10 star general +tinodalae

[seleucid empire]

hey im at a bit of a hole in my KH campaign. Im playing VH camp and medium battles. It is 257 BC but somehow the Macedonians already have a 10 star general and two units of mercenary Galatian wild men infantry along with their superstack (I didnt even know that Tinodalae spawned this early)

I tried saving and then fighting the stack. They ate through my levy hoplies and routed my army killing about 1600 of my men with 100 or so casaulties on their side. If i dont defeat this stack then the last 10 years of fighting will be for nothing. Anyone got any idea how to kill this thing?

[moonburn]

skirmishers for the tindonotae but tindonotae are spear users while gaesotae are sword users the diference is that tindonotae are actually tender then the tough gaesotae the thing is that the 10 star general means they won´t break before he´s dead and if he´s got 10 star it means it will be almost impossible to kill him due to the high hitpoint his unit probably has

naked units have a fear effect on your troops that lowers their batle bravery so my advice is take it as turns remove the tindonotae 1st to increase your batle courage using skirmishers and missile units and try to surround the general in a far away part of the batlefield and then rush him from all sides with all of your available infantry keeping the hypakontistay around fully armed with their missiles if the general breaks and runs for it the rested hipa sould catch up to him or shoot him down with their javelins before he can get away

best way imho is to draw the bastard into a trap by making him chase a unit of peltastai or thureporoi while keeping the rest of his army busy and draw him into a line of 4/5 hoplite/thorokitai style troops surround him and finish him off with the hypo when he makes a run for it

[Ca Putt]

The best thing against fear Infantry imho are unit with good diciple/training/moral stats. Such as Epilektoi(your BG), Spartans and heavy cavalry, well and anything that has enough range to attack them without getting close ;). Afair Tindanotae are sword infantry and with the fear effect this means they are best against heavy but lightly armored levy infantry, such as Haploi and Pantodapoi(all of them).

So the most costy solution for the KH: Stop them with spartans, kill them with Cretans and Cavalry

A cheaper but quite risky way would be to stop them with your bodyguard (yeah I'm serious) best aided by a unit of Hoplites/reformed hoplites (or better Thorakitai(-hoplitai)) and kill them with Archers or anything that has range for that matter.

Another method would be to attack them with a lot of Archers(or slingers) just to kill their Naked fanatics(and maybe the general) and then defeat the army the good oldfashioned way.

In any case you should keep your levy units (Haploi, Arkontistai, Toxotai, Sphendotai, Pantadapoi ....) away from these guys, the fear effect will make them rout before you can say Thorakitai Agematos Basilikou.

By the way: how come the macedonians are powerfull while you are playing KH? did they declare war on the AS and took asia minor?

[seleucid empire]

The best thing against fear Infantry imho are unit with good diciple/training/moral stats. Such as Epilektoi(your BG), Spartans and heavy cavalry, well and anything that has enough range to attack them without getting close ;). Afair Tindanotae are sword infantry and with the fear effect this means they are best against heavy but lightly armored levy infantry, such as Haploi and Pantodapoi(all of them).

So the most costy solution for the KH: Stop them with spartans, kill them with Cretans and Cavalry

A cheaper but quite risky way would be to stop them with your bodyguard (yeah I'm serious) best aided by a unit of Hoplites/reformed hoplites (or better Thorakitai(-hoplitai)) and kill them with Archers or anything that has range for that matter.

Another method would be to attack them with a lot of Archers(or slingers) just to kill their Naked fanatics(and maybe the general) and then defeat the army the good oldfashioned way.

In any case you should keep your levy units (Haploi, Arkontistai, Toxotai, Sphendotai, Pantadapoi ....) away from these guys, the fear effect will make them rout before you can say Thorakitai Agematos Basilikou.

By the way: how come the macedonians are powerfull while you are playing KH? did they declare war on the AS and took asia minor?

They are powerful cause its VH/M and also im playing with realistic movement mod so they can move their troops around quicker. They have already taken, Tylis, Byzantion and Serdike. I have taken chalkis and korinth and have been slowly building up my army and defending sieges at Athens

I cant really surround the general because he has a fullstack and im a few units short of a fullstack so all of my guys are busy trying not to get surrounded. Also he has a 90 unit bodyguard....................

[Brave Brave Sir Robin]

If you have to use Hoplites against them place the hoplites in guard mode so that they die slowly. Try to form angles from which your archers can shoot at the engaged galatians sides or backs and of course, cavalry charges if you have heavy cav.

[Titus Marcellus Scato]

257 BC and you're still using levy hoplites in such an important battle? Then you deserve to get routed! They are fit only for garrison duty.

[seleucid empire]

257 BC and you're still using levy hoplites in such an important battle? Then you deserve to get routed! They are fit only for garrison duty.
Im really poor. I have 2 proper hoplites, 1 merc cretan and one non-merc cretan and 2 light hoplites but the rest are levies. I only have 5 cities and the macedonians have been using their money to hire mercenaries. Ive been constantly set back. It think that with realistic move mod, macedonia becomes way to powerful on VH campaigns

[Ca Putt]

well you won't get around using something else than Haploi against the wildmen. As I said use your bodyguard to pin them and archers to kill them. meanwhile let your Haploi pin their Phalangitai and Hippakontistai seperate them. When you save before the battle you are sure to manage to keep the general alive in one battle ;)

Spare haploi also work wonders against cavalry generals.

I really am a big fan of the Hoplitai haploi and I use them whenever i can but not against Naked fanatics. that's just something they really suck at. They are great against cavalry, can hold up basically every infantry that has no fear effect, they beat most archers/slingers/skirmishers in melee and have a nice big shield to get there, they even do not suck tooooo much against elephants but they absolutely cannot fight Naked fanatics that have swords.

Btw light hoplites are not really good against the naked fanatics but together with the General they may be less of a waste of human life than the Haploi.

[huth]

real movement speed is op, and I don't think it's really realistic... I played campaign with it and that was crazy... edit descr_character choosing 150-170(I prefer latter) and start new campaign, because you're really doomed for the rest of campaign

[Kralizec]

Put half a stack of slingers or more in a city that borders them.

Wait for them to besiege you.

Sally, kill as many of them using only your slingers (except for easy kills, just be careful to conserve casualties on your side) and retreat inside the walls.

Repeat as necessary.

EDIT: 5000 posts!

[moonburn]

i can imagine an haploi turning to his militia buddy and saying "we´re the poorest of the poor in our society but it does seem that those kelts have even poorer dudes look at those poor suckers they can´t even afford some slips and sandals, i bet they´ll run before we make contact"

[seleucid empire]

i can imagine an haploi turning to his militia buddy and saying "we´re the poorest of the poor in our society but it does seem that those kelts have even poorer dudes look at those poor suckers they can´t even afford some slips and sandals, i bet they´ll run before we make contact"

i thought all hoplites were landowners and were rich enough to provide their own equipment? Did they start using levies and state supplied weapons during the EB era when the city states had declined?

[moonburn]

there´s a reason why they are haploi they are the poorest of citizens (just a reminder citizens where roughly only 20/25% of the population of the polis and even then a rich polis would only have 10% citizens being that 50% of the population would be some sort of slaves ) so they aren´t necessarly landowners they could be crafstmen or they could be landowners of land who´s useless for anything except grazzing or just rowers or some other menial task just being lucky enough to be the sons of 2 good families wich qualifies him as a citizen

also these kind of men where the one´s that alexandros and later the diadochi used to populate their lands as colonists citizens who had very litle in their hometowns

i somehow suspect that a few cities did had social armouries to provide a few of it´s less wealthy citizens with some armour suport but the very defenition of haploi is that they only carried their dorus and their hoplon into batle and even then the hoplon/aspis could be of extremly bad quality or very old like belonged to it´s grandfather or something

[vollorix]

The best way to kill a cavalry BGs is to lure them away from the main battle lines using light/medium cavalry as a bait. While light ones will get slaughtered on a contact with BGs, the medium cavalry ( especially the ones with AP attribute for their weapons, and esp. if that weapon is a heavy spear ( read: underhand carried = quite a high lethality value of 0.3-0.4 compared to 0.11-0.13 of a sword/overhand spear ), can fight them for a while to give you time to bring your heavy cavalry in position - behind, and/or one the flanks of the enemy BGs. Then you charge in and surround them, and if the enemy general is a hell of a man with way too many hitopoints, your best chance to kill him is to repeat charging as often as it takes to bring him down. The best unit to do the latter is a unit of Prodromoi, while the Lonchophoroi cavalry ( good armour/shield ) can handle them in melee.
It is also very effective to use your own KH Spartan BGs to counter enemy heavy cavalry BGs: pin them down and watch the slaughter, then bring your Prodromoi cavalrymen to finish the job by charging ( preferably from the rear; and also make sure the are lowering their spears, and not just riding into a melee, means: still standing cavalry in an appropriate distance for a charge ).

On Tindanotae: any unit will rout provided you are able to kill quite a few of the men in that unit in shortest ammount of time ( whatch their morale crumbling while beeing charged by heavy cavalry from behind ). But, as it was said, the 10 stars of an enemy general are adding +10 morale to already present 20 ( or so ) of the Tindanotae, so breaking 30+ morale value is not easy.
There are also several factors determining how fast a unit might rout: 1. a heavily depleted unit ( more then a half ), 2. uncovered flanks, 3. beeing surrounded, 4. loose/rout of a general, 5. fear factors ( elephants, fear causing units, "worrieng" about fighting cavalry, depleted stamina = exauasted etc. ).
And last, but not least: the fresher the unit, the higher the lethality value, and the opposite, consequently. So, trying to kill a 2 HP unit ( which Tindanotae are, along with Gaesatae ) with tired troops wont help your cause, except for the charging value of the cavalry, since the stamina doesn´t seem to affect the lethality of a initial charge.

Good luck.

[Ludens]

i thought all hoplites were landowners and were rich enough to provide their own equipment? Did they start using levies and state supplied weapons during the EB era when the city states had declined?

Not quite: obligatory hoplite service was tied to wealth, not landownership. But, according to Van Wees, even citizens that did not have to go as hoplites would sometimes do so if they could afford the equipment, or had a wealthy friend/relative that could buy it for them. Van Wees cites Socrates as an example of this: the philosopher was a poor stonemason, but he fought as a hoplite in several battles.

As for state-supplied equipment, it probably varied from city to city. I know Athens starting doing so near the end of the Peloponnesian war, and wouldn't be surprised if this went on to become a common practice in EB's time-frame.