Combat Tactics

Battleground

A battle is composed of the succession of several assault in the same place, it being in front of a city wall or on a road. The battleground is created when you first use the attack command against a single player. Providing your units still have Action Points, you can launch another assault on the same battleground after a 30 seconds delay. A battleground dissolves 15 minutes after the last assault, units of both sides regaining their lines. Each assault consists of 5 rounds that last 10 seconds, where each unit in turn react to orders, moves, fires missiles, and/or fights units on the same zone.

The battleground is divided into 5 zones: your Rear Guard (RG), your Defence Zone (DZ), the Battle Field (BF), the Enemy Defences (ED), and the Enemy Field (EF). At the beginning of the battle, your missile units are stationed on your RG, and hand to hand units on your DZ. If you have walls of any kind, they are positioned on your DZ. Note that this description is perfectly symmetric, so that your DZ is the enemy's ED.

Unit Combat Abilities

• Hand-to-hand attack skill(*): Hand to hand fight occurs between units in the same battlezone. This describes the ability of the unit to inflict damage to opponents.
• Hand-to-hand defense skill(*): This describes the ability of the unit to avoid hand-to-hand damage.
• Range attack skill(*): According to the unit's profile and experience, the presence of walls or use of some spells, a unit can shoot at a range of up to 3 battle zones. This describes how well the unit use missile weapons. Logically, it's used only by units having a missile attack.
• Range attack defense(*): This describes how well the unit avoids range damage.
• Initiative describes the highest speed at which a unit can carry out orders, on a scale of 1 to 10, the higher the better.
• Morale(*) describes the strength of mind of a unit, on a scale of 20. A unit with a high moral will fight to the death while low morale units may flee a hard fight.
• Discipline(*) tells how well the unit will conform to battle orders, even if against the natural behavior of the unit.
• Battle Move(*) corresponds to the maximum number of battle zone a unit can cross at the beginning of a round. Value is 1 for foot, 2 for cavalery and 3 for some nomads units.
• Default battle orders (see below)

(*) marked characteristics values are not available to players (/me sometimes wonders why)

Battle Orders

Your character is no field commander, but rather a strategical general. Thus, you can carefully forge battle plans and assign orders to each unit or group of units for the duration of the battle, but once the battle is engaged, dices are cast and you cannot influence the issue anymore.

The battle orders assign the behaviors of the units during combat, providing they don't break orders (remember I mentionned discipline). Units are not very bright, so they can remember at most 4 battle plans, each one corresponding to a specific combat order. When it gets trained, a unit knows 4 standard battle plans. The first one is the most basic, the things the unit does best. The second one is usually more aggressive, and the third more defensive. The last order is the default reaction order, the one that is used when another player attacks you, usually a defensive order. However you can assign new battle plans using the setorders command. Note that you can also delay the moment at which an order should take place, by adding the wished initiative value to the order code. For instance Ma2 will be a missile ambush taking effect at initiative 2. Default (and maximum effective value) is the initiative of the unit.

Just one last thing: experience enhance the units' characteristics. Not to the point of enabling them to beat units of the next level, but significantly nonetheless.

Calcoran's Tips, from the War Master's memoirs

Lesson one: the Ambush Order

How it works:

Easy . Your troops hide, either behind your walls, in the nearby woods, behind rocks, whatever. When the enemy come by, they drop on him and double the damages they inflict (roughly). There is one catch. If the enemy detects your troops, they can act accordingly and be prepared when your troops actually jump on them. In this case, the enemy doubles its damages. Units good at laying in ambush are high initiative, disciplined units. Units good at detecting ambushes are high initiative units. Mostly, Nomads and Elves (Dwarves are very disciplined ... well, most of them, not the Beserkers of course ... but they are usually not extremely fast). Usually, the higher the unit's level, the better. Also, if your units have already attacked another army during the battle, there is little point in tying to ambush it, since it'll be a lot more cautious.

When to use the Ambush order

• When defending. It is a valid option, but if your ambush fails, you could end up in trouble as it might enable the enemy to gain a foothold into your defenses. It might be a good idea to lay your missile units in ambush though ... might give the enemy a nasty surprise.
• When attacking. Some players have a very offensive way of defending : when they detect an attack, they charge. It is a good way of getting rid of pesky pre-attack spellcasters or missile throwers that might be used to weaken the defenses. One way to use this to your advantage is to attack with just a few missile units, and lay the rest in ambush. The enemy will come to you, and get ambushed. If the ambush succeeds, this is very good for you as the enemy isn't behind its protective walls anymore ... on top of the additionnal damages from the ambush. Oh, and if it is indeed charging, there is little chance it'll detect the ambush anyway.