Strategy tips for RTW:BI
Posted: 2005-10-28 07:20pm
I know some people have had trouble with Barbarian Invasion, and in my second attempt at a VH/VH campaign with the Western Roman Empire (the hardest combo in the game), I'm doing so well that I think I'll share what I've learned:
- Do not undersize your garrisons in pursuit of lower manpower costs. Instead, simply eliminate high-cost units while keeping your garrisons around a half-stack in strength. It is possible to successfully defend cities against huge attacking armies with relatively low-quality units if you know what you are doing. I generally use a mix of peasants, limitanei, and foederati spearmen for infantry, plus an archer unit or two, and one cavalry unit (plus a general if I'm lucky). I tend to keep all of my garrisons around the 9 or 10-unit level, ie- a half stack. I've tried running smaller garrisons but it's always caused too many problems. A half-stack of relatively low-end units is just about right, balancing military needs with economic ones.
- In the early game, build garrisons first, and structures second.. Due to the effect of garrison strength on public order, and the effect of public order on economic output, you actually gain more short-term income from an increase in garrison strength than you do from building structures. In fact, in my current game I added peasants to every city for the first few turns, and didn't build anything. One side-effect of larger garrisons is that you are less likely to be attacked; the AI will tend to look for weakly defended cities first.
- Use defense to crush barbarian factions, and offense to defeat civilized factions. The only city I took early on was the Allemani capital, and that's because it's their only city, they're a constant irritation, I had a field army nearby at game start, and they are a civilized faction, which means they will not form a horde when you take their last city. After that, I went into full defensive mode, knowing the barbarian hordes were coming. It is difficult to engage a barbarian horde in the field because of the sheer number of troops he can bring to battle. The best way to deal with barbarian hordes is at your city walls.
- Develop ways of eliminating barbarian faction generals. Barbarian factions are infuriatingly persistent. You can kill 99% of a barbarian horde and the remaining general will wander off, bribe some mercenaries, take a lightly defended rebel city somewhere, and build up a new army. And if you take that city, he will form a new horde, which is just as huge as the old one. Killing generals in battle is difficult, especially if they engage early; oftentimes they run, and they're very hard to catch, particularly when you still have to deal with the rest of their armies. I like to catch fleeing remnants of barbarian horde factions in the field with a large force composed of a whole bunch of "disposable" generals (ie- generals whose religion differs from that of their settlement, which makes them a penalty to public order and in many ways a liability) or with carriage ballistae. Another way to eliminate barbarian faction leaders is to trap them inside a city when they attack it (more on this later).
- Learn how to defend cities against huge enemy armies. There's no way around this. No matter what a great strategist you believe you are, you will eventually find yourself hunkered into a city with a modest garrison while a gigantic barbarian horde waits outside, numbering in the thousands. I have a few tips on this matter:
- Let them take the walls. When you are vastly outnumbered, it is hopeless to try and stop them from taking the walls, especially when you restrict yourself to low-grade troops for economic reasons.
- Fight them at the city square. Your men will not break and run on the city square; they will fight to the death. His men, on the other hand, will often be exhausted from running past all manner of defensive towers shooting at them, and will route easily.
- Keep a peasant unit on the walls far away from the point where they assault them (separated by two towers), and when they take the gatehouse (which they will), wait till they start going down to ground level and then run to retake the gatehouse. This will cause the burning oil to start raining down on their forces as they try to squeeze through the gate, and it will also cause the gatehouse defenses to start firing again, both inside and out. Other effects of this action also include reinforcing armies stopping in their tracks (they will wait until someone retakes the gatehouse before approaching further), and of course, infantry units will try to come back up the tower or ladder in order to retake the gatehouse so you shouldn't leave those peasants there indefinitely. In fact, I often move them away, let the enemy retake the gatehouse, and then rush them in again. I've done this as much as three times in one battle. But there's one downside: with no avenue of escape, enemy troops inside your city will not be routed under any circumstances. All will fight to the death. So only retake the gatehouse if they have some other way in/out (such as a wall breach or a smashed gate or more infantry on the outside which can climb onto the walls and retake the gatehouse). Otherwise you will find that their armies inside your city are tough as hell. Gatehouses are best retaken when the enemy can take it back (so the tactic just delays his attacking army and eats up their manpower) or when you're trying to trap a fleeing enemy general. The comprehensive killing of generals is crucial to eliminating barbarian factions. If even one general escapes, he can start the entire cycle over again.
- Keep your archers on the walls, ready to fire inward. Archers are of only limited value at the city square, but on the walls, placed strategically so that they will fire into the backs of enemy troopers heading toward your city square, they can unleash death on a massive scale. In a typical large city defense against a horde, my archers run dry or nearly dry of arrows, and rack up many hundreds of kills while also weakening enemy morale. They are best used to kill elite enemy troops, since even the best enemy troops will be quite vulnerable to arrows from the rear. Manual targeting orders are often necessary.
- Map out the enemy's projected path to your city square. No competent city defense is complete without projecting which paths the enemy is likely to take to get to your city square. You can then position archers strategically and arrange your city square defense with knowledge of where an attack will probably come from. - Know which factions you can destroy most easily. The Allemani are pitifully easy to destroy, and should be dealt with immediately and offensively. The Celts and Berbers I left off till later, but they are also easy to destroy because they don't form barbarian hordes when you take their last city. But the Franks, the Goths, the Burgundi, the Huns, the Vandals, the Sarmatians, and the Slavs form barbarian hordes when you take their last city, so be careful. I've eliminated most of those factions, but I did so by allowing them to besiege my cities and then annihilating their armies when they tried to attack.
- Walls, walls, walls. The creation of bigger and better walls should be your #1 construction priority. City-defense tactics against huge enemy armies is almost entirely dependent upon having strong walls with good defenses. These walls won't stop an enemy with siege weapons but they will eat up his manpower, and continue to do so even after he has breached them and entered the city.
- Don't skimp on spies. The enemy is fond of using spies to disrupt public order in your cities, and this has a huge impact on your bottom line. Your own spies will ferret out these foreign interlopers and send them to the afterlife where they belong. I put one spy in every city, and the first unit I recruit whenever I take an enemy city is always a spy.