Those crazy missile cavalry

[Omisan]

I started a new game as Turks and I have a hard time using them. It seems like these guy simply never stop firing at enemies no matter what. It keeps resulting in friendly fire.

[Unorthodox]

Turn off "Fire at will" (it's at the 9 o'clock position on your bottom commands thingy, where you have buttons for running, changing formation, fire arrows/schiltrom/cantabrian circle and what have you).

[TevashSzat]

Generally, never leave fire at will on since you will usually have more important targets than what the ai chooses and the ammo is limited enough so that you can't just fire all day

[vonsch]

Heh, I rarely turn it off for HA. I let them shoot up everything. I pick the targets by how I place them, or sometimes I target a specific units with a couple of divisions. I usually run 15-18 HA in my Turk HA armies though. Split them into divisions of three, send two up the middle and two to each flank, then gradually surround the enemy if they're slow.

I use those mostly to take out invading stacks (and to do hit & run on Mongol stacks). When I invade, I usually go in with infantry armies. I may send an HA stack to screen it.

This was one of today's battles with the horde:



Fighting western armies is easy by comparison. I am happy to get 3 kills for every 2 I lose against those Mongol HA. I can replace mine easier. Actually beating a full stack of theirs that way means I celebrate.

With Mongols I don't try to surroound them. That means getting trapped with no escape to the withdrawal zone. But I surround most other armies. Surrounding them wreaks havoc with morale, and also seems to really pose problems for the infantry on which way to move. Often they scatter every which way, which means I can concentrate on a few at a time.

Take a look at this guide to Horse Archers if you haven't.

[Didz]

@Vonsch: Slightly off topic...but how or where did you get that configuration for the command and unit formation buttons along the top of the screen?

[socal_infidel]

@Vonsch: Slightly off topic...but how or where did you get that configuration for the command and unit formation buttons along the top of the screen?

Select "Minimal UI" on the Game Options Menu.

[Odin]

I started a new game as Turks and I have a hard time using them. It seems like these guy simply never stop firing at enemies no matter what. It keeps resulting in friendly fire.

I have made HA's my primary force in every Total war game i have played. They require a modicum of management though, if you leave them to thier own devices, yeah they will shoot the closest target regardless if your unit is engaged.

Taking the fire at will off is good advice, but now that means you have to manage whom they shoot at. If you have a lot of HA's that can be tedious. So learn how to group units and use them in that manner. in short, its easier to manage 4 groups of HA's and thier targets, then say 8-12 seperate units.

[dismal]

I tend to array all my HAs in a big line at the start of the battle, set to a length where each unit is roughly square shaped. If I have a general, I deploy them a fair distance behind the line, maybe 2-3 units depth. If you keep your units from getting between themselves and the enemy you should have minimal friendly fire problems

What I do after that depends somewhat on terrain and enemy tactics.

If the enemy charges cav at my line, I have that section of the line give backward while the other sections form a pocket around the charging cavalry. I kind of think in terms of a left third, middle third and right third. If they charge the middle of my line, I'm going to do grab the left and right thirds and drag them at an angle while the middle falls back. If I want to end this phase of the battle quickly to preserve ammo, I will have them fall back toward the general who will come and fight the enemy from the front while my HA pocket shoots them in the back. This is the typical way of dealing with Mongol generals, etc. who tend to charge out ahead of their lines.

Before charge:

*
__ __ __


After charge:

\ * /
__

If the enemy tries to exchange missile fire with me, I generally just rely on the fact I have much more firepower. The Mongols have a bad habit of sending their 4 or so horse archers ahead to fight my 18 or 20, who are massed on a hill. Simply stand there and shoot them. You may want to avoid wasting arrows by turning off fire at will when they rout. Otherwise you may end up shooting hundreds of arrows to try and take out a single router. If possible, I want to get fire coming from multiple directions. But it's not always advisable to break up the line to do it. You don't want to get tangled up with the enemy infantry, or have some portion of your arrows going at targets you don't want. In some cases, I will drag my whole line back so that the enemy's infantry, which tends to be slower, is kept out of the equation a while longer.

I will also sometimes turn skirmish off and take a hill, relying on the enemy's ranged units to skirmish off the higher ground. If it's a particularly nasty missile unit like pavisse crossbows, I might throw in an old fashioned cav charge or two. Against Milan, you almost have to because they have so many pavissers. Fortunately, they can be routed by a nice massed HA charge down a hill. You can shoot while moving, they can't so it's good just to get them skirmishing back. Just be careful not to get tangled up. If you're going to charge with just your general(s), turn off fire at will first.

Once you've dealt with whatever cav and missiles they've brought, the rest are sitting ducks. I tend to reform my line, and then grab individual HA units and make an evenly spaced circle around them so that you get arrows coming in from every direction. Avoid the edge of the map. Sometimes you can avoid being pushed to the edge by turning skirmish off, manually controlling the unit in a loop back toward the middle and then turning it back on. If you've conserved your missiles well in dealing with his cav and missiles this phase is just a massacre. If you run out of missiles, find a good hill reform your units into a nice line and finish them with massed charges.

[Didz]

Horse Archers are a big pain when you come up against them but personally I find a strong line of archers and crossbowmen in open order backed up by a line of spearmen more than holds their own and can trade casualties on a reasonably even basis. The point being that a dead HA costs much more than a dead archer.

Of course the best strategy as always is to sucker them into attacking your cities. That way all they can do it ride up and down outside the walls and get shot to peices by your wall archers. In my recent battles between the Mongol Horde and the Russians my wall mounted Dvor and Mercenary Crossbows were killing 50% of every Mongol army they met simply by shooting them from the walls of the city whilst they were waiting to start and assault.

[gardibolt]

I've never played a horse-archer heavy faction; what would be a good starter faction for trying that out? Turks?

[vonsch]

The Turk get a lot of HA choices right off. Turk Horse Archers are cheap early on, but given the choice I use Turkomen as the experience mounts up nicely if you preserve your force. Sipahis tire out more, but can handle some cavalry duty better.

Egypt has the Mamluk Archers, which are very nice, but expensive so not often a good early unit.

Byz has nice ones. The Hungarians too. Russia has Khazaks at the starter level, and a mix of jav and better HA later. And you can hire mercs in many areas in enough quantity to work with too.

[Didz]

Yes, I just bought 3 units of Turkoman's back with my army from the Holy Land, which should help against the Hungarian Noble Cavalrymen.

[Odin]

I've never played a horse-archer heavy faction; what would be a good starter faction for trying that out? Turks?

Try the Hungarians, a very underrated faction IMHO. Great location for everything from merchants to priest devlopment, and you get the Byzantines right there to attack and sack constantanople.

Thier cavalry line up is pretty solid to, with a decent array of other catholic troops for fun.

[Didz]

I must admit I find horse archers to be the most difficult opposing troops to deal with in the game.

They are usually too fast to catch with your own cavalry and much better shots than your own archers especially when running round in circles. I find that often dealing with them just results in a long fire fight with my crossbowmen in the medieval equivalent of Mutually Assured Destruction with both sides trading losses.

On a few occassions I have managed to get cavalry behind them and pushed them into my main battle line but even then they have an annoying habit of slipping through the smallest gap. The only other hope is to trap them against the map edge which is a bit unrealistic, though I have squeezed them into a corner and massacred them before.

Very irritating troops.

[Odin]

I must admit I find horse archers to be the most difficult opposing troops to deal with in the game.

They are usually too fast to catch with your own cavalry and much better shots than your own archers especially when running round in circles. I find that often dealing with them just results in a long fire fight with my crossbowmen in the medieval equivalent of Mutually Assured Destruction with both sides trading losses.

On a few occassions I have managed to get cavalry behind them and pushed them into my main battle line but even then they have an annoying habit of slipping through the smallest gap. The only other hope is to trap them against the map edge which is a bit unrealistic, though I have squeezed them into a corner and massacred them before.

Very irritating troops.

Yes they are a pain to deal with. Crossbows seem to be the best at whittling them down to ineffective, but as you said it becomes a shoot out and loosing crossbow men to low end HA's is a poor trade off.

Here is a solution: Peasants !

Get a few groups of peasants in your army and keep them in the front and let them absorb missles. Technically you are sacraficing a unit which is counter intuative to generalship, but it does exhaust enemy missles.

Once the Ha's are out of ammo there pretty much a non factor, just remember to keep a melee guard unit near your missle units incase the AI gets cute and charges those HA's into your crosbow line.

[Doug-Thompson]

I started a new game as Turks and I have a hard time using them. It seems like these guy simply never stop firing at enemies no matter what. It keeps resulting in friendly fire.

A lot of good points on this thread, but friendly fire seems to be the big complaint.

Friendly fire happens when arrows from one unit cross over or through another unit. Horse archers never cause friendly fire within their own unit, no matter how thick the unit is.

This is illogical, but true.

Therefore, the best thing to do with bow-armed cavalry is to put it in thick squares about four ranks deep, quite like dismal described. Horses are longer than they are wide, so a unit of only four ranks is close to being a square.

This allows you to put some distance between each square and have them approach from different directions. This keeps them out of each other's fire.

Be warned: You can get two squares close enough to each other, even with an enemy in the middle, to have some overshoots hit friendlies.

What's really irritating is to send some cavalry of any kind in pursuit and have your own missile cavalry shoot them in the back. That's both annoying and expensive.

There's nothing to do but be careful, or shoot all your ammo before you charge home.