Expert Guide to Army Control [sCaIz_]

Army Control

hey guys, in this article i want to explain my personal view of how to control your army as
effective as possible. surely im not close to be a good DM player, i dont even know the
hotkeys for most buildings. but i can tell you with a good conscience, that i know every
unit stance/formation and i know which beats what of playing CS a pretty long time.
some of my hints or tactics will not be praticable / are useless in a DM game, yet i
think it might be interesting to know how to beat 40 paladins with 40 axes, how to
make sure to win every pretty equal battle, like 40 vs. 40 paladins. or how to freeze an
enemy's army!

i set the formations and stances of my army completly with (regular) hotkeys, its the
only way to be succesfull with what you do, because you have to do it fast, else it will
just be a normal patrol and nothing special.


Regular hotkeys:

Formations
Line Q
Staggered E
Box W
Flank F

Stances
Aggresive A
Defensive D
Standground N
Passiv O

Other
Patrol Z
Stop S


Important hints
- dont fight an enemy who is on a big hill! lets imagine a battle, where your enemy got 40 archers on a hill and you are attacking him with 40 of your archers. he will completly defeat you, while he will have 10-15 archers left. same with cav and inf. thats probably because your units cant fight properly after climbing a big ass hill
- try to avoid battles, when your amount of army is obviously less than your enemy's! as an idiot example: (enemy)2 vs. 1(you) paladin, you might know the result. a better example: (enemy)40 vs. 20(you) paladins. with a proper army control your enemy might win the battle with 1-5 died units and NOT 20!


Infantery/ Cavalry
i personally, run my inf/cav on standground. like this i make sure that they dont follow one single enemy unit and get lost/split on the whole map. but thats not the main reason. run your paladins into your enemy's paladin army on standground and as soon as your inside(!) your enemy's army, change your stance to defensive and repatrol. you will notice your units will fight like crazy and kinda "break out of the prison". i guarantee that you will win the battle (if its quite euqal) with more than half of your units left. thats because you make sure that all of your units start fighting at the same moment, while ur enemy's pals are blocking each other ways and fight delayed. so far i have only seen mortal_share doing this. besides his great eco thats one of his keys to be top.

this needs a perfect timing, to know when to change stance to defensive and when to repatrol, which comes after doing this over and over again. by doing that theres also a chance to freeze your enemy's army. his units will stop fighting and just run around like crazy.

you noticed, your enemy is using this strategy, what now? how to counter?
check the picture below, we both ran our pals into each other, on stand ground. i flanked them quite before the battle. right now i change the stance to defensive and repatrol. my army surrounded him while his units where at one point and only had about 10 paladins fighting. i left the battle with 15 units left.



distracting enemy units
there is a pretty easy way to completly defeat your enemy's army. this strategy is used in AoC CBA and its called distracting enemy units. check the picture below.




as you see, i am distracting half of his army with 1 paladin. im still on stand ground, changing stance to defensive now would really suck. wait 1-2 secs untill you are pretty much inside.






he didnt watch his army and i have been fighting 40 vs. 30 long enough to leave the battle with 25 paladins left.


Archered units/ axes, mamelukes
an easy and effective way to use archered units in big battles is the mostly used line/standground formation.

lets take axes as an example, when they are in a good position, just stop them on stand ground. from now on you can only micro your paladins. run your paladins back so your axes dont get out of range. check picture below:





axe vs. axe
axes are weak. imagine a 40 vs. 40 axe war. if both players use line/standground formation it will be a pretty luck depending battle.
how to avoid luck? check pictures below, and remind, axes are weak!











for those, who still dont know why i said that axes are weak twice: if you have your axes crunched like player 2, his axemen will shoot on dead bodies! they are taking 40 shots to one of my man. even tho 7 shots would be enough. while i flank him and kill one by one. thats much more effective.


draging in archer battles
this is a pretty amazing strategy you might use in random civ games. set your light cavs on passiv and let them patrol on a short way. the shorter the way, the more your opponent will fail trying to shoot you. look how many arrows are besides my light cavs! light cav is the fastest unit in the game, champs or what ever will also do it, if you do it right.

i completly defeated enemy's skirms and lost 2 scouts and 4 skirms.






evil trick (40 axes own 40 pals)
you might remember i was talking about " not practicable" tricks. this is maybe one of it, but maybe not! if your enemy is stupid enough to fight this.

lets imagine, i see some enemy paladins coming to own my axes, i might aswell run back somewhere and probabaly lose some of my axes. but why not just fight if i can win the battle?

for this we need a straight line, like the crater in the picture below. buildings, water or trees will also do a good job. the point is to crunch your axes as much as possible and as fast as possible (2-3 secs)

first step, select your army and change their stance to passiv, if they are not on passiv, they will start attacking enemy units and you will not be able to set up a good crunch. patrol them straight into the crater.




second step, first repatrol





third step, second repatrol





your axes seem to be ready to fight, change stance to standground





40 axes owned 40 paladins. 11 axes left!






thats all so far, hope it can improve your gameplay and comment please!