AoE 103 Here is the much-delayed AoE 103. At the very end of AoE 102 I made some suggestions about what I was going to talk about, but that was a long time ago and I�m not going to discuss that now. Instead I�m going to talk about Napoleonic AoE. Basically all this is, is learning from the legendary general Napoleon, how to play and win at AoE. There are two aspects to Napoleonic AoE, first is divide and conquer and second is fighting on 2 fronts.
The initial genius of Napoleon at battles like Austerlitz was his ability to manipulate a victory versus a larger army. He did this by splitting the enemy forces into multiple groups which when attacked separately had a numerical disadvantage vs. his French troops. The same strategy can be applied and is encouraged on the AoE battlefield as well. Baring skirmishes between rogue CA wandering the map, you are typically either controlling an attacking army or one of the defensive variety. You can manipulate your opponents� maneuvers in both conditions and I will explain how.
If you are on the attack and have numbers on your side you don�t have to worry about splitting his troops up. Just crush them straight away and then go for his villagers. However if you are outnumbered you can still do damage and there is no reason why you should call off your attack. First of all keep in mind that your objective in the attack is to let you get the upper hand economically. What this means you want to do things that will disrupt his economic flow while yours continues to gain momentum. What you should then do is roughly split your CA into 2-3 groups. (This is assuming you can get into his town if not then don�t bother attacking with less military). Run your CA in different directions through his economy. With some CA don�t even bother to attack his villys just run around and distract his army, at the very least you can just click a few basic directions for your CA, your enemy however doesn�t know where the hell you are going and conversely has to micromanage his a lot more carefully. This allows you time to go back to your base and micro your economy better and concentrate on making a new attacking force. With the other half of your army try to pick off any wounded units, this can be villys or CA. One way to do this is have your distraction army run into your other army so you have regrouped in the base and then quickly turn on one of the chasing forces. If you are good at moving the CA around you can, even if it�s just for a brief moment, have the numerical superiority and kill a few CA. Your basic goal in this scenario is to delay defeat, not attain victory. You can�t win with less troops, but you can disrupt his economic production and distract his military from attacking you. Basically you are prolonging your life and buying time for your boom. At the very end of this run try to kill any villys you can take as many out as possible and in a blaze of glory go down shooting.
For the defensive your goal is the opposite. You want to concentrate on his CA and prevent any economic disruption. As a defensive player you should have 3 advantages. 1st you have had first dibs on your terrain and hopefully have positioned yourself somewhat defensively with walls and buildings on hills. Hopefully you have built walls that will at least force your opponent to go through an opening in a certain spot where your ranges are or allows you to shoot at him from an elevation. At the very least you should have it so he has to encounter some military resistance before getting to the goods. Your 2nd advantage is that your ranges are closer to the fighting and your means of production. This means you time retreats and advances on the opponent with the production of your CA. One of my favorite movies is retreating with like 4 CA to my ranges right when 4 others are popping out. Tough shit for him if he doesn�t have 8. The obvious ability to reinforce your army should give you numerical superiority over a brief time if you don�t already have it to begin with. Your 3rd advantage is that your villys are right there to help. They can take down weak CA or build more ranges to join the battle. Basically on defense you are trying to gain numerical superiority at all costs while still trying to maintain economic competition with the enemy. Many times players have won initial defensive battles on their own turf, only to allow the enemy to build a much larger force, which will come later and crush them.
In both cases you have one other wild card factor, that Napoleon did not have himself�allies. One of the easiest ways to gain numerical superiority is to ask an ally to come on the raid or come to your aid (I like rhyming, so sue me). With allied support you can decide to go for the jugular and turn your simple economic raid into a fight to the death, well the enemies death at least. If that is the case go all out with army and send more troops to the fronts immediately, and villys as well. Start to take over his land if you see him evacuating, set up some stuff by his ranges which should be on fire by now. Hopefully you can start to cut his wood and make multiple town centers in his base. While allies are a quick way to gain numerical superiority they are not necessary, in fact numbers aren�t even necessary�if you have boats. The war ship can do more damage and take more punishment then any CA. If you are playing shallows you can successfully defend your base and get a faster boom if you are using boat defense. Depending on how ballsy you are you can go with just boats for defense and not make any more then your first range. In this strategy getting iron quickly is essential and if you can�t do that with your map then your best bet is to make CA. The boats in general are a good idea for shallows maps and essential for coastal games, but for one large land mass they are usually irrelevant.
The other main issue to be addressed here is fighting on multiple fronts. Napoleon eventually lost because he was fighting on several very distant fronts. Even with victories versus the Russians at battles such as Borindino and the eventual burning of Moscow (though that fire was probably set by Russians), Napoleon�s campaign into Russia was a failure. The reason is quite simply logistical. It is hard for anyone to win fighting very far from ones base and maintain battles elsewhere. You should look to avoid these scenarios in the majority of games. If you find yourself fighting on 2 fronts there are some basic things you can do. First, if your base is in danger due to loss on one of the fronts concentrate all of your attention there. Victory elsewhere will be meaningless if your base and economy gets trashed. While sacrificing the good of one front may be necessary in most cases it is certainly not desired. There are several basic things you can do to help ensure victory on at least one of the 2. First and foremost get allied support. Second use tactics like those discussed earlier. Consider yourself of having 1 big army not 2 small ones. A very successful move is taking the units from one front and throwing them at the economy of the guy you are fighting on the other. Usually the enemy sends his CA running back home and you can easily conquer and start building on the terrain you were fighting over. This is very important; one must conquer terrain if he has any hopes of winning vs. two people. What this also does is bring the front closer to your base of operations. Fighting distantly may put you closer to an enemy base but in the same token it removes your army from protecting yours. At all times you want to ensure the safety and boom of your economy. This can be done be putting so much pressure on the enemy that if he doesn�t keep his full attention on defending his base he will surely lose, even if he gets some military in yours. Or you can do a balance where you have some attacking force on his front and have some army ready to defend your town in case of attack. It is not necessary to have an army back at your base just waiting there that would be stupid. But it would a good idea to be prepared to run your villys to a safe spot and have some CA be able to spring into action.
Fighting on two fronts is almost never preferred but sometimes necessary. While fighting on the defensive what you should keep in mind is economic expansion and buying time. Once Iron you have a better chance of beating back the enemy, and survival that long means that hopefully allied help will arrive. From the offensive prospective you want to disrupt the economy and ensure yourself a faster and larger expansion. Territorial acquisition is also important and stealing enemy resources can prove to be beneficial in long games. Basically what you want to do is either force yourself into a position of dominance over the enemy where he has limited choices and will ultimately lose. Oh by the way, if you can�t micromanage well you will lose in a game like this so learn�=D
