Going OFFENSIVE

[unmerged(44611)]

I am playing Italy around 1440. I just got attacked by the Austrians, to my complete surprise. The Austrians ran a half baked campaign and go two of their three stacks wiped clean in the north. So I moved in with my eyes on some gold mines. I ran upon their third stack in the north. I sacked Wien, and they attacked my 12K men with 8K. My ass was kicked bad. So I eventually had some Sicilian revolt issues and let them off easy taking Trent. Attrition was a problem.

How do you attack offensively? There are all kinds of posts and advise on how to defend (especially vs. France) with scorching and counterattacking. So how do you attack? The war above was technically a defense, but after a month it might as well have been and Italian invasion of Austria. Some strategic, operational, and/or tactical suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[DPS]

If you have troops that have higher ratings on the offensive than the defensive (I'm not talking about the slider here, but rather the number of "pips" shown for your preferred unit type) then you should attack, rather than letting them come to you, even if you have to abandon your seiges (if you wipe out their whole army, you can seige all of their provinces at your leisure).

 

[von_Rundstedt]

I believe you got that wrong:

These "pips" are their attack- and defense values, like, how much damage will they do and how much can they take. Wheter your army is actually attacking or defending doesn't matter.

 

[unmerged(133986)]

Im fighting my offensive wars in HoI2 fashion , advancing slowly by holding frontal line so i can backup my army thats under attack from several nearby provinces. Keeping my armies small so they dont take much attrition and as soon as i get enemy stacks on the run its rather simple mop up and sidge everything at once.

The AI is dumb, i mean if i put 5k to siedge Trent for example and keep 2x10K stacks at Verona & Treviso (i think) i can move in as soon as i see him going to Trent , so its defensive battle of my 25k vs whatever he got in.

 

[Blastaz]

Pips effect how many casualties/morale damage you take/dish out. It makes no difference whether you initiated the battle or are sitting on your mountain range.

You, as always, want to be strategically offensive but tatically defensive. It's pretty much the same game, you want to wipe out his field army and siege as many of his provinces as possible to stop him building up more troops.

Don't split your stack too soon or any troops they have left will carve up your army piecemeal. But do split off 1k stacks to cover his provinces as soon as you can get away with it. Ultimatly it's just a matter of judgement. If you don't have enough troops to cover a country... build more!

This is the best way to get a 100% WS. If you are looking for a smaller peace deal you don't need to be so thorough and don't have to take as many risks.

 

[Hidden Legend]

Do not assault the fort until the main army is taken care of. If you have spies set to free try to get troops to desert, otherwise just keep back up and enter the province to defend. Even if you do not want the province holding a good line with back up will add to the war score. Also If you take damage alternate who is holding the siege with your back up by swapping during and after battles. Usually it takes three months for a broken army to gain its morale back.

 

[Dafool]

I follow the method making one big front. Start sieging, and then when the whole front is fully sieged and under my control, I move forward. Keep a few groups in the back in case you need some reinforcements, and eventually you'll force the AI into a corner where you can just overwhelm their remaining troops. This works particularly well against nations that run north to south or east to west, because the narrower the nation, the easier it is to keep a solid front.

 

[King Nothing]

You sacked Vienna? Do you mean that you assaulted? With one of their armies close by? There you have your problem this time. Never ever assault as long as there are enemies close by. I would go as far as to say that never ever assault unless you for some reason are in a hurry to get out of the war. That is the only reasons for assaults that I can see. And with that I mean assaulting one or perhaps two provinces at the very end before you send your peace deal.. Otherwise you are more likely to hurt yourself than your enemy..

For an easy war with very low we for you there are a two simple steps.
1. Wipe out their armies on your home turf. That way they are taking attrition and not you.
2. Move in and siege all their provinces with small siege armies.

Of course that's not always possible as in your case now but they only had 8 k troops in a very mountain heavy area.. Then you start walking in with armies that is precise the size that the province can support. When you have the siege you can most often move in with a couple of thousand more, they can start walking two days after the first army. That's enough. That way you spread forward with armies of around 4-8k. Big enough to withstand an army of 8k for some days. When you have located their army you fill upp all the surrounding provinces with the maximum soldiers thay can support and when they start to move toward one of your armies you should move in with the surrounding armies to help him. That way there will be a battle with his 8k on one side and your fresh 12k on the defending side. With a good general and the mountain/hill defense bonus you should wipe him clean quite fast. And you haven't taken a single point of we due to attrition.

 

[unmerged(11600)]

Keep balanced armies, and keep three of them near each other. Get to the battle province first. Rotate these armies in and out of the battle to make certain you maintain your morale and receive reinforcements while your opponent does neither. Achieve victory.

-Pat

ps- and WiF's Lansingburg Advice: Roll well.

 

[EckyThump]

You have to plan to avoid huge attrition and getting caught with low morale. Typically I'll stick with defend and counterattack, because it rarely fails against AI opponents, but for an offensive campaign, usually what I'll have prepared is main armies of 20,000 or so mixed cav/inf and several mini-armies of two or four thousand infantry. Move the mini-armies into the first row of enemy provinces, take a look round, if there are no major stacks nearby (there usually are unless the AI is busy fighting elsewhere when you declare war) then I move the main armies in to assault and send the mini-armies on to commence sieging the second set. That gives me visibility for two provinces in a ring around where my main armies are, and hence time to react if a large enemy stack does show up.

Basically an offensive strategy is scout, kill, scout again, assault, reinforce, repeat, ideally leaving a cloud of little two-regiment sieges as you go, to clock up additional warscore but more importantly, to give the AI more to worry about and stop their new recruits from doing anything useful. Think about why the counterattack strategy is so good against the AI, and avoid making the mistakes that it does.

 

[Wetboy]

Once you go on the offensive you must obliterate the enemys main forces, grabbing land can wait. Ideally I think you could have stayed on the defensive a little longer, untill Austrias starting army is spent. After that send in one or two armies hunting newly formed regiments while the rest start seigeing.

 

[unmerged(76560)]

The problem with the defensive tactic is that the nation who has the biggest manpower wins.
If your manpower is smaller than your enemy then be offensive, kill their existing army and siege everywhere with 2k inf stacks, this way their manpower is usuless and you have won, unless they have allies, but that's another story

 

[ciadude2]

I follow a pretty simple strategy that almost always wins for me.

I keep stacks of about 10K men(12K once we get cannons, because it helps for sieging if I need to). I usually keep them at or at least very close to my borders until the action starts heating up. If I'm outnumbered, I scorch and run. If I'm equal, I defend until I get the advantage. If I outnumber them, depending on how much, I might just try a zerg rush of any stacks nearby.

I take my battles slowly and methodically, taking one province at a time until I can afford to flood the whole country.

If I have an army of vassals, it's generally pretty fun to let them all just swarm in. In a game as the OE, I had vassalized every country from Egypt, to Algeria, to parts of Germany. Poland DoW'd me, and my vassals all joined the fight. Poland won every single battle but lost the war(100%WS too). They couldn't keep up with the fact that dozens of stacks of 2-3 thousand men were flooding in.

Your offense will largely vary based on what's going on at the time. In that Poland war I mentioned, I don't believe I actually sent any of my own soldiers in.

 

[Hidden Legend]

In HttT 4.1b there seems to be a rather large advantage to defending the province. Thus if you get to a province first you have an advantage. This is true even when besieging. Even if you have only a small stack in the province and are attacked by reenforcing before you loose the siege force allows you to keep the defense value and route the attacking force. Use another force while the fight is on to maneuver to the likely province of retreat. Either they will retreat to where you are or your forces can maneuver after the retreating force.

In EU it is about marching and counter marching much as it is in traditional military action. You are trying to gain an advantage. Play to your strengths and the strengths of the terrain.

 

[unmerged(44611)]

Austria showed little inclination to move their last stack into Italy. I sacked Vienna after a short siege, that involved no assaulting. I rarely assault fortress early in the game. I think the only times I did so was when I was siegeing and my ally dumped a few thousands of infantry that I could assault with and a time or two when I lost a city and got there before the garrison was of any size. Later on though 10 galla infantry can make a fort fall in 1 assault at least 80% of the time.

The problem was the battle after Vienna. I had more cavalry, more troops over all, a 4 shock general. Crill as my only idea as well and 2 quality. Bit I still lost. With revolt issues in the south of Italy I could not keep enough forces in Austria to continue to battle that stack, siege cities, fight off his Hungarian and Croat vassals, and keep from losing all of Umbria to rebels.

The main problem was I was going to be forced to engage the Austrian army on their soil. I had to keep a large force together to keep it from going after my forces laying siege. This was bad because attrition was brutal. I could rest in Vienna, until I lost there.

 

[Sejong]

This is an approach I've found useful for HTTT ..

I generally use multiple stacks to go on the offensive .. one to screen off the opposition and one to assault low-level forts. A good rule of thumb seems to be that the assault stack should be at least 10-1 vs the fort level (eg. 20k vs a level 2 fort) and the screen stack should be at least as big. You'll want to swap infantry between the screen and assault stacks as morale is lost from assaults. Having a shock/fire leader definitely helps in conserving morale too.

If the opposition come at you with a larger stack then retreat to the occupied provinces and let them attack your combined shield and assault stacks. They'll take terrain penalties plus greater attrition and you should be big enough to ward them off .. if they're still bigger then avoid them and shadow their stack from two provinces away (to avoid getting jumped on) as they start to siege their occupied provinces. Move in and assault any provinces that they take back if they have a reduced garrison and pounce when their stack gets attritioned down or has low morale from assaults.

Never ever allow a stack to be completely without morale .. in HTTT even a 1k enemy unit with morale will beat a 20k stack with no morale :wacko:. Therefore never assault a province that'll finish building a land unit within the same month unless it has at least several cavalry because you could lose the entire assault stack. Similarly avoid any type of battle that might be classified as even odds and play the siege game instead, but conversely pursue any defeated enemy stacks to the death.

If you can only afford one 10k stack then you need to cagey and shadow them while taking back reduced garrison provinces. If you have no strategic depth and can't win a field battle, then you're screwed .. there's no advice for that :rofl:

 

[King Nothing]

Keep balanced armies, and keep three of them near each other. Get to the battle province first. Rotate these armies in and out of the battle to make certain you maintain your morale and receive reinforcements while your opponent does neither. Achieve victory.

Is this a late game thing or something? Because I don't think I have ever been in a battle that last so long that something like this could be possible..

This is an approach I've found useful for HTTT ..

I generally use multiple stacks to go on the offensive .. one to screen off the opposition and one to assault low-level forts. A good rule of thumb seems to be that the assault stack should be at least 10-1 vs the fort level (eg. 20k vs a level 2 fort) and the screen stack should be at least as big. You'll want to swap infantry between the screen and assault stacks as morale is lost from assaults. Having a shock/fire leader definitely helps in conserving morale too.

This tactic is a killer for you when it comes to we.. If you don't finish this war quickly and you don't have a bunch of armies guarding your rear you will be swarming in revolts pretty soon..

 

[unmerged(11600)]

Is this a late game thing or something? Because I don't think I have ever been in a battle that last so long that something like this could be possible..

Nope, I'm still in the early game. In my current Holland game I've destroyed more than one French doomstack using 2~3 stacks of 8~12k each. The same goes for naval battles as well. Rotation of forces to keep your units at or near full strength is the key to winning, in my opinion. It allows me to have a smaller military and yet defeat a more powerful opponent.

-Pat

 

[Sejong]

This tactic is a killer for you when it comes to we.. If you don't finish this war quickly and you don't have a bunch of armies guarding your rear you will be swarming in revolts pretty soon..

Can't say I agree .. in my experience WE has never risen above 1-2 for any war, but by the time I engage in wars to the death I'm pretty large (as in very) so your experience may vary.

I can also imagine that against forts of very large size you'd have an issue, but I'd not recommend that large forts be assaulted .. I wouldn't assault anything 3 or larger tbh, just siege and move on because generally those would be the exception rather than the rule .. perhaps in MP, but then you'd be spending your money on a larger army imho than covering your country in L3+ forts.

The point of the tactic is to quickly get a buffer zone of occupied territories in which to base yourself to defeat the enemy concentration once it comes and raise their WE until it does .. if they come and fight and beat you (worst case), they'll need to take time to siege the occupied provinces so there's some time to recover, if they siege then they take attrition and have to deal with increasing WE. Effectively you turn the WE clock against the opposition, once the buffer is gained you can attack further provinces at leisure.

Of course the above tactic is designed to deal with an enemy with a weak front or one weakened through defensive warfare but has a large enough army that you can't spread + siege with peace of mind and you want to make territorial gains.

Common sense applies as always.

 

[No idea]

Im fighting my offensive wars in HoI2 fashion , advancing slowly by holding frontal line so i can backup my army thats under attack from several nearby provinces. Keeping my armies small so they dont take much attrition and as soon as i get enemy stacks on the run its rather simple mop up and sidge everything at once.

The AI is dumb, i mean if i put 5k to siedge Trent for example and keep 2x10K stacks at Verona & Treviso (i think) i can move in as soon as i see him going to Trent , so its defensive battle of my 25k vs whatever he got in.

I also use this tactic and it always works. Being defensive gives a lot in this game. It can be irrealistic, but that´s the way it is.