Best way to fight cavalry archers

[Tuuvi]

What is the best strategy/unit combo for cavalry archers? I just fought an army of rebel cav archers in my Getai campaign and got my ass kicked. Since the Sarmations are nearby I figure it wouldn't hurt to have a good strategy in case I ever have to fight them.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Foot archers. The getai have some that have spears, so that helps when dealing with cavalry too. Foot archers and some decent cavalry that can corner their HA's if you get a chance. That plus trying to get on top of a hill before the battle.

[Musopticon?]

Really, the best way to fight HA is slingers and light infantry/phalanx support. The slingers absolutely murder any units with a secondary armor as "flesh" and those include most barbarian levys and HAs. Support the slingers with other units by letting them stand right in the back of the slingers and once the HAs get irritated and charge the slingers, pull them back through the light infantry or phalanx(take them off phalanx formation when the slingers are trying to traverse through the spears, otherwise they will get stuck). The result should be a huge mass off HA corpses.

On the support infantry, light infantry has the bonus of fast speed and being less costly than phalanx, while phalanxes are pretty much invulnerable to missiles from the front.

Try to get your units to higher ground too, it always helps. And don't try chasing HAs with light cavalry, they will just get pincushioned, only attack HA with them if they are already pinned down.

[The_Mark]

Alexander's trick of a phalanx line and a _large_ double envelopment with cavalry, surrounding the HAs and driving them to the phalanx is one possibility.

And, do not click on the submit thread-button more than once. Thank you.

[Tuuvi]

Thanks for the tips. And I'm really,really sorry about the quadruple post, the page wouldn't load when I clicked submit and I had no idea those actually got posted.:oops:

[Darkarbiter]

So does armour piercing mean it goes to the second armour type and ignores the first?

[Fondor_Yards]

It means it treats the armour as if it was half the value it really is. So if you have an armour rating of 14, it only counts as 7 for that attack.

[Darkarbiter]

what about effective against armour?

[sedlacekj]

I like both the slingers and the double envelopment. I usually allow the phalanx in the front to approach the HAs until they are receiving fire, then walk up the slingers until they are with in range and let loose. Sometimes I will wait until the HA's run out of ammo, if I don't have advantageous terrain. I bring up my Cav on both sides of the Phalanx, move 100 meters foward then charge the HA's from both sides. This works best if the HA's are engaged with the infantry or pinned on the red line. Another infantry type that does pretty well against cavalry of all types is Peltasai. If the HAs are part of a combined task force, you might have to destroy the infantry and other foot units first.