When you think of Army Control, you think getting your army to attack the emenies but without form. I've seen this in people's play online and their performance suffers greatly and it just looks bad. I've often been asked to teach people about my style of control and in response to the requests, I've made this site to help everyone who wants to become good at No Siege. So here goes nothing!!!

Gold Mining

As important as Army Control is, if you have no gold or good gold mining abilities, your not gonna have an army to command in the first place. Here's a simple question to ask yourself "Are vills really expendable?" Truth being, that they are and you should use them like they are. then ask yourself "Would i be willing to trade a K of food in vills for a K of gold on an emeny's gold pile?" IF you happen to say NO, You need to rethink some logic! hehe Food is one of the easiest resources to acquire and at that, the K you stole from your emeny can tip the balance of the game in your favor! Now the next step that you got all the stupid questions out of the way, HOW DO I MINE GOLD? Easy use this System:

F- Front

2

B- Back

F2B is an idea of how to get the MOST out of gold mining. In this system, you divide up ALL the gold piles on the map into 2 different areas

Back-up Piles: These are piles of gold located in your town and ranges. These types are mined slowly since they aren't under constantly threat of attack from outside forces. You should have around less than 10 vills on these gold piles, unless they are your only ones then no more than 15!

Front Line Piles: These are piles NOT protected by your town or ranges but they are mines that your archers will protect the vills and/or located in your emeny's area. You need to mine this piles the Fastest!!!! No more than maybe 20 vills on these piles!

NOTE: the MORE vills you use is not always better! Try to get no more than 45 vills in a game to balance army and economy!

Now your a good gold miner, but your still green! you got more to learn newbie!

Basics in Army Control

Wow, well Army Control is a VERY COMPLEX topic but i'm gonna hit the opening points to get decent army control (NO tactics yet, gotta learn other stuff first!). Often when I watch people ( I'm bad about this sometimes to), they'll leave part of their army to be slaughtered! Every Archer you save, is an archer that you can use for a bigger battle! Now as you'll see later in the advance ideas, there are expections to every rule but right now you need to learn to save all your archers that you can. Another thing that'll improve your chances, KNOW YOUR AREA!!! I can not stress this ENOUGH how important it is to know your area! Remeber that forest entrance near your base that is really small? well you know it could be used for a great defensive position until i can regain the ability to attack OR that hill would make for a great choke point and allow me to conduct attacks while maintaining a strong defensive position! It's just little things like this that you notice can save you alot of archers. Also, Confucious ( i mispelled it i know, i'm a horrible speller! but he's a chinese army writer) says that (in simple and understandable terms): "IF you know yourself but not your emeny, you have a 50% chance of winning, if you know both yourself and your emeny, you have a 100% chance of winning but if you know neither, your always gonna lose." While this doesn't make alot of sense until you REALLY think about it. Let's apply it to a situation:

Your Emeny is a typically aggressive attacker and plays defense on hills. Take control of Hills before he can, and if he does take a hill and plays defense on it use the Hill Taking Method ( in advanced ideas) but if your gonna sit around and plan what to do next, you really do not know yourself as a player and if you only make guesses at what your emeny is gonna do, you don't know him either. Also, if you know both, you can counter his EVERY move.

But even as important as that is how do you set your army up? What's the best attacking method? Well blocking your men up and just throwing and going doesn't cut it against real good players. You need to learn to pull men out to the flanks of his army and Extend your AOF (Angle Of Fire) so that you can have the most archers firing upon the emenies this in turn will reduce your losses and increase your kills by getting more and more archers to fire upon the emenies. I'm sure your confused on just how to do this, so this is a practice method I've used in training people to teach them how to move on flanks:

Divide your army into 3 groups (don't number them). Take the CENTER group and attack the FRONTLINE of archers with the CENTER group. While The CENTER group is drawing Fire, take one of the FLANK groups and attack. Now very shortly after sending in that FLANK group, send the other FLANK group to the other side of the emeny army. MAKE SURE YOUR LINES ARE NO MORE THAN 2 ARCHERS THICK FOR MAX FIREPOWER AND BEST AOF!!!!!!!!!! IF you must, speard archers out from the backlines and extend your flanks, if you want you can encircle the emeny for the best possible AOF.

This idea sounds nice and all but how would you reinforce it? Using this system:

Ranges--->Center---> Flanks

Meaning that, All the archers you get will reinforce your CENTER and you divide out the archer as to where you need them on the flanks because if your center falls, your flank will be slaughtered! REMEBER TO EXTEND ARCHERS IF NEEDED TO!