It is the late game. All of your allies have been crushed and their castles taken. The enemy armies are massing to finally assault your base. What do you do?

In my experiences, going onto the defensive side in the later parts of games can be rewarding, especially if you have multiple towers, outposts, powerful armies, etc. But how to put these to good use?

Try to put rangers in towers and outposts, which will give your armies a sphere of protection. Then place a wall of melee units in front of them to protect the ranged units. This will allow your rangers to keep shooting until the line of melees are breached. If the odds are immensely against you, get some powerful units, like falachioners, calvary, and knights, and send them in a wide arch around your frontline. Then you hit them in the back. Since their rangers will most likely be back there, much of their army will be slaughtered right then and there. If the flank succeeds, then the enemy may try to retreat, but your flankers will cut them off and decimate them. If the flanks doesn't succeed, fall back to the castle, leaving a rearguard.

If you don't have these units, or not enough units, try to make do on a much smaller scale.

Thanks for reading this.

you can't really successfully flank against a larger army if the player is any good at all. it's too easy to adjust that out-numbering melee force to protect the ranged and the ranged forces are probably so numerous that a few lost won't really matter anyway...

the problem with the flanking movement having any effect is that generally speaking the enemy can see you coming - there is no element of surprise. The other half of this equation is that if you are backed up to your castle, you are likely not in a position to purchase Falcs, Calvary and Knights, let alone spend the time to run out your back door, make a wide arch and then hit the opposing force.

If you've taken the castle defense techs along the way and have quite a few decent sized stacks of ballista or Marksmen in towers, you can repel a siege for quite a while. If, on the other hand, you have been out fighting and have revved up your offensive techs more than your castle defense, and THEN you get hit by a strong larger army you are going to simply get pummeled.

Put it to the test, though - experience is the best guide.

Jmac
D~S

I think going defensive in your scenario is the only option unless you can diplomatically persuade him to call off the attack.