On ambushes, mountains and split armies in one region

[schmolywar]

So lets say you have a mountain region. You have a legion or two and some of those archers and skirmishers with the added ability of bonus in wooded hill, alpine or mountain terrain.

Approaching you is a way superiour army, leaderwise and numberwise.

However they have to attack into a mountain area.

How would you as the defender setup up your forces? In one stack, or split it up so that one leader controls the skirmishers and one controls the legion you have?

Would you use the "ambush" function on the skirmishers?

Or would none of this matter so its best to just put everything in a big stack?

Let me know your thoughts.

[arsan]

From my experience, defending with several stacks in the region is very risky. You have many probabilities that the enemy will attack and defeat each stack separately, or that some stacks don't fight at all while others are destroyed.
Think of separate stacks as different armies on a region of many square miles. They can be very hours of even days away from each other.

As for ambush, i have never used it much on AJE because there is few units capable of and usually stacks are pretty big. On other games, like WIA, with many Indians, irregulars and smaller stacks is pretty useful.
But ambushing a big enemy army with a couple archer units don't look like a good idea. Maybe they succeed in the ambush and kill some enemies, but after the first round they will probably be eliminated by the huge enemy army. Against a small enemy force it could work better... or playing with barbarians, pirates and the like with lots of irregular units.

In your case i will put everybody together and use the hold at all costs defend order if you really want to make a stand on those mountains.
Cheers!