Breaking a Strong Defense

Frostfire · Post by **Frostfire** » August 2nd, 2006, 7:25 am

How do you break through a strong defensive position, like in the map Siege Castles it's on the east battle between upper right and bottom right (elves vs dwarves, me as elves) and basically we're both sitting on each side of the swamp, him with guardsmen and fighters, me with fighters and archers. So basically it boils down to niether of us wanting to attack the other because it would either require bottle-necking or passing through the swamp, which is a bad plan either way, and thus we are at a standoff saying, "do you want to come in here?" "nah, I'm good, what about you?" "no thanks, hey how about we get some pizza?" "sure". Or something like that.

I would assume that he would try to use ulfs to bbreak my line and then stick his guardsmen there, but I'm at a loss at to what to do.

Also if you are unfimiliar with the terrain I'm talking about, basically I have a bunch of forests on my side, and he has mountains/hills/a keep on his. Very bad for an assault (through swamp terrain no less).

toms · Post by **toms** » August 2nd, 2006, 7:46 am

If you play dwarfs, griffins are a good idea, coz they have the same def everywhere. Drakes have the saurian skirmishers, which can sneak in and weaken the enemy lines. Undead are pretty good in swamp, poachers too, and humans have skirmishers too. Once you broke the line, place a unit with good resistance.

Frostfire · Post by **Frostfire** » August 2nd, 2006, 7:57 am

Rebels?
Hunters?

Post by **zookeeper** » August 2nd, 2006, 8:09 am

Take some units around him to grab villages or to harass weaker units and thus force him to act? Or use a cheap decoy unit and place it so that he can't kill it without breaking his lines or at least exposing some of his units.

Multiplayer Scenarios / Campaigns · Post by **Rhuvaen** » August 2nd, 2006, 8:18 am

For the elves you should have a merman or two in this kind of situation. Use them to block off a corridor for your elvish troops to cross. Fighters should be backed by shamans, archers and mages should be most protected.

Sometimes it also helps to send a scout the long way around to annoy the enemy from behind - i.e. avoid getting into the facing-off situation in the first place. Also there must be villages elsewhere on the map that you can capture, and when you have an income advantage you can afford higher losses while crossing that swamp.

JW · Post by JW » August 2nd, 2006, 8:26 am

One good way to negate an opponents good defense is to use Magical attacks. Unfortunately, I don't know if this will help since I don't know the map that well.

Post by **zookeeper** » August 2nd, 2006, 8:37 am

JW wrote:One good way to negate an opponents good defense is to use Magical attacks. Unfortunately, I don't know if this will help since I don't know the map that well.

In this case, it would probably mean putting a whole bunch of magi to swamp to fry those guardsmen out - not a good idea, since you could expect to kill maybe one of them (with some luck) and your magi would then be dead the next turn.

Post by **F8 Binds...** » November 27th, 2006, 12:13 am

In this case, it would probably mean putting a whole bunch of magi to swamp to fry those guardsmen out - not a good idea, since you could expect to kill maybe one of them (with some luck) and your magi would then be dead the next turn.

i have seen your map and know your difficulty. the only hope is to put, for instance, a couple of mages out close to distract him and lure him out of his position. the problem is that you wast 40+ gold (ouch). other than that, you beat him by shear numbers, or you play with another person.[/img]

IB · Post by IB » November 27th, 2006, 2:46 pm

Try playing on a good map?

Glowing Fish · Post by **Glowing Fish** » November 27th, 2006, 7:36 pm

Three answers:

1. You can just throw as many troops in as possible, and hope that eventually you win the battle of attrition.

2. You can use units with specials to gain an advantage. Magical, marksman, poison, slow, berserker, charge are all specials that can get through this for you.

3. Use scout units to go behind and capture villages.

Post by **F8 Binds...** » November 27th, 2006, 10:11 pm

with sending units behind lines, it's a nice idea- but with one problem...
the map he is talking about, right next to the swamp is a river some 7-8 squares thick, rendering the idea quite useless. the other side of the swamp is the end of the map.

depending on his race, there are certain ways to acheive victory.
saurian augrs can benefit from the 60% defense in swamp, and throw out a 6-3 magical attack at night. woses, although they are slow, could make the initial penetration, since they get bad defense wherever they go, but won't die without giving out decent damage. with the same principle, HI could be used. even mermen or nagas with their 60% def, although they won't be able to continue on due to their ineffectiveness on land.

the defense shouldn't be to hard to conquer if you are higher in numbers.

Post by **Thrawn** » November 27th, 2006, 11:07 pm

on a semi-related note, I found a huge weakness in my playing strategy. I can't resist trying to break a solid defense. I hate waiting, and only manage to wait until the next time I have a good cycle, by which time the enemy has had time to fortify and support units. Especially against dwarves on small maps (Den of Onis, especially). I can't seem to dislodge them from the mountain positions when they begin in the north, as they have perfect positions, IMO for retreating to villages and replacing units.

As long as they grab their villages and sit there, I can't manage to beat them.

Grrrrrrr....