Fun Bonus; he is easily the most entertaining of any of the total war content creators I’ve found. He weaves everything into a story and he has a degree in the classics so he knows tons of the history of the time periods and brings all sorts knowledge into his videos
I feel like the best way to get a general idea on "what to accomplish for each battle" is to basically watch someone else that knows what they're doing and go from there.
I'd say start with watching a few LegendOfTotalWar videos. Pick a faction that you want to play as and see if he has a campaign series with that faction or some faction that is similar to the one you wanna play with. He's pretty good at fighting against the AI.
If you wanna take your 1v1 skills to the next level, I'd say start watching some PrinceOfMacedon videos to see how he does things. When it comes to 1v1s, he was considered one of the best back in the day.
If you have any specific questions, feel free to post on this sub or reply to this comment. Lots of veteran players here that would be happy to help including myself.
Everything said in this comment is excellent advice. Don't feel disheartened, some people have been playing these titles for over 20 years and still learn new things.
Just to add; practice makes perfect OP. Set up a few battles in custom battle mode and you'll start to figure out some strategy. You could even make it really one sided to just practice cavalry charges, flanking, and proper positioning.
I have to say none of the games other than Rome I and Medieval II have really clicked with me so maybe try those? Rome especially is easy to understand but as you play more and more you uncover stuff at your own pace which stops it from being overwhelming. Maybe I’m just an idiot though who knows 🙃
I'd turn the question around and dare to say that this isn't really a problem (given the singleplayer nature of the series) but rather an opportunity to have fun. Almost twenty years ago, as a kid, I had esentially no sources, didn't quite pay attention to the unit stats nor did I really care, and went by feel. Were those terrible battles? Very likely. But I had a lot of fun just experimenting and learning by doing it.
So, as stupid as this perhaps sounds(?), I'd say don't worry too much about it, just feel free to experiment, and don't railroad yourself into one single thing you are told that you are "supposed to do", simply because you can construct those answers yourself.
If you already decided to look for external sources (nothing wrong with that either), I'll throw some random things into the basket, but I do not know what is obvious/basic knowledge to you, and what might actually help, so I apologize in advance for those.
- There are a few decent faction picks as a quasi-beginner, but regardless of playing Rome 1, Remastered or 2, I'd advise to pick Rome as your starting faction first. The reason is simply that you will be able to rely on good, consistent melee infantry thorough the game as your backbone (from Hastatii to Legionaries), and they are not micro-heavy. Whatever situation you won't solve, they have a good chance of solving themselves or at least endure long enough until you pay attention. Above this, with Rome you still have a rather diverse roster (and the auxiliary system in R2), so you will be able to experiment and familiarize yourself with a wide range of units. Can't quite remember R1, but in R2 legionaries even have the "disciplined" trait, so even if you happen to lose your general, they won't get a massive morale shock.
- Some might argue that there is a (too) basic rock-paper-scissors system in Total War: cavalry beats ranged, ranged beats infantry, infantry beats cavalry, but this might not be a useful approach even for most basic battles. In Attila, you have access to cavalry that flattens even braced spear formations frontally (yeah, it's stupid). In Age of Charlemagne, Avar archers will make a mist of blood out of anything in front of them, in R1, you can fire your entire quiver into a Roman Testudo and not much will happen. In R2, you can stumble your Light Horse into melee with Cimmerian Heavy Archers, and then they pull out a spear and start stabbing your cavalrymen. The main takeaway is that in most (every?) Total War games the basic building brick to learn is not really the unit type, but the individual unit itself, upon which you'll build your tactics.
- If you are feeling overwhelmed by the "messy skirmish", remember that you can pause the battle AND issue orders while the game is paused. Don't be ashamed of abusing the Pause button and taking your time to assess the situation, should you feel the need.
- Unit stats. I mentioned that as a kid I went "by feel", but strictly mechanically speaking what you are doing in a Total War battle is basically just pairing up / countering unit stats with unit stats. In R2 you should see this in battle on the lower left corner of your screen, in R1 pause the battle and right click on a unit to bring it up. Putting defence, missile block, armor, hit points etc. aside (not least because they vary between games), units can esentially do harm in three different ways with respective stats: melee, charge and missile.
- - > Melee is straightforward, and when playing as Rome you'll rely on it to a fair degree. Melee damage can be normal and armor piercing damage: axes and such have a tendency to do better against armored units, but as Rome you won't need to be too bothered by this. Sometimes your units will get various bonus damage types, the most important of these is "Bonus vs. Large", which is ultimately an anti-cavalry (but also anti-elephant etc.) damage, and generally you'll find it in context of spearmen.
- - > Charge you usually associate with cavalry, but infantry also have this value, and some factions and especially some units (berserkers, axe, rhomphaia/falx wielding shock infantry etc.) use it heavily. You can think of this as a temporary melee-bonus given to your units which initiated the melee with a charge. This is why counter-charging can be preferable even when defending, but again, playing as Rome, you should be fine even if you forego this: the biggest thing is that your Legionaries should still throw their javelin volley. For cavalry, generally you will find a unit type that relies on this charge damage (shock cavalry), with which you'll disengage from the melee after a short while (mechanically speaking once your charge bonus damage ceases to apply), and charge again - this is often referred to as "cycle charging". R2 will even spell this out for you, in R1 you'll identify these by their charge damage, but they are usually lancers. Melee Cavalry do worse on the charge and have less of a shock value, but do better in protracted melee. You use them usually to intercept enemy cavalry units, ride down skirmishers and such, but as long as they are not fringe cases (like gallic light cavalry or various missile cav types), you can just pick a decent melee cavalry and do everything with those in to begin with, really. For this, Roman melee cavalry is generally fine, nothing to write home about, but no glaring possibilities to royally fuck up either.
- - > Missile is mostly defined by its range. Yes, there is also a case of "better/worse against armored units" here as well, but for now just pick whatever is available, esp. with Rome. Perhaps the most important thing is to not dismiss javelins. They are especially useful against high-value units, and with proper positioning and tactics you can make some statwise mediocre units (such as hellenistic Peltasts) disgustingly powerful, but again, when controlling Rome, you are fine by leaving your units on "fire at will" mode. Later you will be able to select priority targets for your missile troops and artillery, and some factions are fairly dependent on this. For now, just remember that the "hammer" in the "hammer and anvil" can be anything other than cavalry too, it can be flanking melee infantry, shock troops or even javelin volleys or sling projectiles.
- Speaking of missile troops, with Rome perhaps the greatest question at the beginning is what to do against enemy missile troops. If you can't outshoot them (and you probably won't), you can wait for / force a melee engagement, and catch them with cavalry before turning them back for a back charge, which is probably the most basic and universal tactic. Again, however, feel free to experiment: for example, if the enemy is fairly confident in its own firepower and pushes their (let's say) slingers into the front, you can release warhounds on them before charging into the confusion. In Rome 2 the long-term solution is usually auxiliaries, such as Balearic Slingers or Cretan or Syrian Archers. You can check their avability and much more[ on Honga](https://www.honga.net/totalwar/rome2/).
- There are a few shortcuts that can help controlling your armies, but the most important is G and Ctrl+G. In Rome 2 'G' creates a group of units which you can quick-access with the numerical keys on your keyboard (very useful for let's say horse archers), Ctrl+G does the same thing but also locks the formation, so the relative position of units compared to each other (and if I remember correctly, same keys work in R1, but do the opposite thing). This means that you can build up an army formation, lock it and approach the enemy instead of having to screw around with arranging your units with every single movement command.
- Insert "draw the rest of the fucking owl"-meme. In all seriousness, there are A LOT of rabbit holes to go down into, to the point of how fatigue works (oh yeah, whenever possible, don't force your units to run!), how morale works down to the usage of fire arrows for debuffs or panicking elephants, how to manually fire siege equipment or use them for area denial, what to look out for in sieges etc., but hopefully this wall of text will prove to be at least vaguely useful. Not in the sense of following it to a tee, but in the sense of just gaining the confidence to slam into the game and play around with things. In the end, experience will come with the more and more battles you do. Do not be afraid of screwing up, or even restarting a campaign if necessary. Also, do not let "perfect" be the enemy of "good enough." Whatever you did suboptimally in the battle can often be accounted for on the strategy screen, especially in Rome 2.
Thank you so much for this! I've read through the entire thing, by the way I totally understand what you mean by try experimenting on your own. A bunch of people suggested me to watch content creators but I feel like that takes away from the fun. My goal with this post was to just basically get a grasp on the basics, since most of my battles were just messy skirmishes it wasn't really fun at first, but now I'm completely hooked on the game. 😄
Which game are you playing? They have the same pattern of playstyle but Rome 1 the battles are incredibly fast paced and morale is king, Rome 2 the battles are longer and it isn’t too much of a rush. Then the factions have different playstyles.
Infantry in the front. Archers behind them. Cavalry on the flanks. Hammer and anvil is the gold standard. But turning an enemies flank is good as well. Having one side route and sending your troops to flank is useful.
Make sure you line up your forces properly. Don't send cheap spears after heavy infantry. Never hire peasants or town militia unless you're defending a city. If you out number your opponent then you want to stretch your infantry line to be wider then there's and have your flanks collapse on theirs.
If you're defending use the terrain to your advantage. Trees are good for hiding your troops, certain units can't hide and use those as bait. Ambush attacking units and gain the advantage. If there are buildings/ structures use those to your advantage. Put your weaker troops next to them so to avoid them from getting flanked and routed.
Avoid attacking up hill. You do not have to advance upon the enemy head on. If you are in unfavourable terrain March your troops to a better spot and advance on the enemy from there.
Trees are good for negating archers missiles. Bridges are natural defensive positions. If you are attacking then be sure you have a good mix of heavy infantry and archers/ artillery.
During a siege your best bet is to abandon the walls and use the town centre as a defensive position. Your troops will never rout there. If you're defending a fortress/ citadel you can hold the outer wall until the battering ram approaches the gate before repositioning in the interior defenses. If the enemy has artillery then risk your cavalry in destroying them. Don't assault a city unless your opponent only has cheap infantry and few missile units. Use a spy to open the gates.
Let's say you have a stack and your opponent has two. One in the field and one in a town/ castle. One unit is enough to besiege the town while your army in the field faces off against your opponents field army. An army composed entirely of cavalry is enough to besiege and take a town/castle if you starve them out.
If your opponent is advancing on one of your settlements you can buy time by building a fort or forts in/ to form a choke point.
Strategically you win, not when your opponent has no troops left, but when he has no settlements. Settlements are the main target, don't forget that.
If you can go after the unit with the armies captain/ General. The hit to their morale is usually worth it.
Your army should have 4- 6 units of missile units. 6- 8 units of cavalry is alot, you can get away with 4 having two cav units on each flank. The rest should be heavy infantry or spears.
You need money early in-game. Sell your trade rights,map info, and alliances for roughly 1k each faction. If you're investing in mining a good return is 10 percent. Anything less and the mine isn't worth the cash. Invest in money producing buildings before troop upgrading ones. Get good at fighting with low and mid troops so as to save your cash to invest in assets returning buildings.
Once a castle/fortress is no longer on your frontier (bordering rival nations) turn it into a town/ city.
Build only one thieves Guild in your domain. Merchants guild are good because they let you train cav in your towns/ cities and you don't pay upkeep to a certain amount of these units.
One explorers guild, one assassin's guild, one theologians guild. The rest merchants guild.
Your geopolitical strategy should be based on geography. You're playing as England/Scotland? Take the whole of the British isles as quickly as possible. Playing as Spain/Portugal? Take Hispania quick as you can. It's easier to build and defend an empire if you have the smallest number of neighbours.
Even if you are invading try to always be on the defensive side of the battle.
Harass their armies. Put armies on their provinces and loot, fortify positions and never engage if it's possible untill they attack you.
This will minimize skirmishes in Battle due to the need of the enemy to crush you to win the battle. Try to be only in the offensive on siege battles.
I hope this makes sense. Has worked for me very well. Takes longer but you get to choose battle grounds and enemy armies usually arrive to the battle low on morale because of sabotage and other methods or harassment.
Unless you want to phalanx-corner camp every single time it is much better to be the attacker.
instead of the entire hostile army coming at you, forcing you to be reactive you can rather freely deploy and pull them apart - creating local superiority to win with on paper much inferior troops.
A second major advantage is being able to disengage when needed: if you are the defender odds are you can only retreat mid-battle with extra losses, while as attacker if needed (happens regularly for armies relying heavily on ranged troops) you just pull your units back, maybe kill of a handful of enemy cav that chases you and leave the battlefield - only to fight again next turn (or this turn if the AI then attacks you)
Watch Many a true nerds play throughs; Jon taught me everything I know.
This. Jon got me into Rome Total War, learnt so much. Rome 1 is my favourite game of all time.
Fun Bonus; he is easily the most entertaining of any of the total war content creators I’ve found. He weaves everything into a story and he has a degree in the classics so he knows tons of the history of the time periods and brings all sorts knowledge into his videos
I feel like the best way to get a general idea on "what to accomplish for each battle" is to basically watch someone else that knows what they're doing and go from there. I'd say start with watching a few LegendOfTotalWar videos. Pick a faction that you want to play as and see if he has a campaign series with that faction or some faction that is similar to the one you wanna play with. He's pretty good at fighting against the AI. If you wanna take your 1v1 skills to the next level, I'd say start watching some PrinceOfMacedon videos to see how he does things. When it comes to 1v1s, he was considered one of the best back in the day. If you have any specific questions, feel free to post on this sub or reply to this comment. Lots of veteran players here that would be happy to help including myself.
Everything said in this comment is excellent advice. Don't feel disheartened, some people have been playing these titles for over 20 years and still learn new things. Just to add; practice makes perfect OP. Set up a few battles in custom battle mode and you'll start to figure out some strategy. You could even make it really one sided to just practice cavalry charges, flanking, and proper positioning.
I have to say none of the games other than Rome I and Medieval II have really clicked with me so maybe try those? Rome especially is easy to understand but as you play more and more you uncover stuff at your own pace which stops it from being overwhelming. Maybe I’m just an idiot though who knows 🙃
This is great advice start with the older games and get the basics down then move onto to the more complex ones.
I'd turn the question around and dare to say that this isn't really a problem (given the singleplayer nature of the series) but rather an opportunity to have fun. Almost twenty years ago, as a kid, I had esentially no sources, didn't quite pay attention to the unit stats nor did I really care, and went by feel. Were those terrible battles? Very likely. But I had a lot of fun just experimenting and learning by doing it. So, as stupid as this perhaps sounds(?), I'd say don't worry too much about it, just feel free to experiment, and don't railroad yourself into one single thing you are told that you are "supposed to do", simply because you can construct those answers yourself. If you already decided to look for external sources (nothing wrong with that either), I'll throw some random things into the basket, but I do not know what is obvious/basic knowledge to you, and what might actually help, so I apologize in advance for those. - There are a few decent faction picks as a quasi-beginner, but regardless of playing Rome 1, Remastered or 2, I'd advise to pick Rome as your starting faction first. The reason is simply that you will be able to rely on good, consistent melee infantry thorough the game as your backbone (from Hastatii to Legionaries), and they are not micro-heavy. Whatever situation you won't solve, they have a good chance of solving themselves or at least endure long enough until you pay attention. Above this, with Rome you still have a rather diverse roster (and the auxiliary system in R2), so you will be able to experiment and familiarize yourself with a wide range of units. Can't quite remember R1, but in R2 legionaries even have the "disciplined" trait, so even if you happen to lose your general, they won't get a massive morale shock. - Some might argue that there is a (too) basic rock-paper-scissors system in Total War: cavalry beats ranged, ranged beats infantry, infantry beats cavalry, but this might not be a useful approach even for most basic battles. In Attila, you have access to cavalry that flattens even braced spear formations frontally (yeah, it's stupid). In Age of Charlemagne, Avar archers will make a mist of blood out of anything in front of them, in R1, you can fire your entire quiver into a Roman Testudo and not much will happen. In R2, you can stumble your Light Horse into melee with Cimmerian Heavy Archers, and then they pull out a spear and start stabbing your cavalrymen. The main takeaway is that in most (every?) Total War games the basic building brick to learn is not really the unit type, but the individual unit itself, upon which you'll build your tactics. - If you are feeling overwhelmed by the "messy skirmish", remember that you can pause the battle AND issue orders while the game is paused. Don't be ashamed of abusing the Pause button and taking your time to assess the situation, should you feel the need. - Unit stats. I mentioned that as a kid I went "by feel", but strictly mechanically speaking what you are doing in a Total War battle is basically just pairing up / countering unit stats with unit stats. In R2 you should see this in battle on the lower left corner of your screen, in R1 pause the battle and right click on a unit to bring it up. Putting defence, missile block, armor, hit points etc. aside (not least because they vary between games), units can esentially do harm in three different ways with respective stats: melee, charge and missile. - - > Melee is straightforward, and when playing as Rome you'll rely on it to a fair degree. Melee damage can be normal and armor piercing damage: axes and such have a tendency to do better against armored units, but as Rome you won't need to be too bothered by this. Sometimes your units will get various bonus damage types, the most important of these is "Bonus vs. Large", which is ultimately an anti-cavalry (but also anti-elephant etc.) damage, and generally you'll find it in context of spearmen. - - > Charge you usually associate with cavalry, but infantry also have this value, and some factions and especially some units (berserkers, axe, rhomphaia/falx wielding shock infantry etc.) use it heavily. You can think of this as a temporary melee-bonus given to your units which initiated the melee with a charge. This is why counter-charging can be preferable even when defending, but again, playing as Rome, you should be fine even if you forego this: the biggest thing is that your Legionaries should still throw their javelin volley. For cavalry, generally you will find a unit type that relies on this charge damage (shock cavalry), with which you'll disengage from the melee after a short while (mechanically speaking once your charge bonus damage ceases to apply), and charge again - this is often referred to as "cycle charging". R2 will even spell this out for you, in R1 you'll identify these by their charge damage, but they are usually lancers. Melee Cavalry do worse on the charge and have less of a shock value, but do better in protracted melee. You use them usually to intercept enemy cavalry units, ride down skirmishers and such, but as long as they are not fringe cases (like gallic light cavalry or various missile cav types), you can just pick a decent melee cavalry and do everything with those in to begin with, really. For this, Roman melee cavalry is generally fine, nothing to write home about, but no glaring possibilities to royally fuck up either. - - > Missile is mostly defined by its range. Yes, there is also a case of "better/worse against armored units" here as well, but for now just pick whatever is available, esp. with Rome. Perhaps the most important thing is to not dismiss javelins. They are especially useful against high-value units, and with proper positioning and tactics you can make some statwise mediocre units (such as hellenistic Peltasts) disgustingly powerful, but again, when controlling Rome, you are fine by leaving your units on "fire at will" mode. Later you will be able to select priority targets for your missile troops and artillery, and some factions are fairly dependent on this. For now, just remember that the "hammer" in the "hammer and anvil" can be anything other than cavalry too, it can be flanking melee infantry, shock troops or even javelin volleys or sling projectiles.
- Speaking of missile troops, with Rome perhaps the greatest question at the beginning is what to do against enemy missile troops. If you can't outshoot them (and you probably won't), you can wait for / force a melee engagement, and catch them with cavalry before turning them back for a back charge, which is probably the most basic and universal tactic. Again, however, feel free to experiment: for example, if the enemy is fairly confident in its own firepower and pushes their (let's say) slingers into the front, you can release warhounds on them before charging into the confusion. In Rome 2 the long-term solution is usually auxiliaries, such as Balearic Slingers or Cretan or Syrian Archers. You can check their avability and much more[ on Honga](https://www.honga.net/totalwar/rome2/). - There are a few shortcuts that can help controlling your armies, but the most important is G and Ctrl+G. In Rome 2 'G' creates a group of units which you can quick-access with the numerical keys on your keyboard (very useful for let's say horse archers), Ctrl+G does the same thing but also locks the formation, so the relative position of units compared to each other (and if I remember correctly, same keys work in R1, but do the opposite thing). This means that you can build up an army formation, lock it and approach the enemy instead of having to screw around with arranging your units with every single movement command. - Insert "draw the rest of the fucking owl"-meme. In all seriousness, there are A LOT of rabbit holes to go down into, to the point of how fatigue works (oh yeah, whenever possible, don't force your units to run!), how morale works down to the usage of fire arrows for debuffs or panicking elephants, how to manually fire siege equipment or use them for area denial, what to look out for in sieges etc., but hopefully this wall of text will prove to be at least vaguely useful. Not in the sense of following it to a tee, but in the sense of just gaining the confidence to slam into the game and play around with things. In the end, experience will come with the more and more battles you do. Do not be afraid of screwing up, or even restarting a campaign if necessary. Also, do not let "perfect" be the enemy of "good enough." Whatever you did suboptimally in the battle can often be accounted for on the strategy screen, especially in Rome 2.
Thank you so much for this! I've read through the entire thing, by the way I totally understand what you mean by try experimenting on your own. A bunch of people suggested me to watch content creators but I feel like that takes away from the fun. My goal with this post was to just basically get a grasp on the basics, since most of my battles were just messy skirmishes it wasn't really fun at first, but now I'm completely hooked on the game. 😄
Which game are you playing? They have the same pattern of playstyle but Rome 1 the battles are incredibly fast paced and morale is king, Rome 2 the battles are longer and it isn’t too much of a rush. Then the factions have different playstyles.
I have never understood how to play Rome 2 despite being competent at Rome 1/Remastered. I really should learn.
Infantry in the front. Archers behind them. Cavalry on the flanks. Hammer and anvil is the gold standard. But turning an enemies flank is good as well. Having one side route and sending your troops to flank is useful. Make sure you line up your forces properly. Don't send cheap spears after heavy infantry. Never hire peasants or town militia unless you're defending a city. If you out number your opponent then you want to stretch your infantry line to be wider then there's and have your flanks collapse on theirs. If you're defending use the terrain to your advantage. Trees are good for hiding your troops, certain units can't hide and use those as bait. Ambush attacking units and gain the advantage. If there are buildings/ structures use those to your advantage. Put your weaker troops next to them so to avoid them from getting flanked and routed. Avoid attacking up hill. You do not have to advance upon the enemy head on. If you are in unfavourable terrain March your troops to a better spot and advance on the enemy from there. Trees are good for negating archers missiles. Bridges are natural defensive positions. If you are attacking then be sure you have a good mix of heavy infantry and archers/ artillery. During a siege your best bet is to abandon the walls and use the town centre as a defensive position. Your troops will never rout there. If you're defending a fortress/ citadel you can hold the outer wall until the battering ram approaches the gate before repositioning in the interior defenses. If the enemy has artillery then risk your cavalry in destroying them. Don't assault a city unless your opponent only has cheap infantry and few missile units. Use a spy to open the gates. Let's say you have a stack and your opponent has two. One in the field and one in a town/ castle. One unit is enough to besiege the town while your army in the field faces off against your opponents field army. An army composed entirely of cavalry is enough to besiege and take a town/castle if you starve them out. If your opponent is advancing on one of your settlements you can buy time by building a fort or forts in/ to form a choke point. Strategically you win, not when your opponent has no troops left, but when he has no settlements. Settlements are the main target, don't forget that. If you can go after the unit with the armies captain/ General. The hit to their morale is usually worth it. Your army should have 4- 6 units of missile units. 6- 8 units of cavalry is alot, you can get away with 4 having two cav units on each flank. The rest should be heavy infantry or spears. You need money early in-game. Sell your trade rights,map info, and alliances for roughly 1k each faction. If you're investing in mining a good return is 10 percent. Anything less and the mine isn't worth the cash. Invest in money producing buildings before troop upgrading ones. Get good at fighting with low and mid troops so as to save your cash to invest in assets returning buildings. Once a castle/fortress is no longer on your frontier (bordering rival nations) turn it into a town/ city. Build only one thieves Guild in your domain. Merchants guild are good because they let you train cav in your towns/ cities and you don't pay upkeep to a certain amount of these units. One explorers guild, one assassin's guild, one theologians guild. The rest merchants guild. Your geopolitical strategy should be based on geography. You're playing as England/Scotland? Take the whole of the British isles as quickly as possible. Playing as Spain/Portugal? Take Hispania quick as you can. It's easier to build and defend an empire if you have the smallest number of neighbours.
Damn, thanks a bunch for this! I never expected anyone to put this much effort into a comment
Even if you are invading try to always be on the defensive side of the battle. Harass their armies. Put armies on their provinces and loot, fortify positions and never engage if it's possible untill they attack you. This will minimize skirmishes in Battle due to the need of the enemy to crush you to win the battle. Try to be only in the offensive on siege battles. I hope this makes sense. Has worked for me very well. Takes longer but you get to choose battle grounds and enemy armies usually arrive to the battle low on morale because of sabotage and other methods or harassment.
Unless you want to phalanx-corner camp every single time it is much better to be the attacker. instead of the entire hostile army coming at you, forcing you to be reactive you can rather freely deploy and pull them apart - creating local superiority to win with on paper much inferior troops. A second major advantage is being able to disengage when needed: if you are the defender odds are you can only retreat mid-battle with extra losses, while as attacker if needed (happens regularly for armies relying heavily on ranged troops) you just pull your units back, maybe kill of a handful of enemy cav that chases you and leave the battlefield - only to fight again next turn (or this turn if the AI then attacks you)