wait in their back for the melee to start, called the left-wing Empire Knights back (the pursuid Troll unit was down or had escaped, dunno), cast transmutation of lead onto the battlezone /w the enemy general engaged (plus the chosen(halberds), 2 chaos warriors, the by now returned 2nd chaos trolls in range),

- noticed the Chaos lord to break, sent the "now-free" Greatsword unit to assist my right-wing cav, focus-fired the opposing general down /w all 3 handgunners. Sent the Steamtank into the infantry brawl (for obvious reasons not on the chosen(halberds)),

- "would have" sent my left-wing cav to cycle-charge the opposing infantry from behind. Was not necessary tho, enemy army shattered altogether shortly after the general went down due to "army losses".


Could've been faster, however, i only started setting up my line of defense after the battle had started (instead of using placement phase), and only sent outriders in once i had finished the line-placing (cost ~2 minutes altogether. I'm slow.).

Which ultimately makes me wonder - what exactly is your problem /w winning this battle, when using a customized army? Please elaborate for better-suited tips...


p.s.: Yes. i could have simply uploaded a replay vid. But a felt like writing this down instead. Cope /w that.

You didn´t read my previous post, I did exactly what you describe above. I used ranged cavalry to lure them into my troops although different composition. What I had done previously was to run the cavalry in rings to give my artillery time to work ... that obviously turned out bad. I explained that in my second post.

[lump0815]

Originally posted by Don:

...
You didn´t read my previous post, I did exactly what you describe above. I used ranged cavalry to lure them into my troops although different composition. What I had done previously was to run the cavalry in rings to give my artillery time to work ... that obviously turned out bad. I explained that in my second post.

Oh, i did read the posts. Just not the names . Good to find out you found a way around this mission on your own anyway :).

[Don Cool]

Originally posted by lump0815:

Originally posted by Don:

...
You didn´t read my previous post, I did exactly what you describe above. I used ranged cavalry to lure them into my troops although different composition. What I had done previously was to run the cavalry in rings to give my artillery time to work ... that obviously turned out bad. I explained that in my second post.

Oh, i did read the posts. Just not the names . Good to find out you found a way around this mission on your own anyway :).

Good post btw, I forgot to thank you. Not having much luck with greatswords though, I have played so much with the lizzards that Empire infantry makes me nauseous, they pale in comparison. I try to use the steam tanks as bait and the greatswords engaging right after as support, even so they still melt fast to almost anybody .... unless its meatshields of course.