brute force or strategy ?

[LordOfTheTechs]

Hello Glest-Community,

Making it short, my question is:
How do I attack, or defend with minimal loss of Units ?

a bit longer:
playing the game for a while now (always with tech), i was wondering about strategy when attacking or when defending my base.

Against a Ultra-AI (always Tech as well ... ) I can win, against a Mega-AI sometimes i win sometimes I am overrun... not to speak of human players which I wittnessed producing horrible massacres on my people.

Mostly, it seems to me, it ist the number of units that matters. Now, I dont think I can improve upon my economy anymore.
The only attack or defense strategy so far was to have as many Units as possible and attack with all at once (attack and defense). I have always many archers, in big numbers they seem to be quite effective, but not only archers of course...

- Which units do you group together ?
- How many ?
- Where to place the Units, Buildings ?
- Do you use the "Hold Position Command"
- Do you let your units battle by themselfs, or do you give them a lot of commands
- any tips, tricks ?

[-Archmage-]

Welcome!

Defending:
Pump out as many units as you can.
Build as many towers as you can.
Build lots of Battle Machines.
Set up ambushes if you can.
Focus on doing combat around your towers.

Defensive Tactic:
Send units out in between the routes the scouts take to find you, then when they find your one man, the enemy army will go there.
The enemy may send out another scout.
This can ward of an attack entirely, or it can delay it some.
This only works against the AI.

Attacking:
Make sure your defense will hold.
Produce a small group of horseman(say ~10)
Produce a large group with 25+ infantry, 2+ catapults, 2+ battle machines.
Send the small group, somewhere near the enemy base, where they would be found by a scouting party, (you want this small battle to take place out of the path of the big army).
Now get you big army placed somewhere around there base where they won't be attacked.
When your small army is found, the enemy will attack them.
This is the time to strike with your large army, send your infantry in first to swarm all resistance, then use the catapults to wipe out the towers, and use the battle machines to guard the catapults and take fire for them.
After the base is de-fortified, focus all fire on the castle(s).
With 2 catapults the castle(s) should go down fast enough so you will probably win before the enemy army has chance to get back.
If that is not your last/only enemy, then you need to quickly evacuate their base.

Good luck dude!

[wyvern]

Archmage has summed up almost everything but remember, airships are like aerial catapults but immune to most infantry, you can use them to damage an enemy base with relative impunity, provided they don't have much air or anti air of their own. Also, to a limited degree, ornithopters can be used to conduct hit and run raids, killing off individual workers. medium sized groups of horsemen(3-6) are also good for raiding workers and individual units, keep technicians to heal them when they get back and don't attack large groups with them unless your sure you can win aka against 5 swordsmen. also, don't keep raiding horsemen in large groups since they'll lose coordination and fall apart

[Omega]

Technically, brute force can be very effective if you outnumber the foe, but you'll lose more units than if you used strategies such as attacking from the front with a small force then pounding the foe's rear with a larger force, or by effective use of splash units, etc. I consider magic to be stronger than tech, but it needs a lot more skill to use.

I recommend you check the Glest wiki: https://docs.megaglest.org/Strategies

Feel free to add any strategies that you find working there too.