Hold Steady
01-08-2003, 13:06
I'm playing the Russians in a late expert campaign, and it appears to me that, while cleaning up the stepps down to the Kaukasus by kicking out the GH, they've become quite harmless.
I wouldn't say they've become wussies, since they counterattacked Novogrod and Muscovy immediatly after I invaded smolensk (te uppermost GH-occupied province), but after succesfully defending those, they pose no real problems (i'm much scarier, well, scared, pfwaah, of the Poles and expanding-into-HRE-Danes).
Once on the battlefield, I face forces comprising of Cav archers (more than 50%), foot warriors (20%), Heavy cav (20%) and a mixed other rubble of archers or steppe cavalry.
And then the boring starts, just enduring countless retreats of them horse archers..
The only thing I really watch out for on the battlefield is their heavy cav. So, when I finally decide that I cannot lure the cav archers into a fight with infantry, I attack them with my steppe cavalry. This is retalliated with an attack from their heavy cav, I pull the steppe cavalry back and advance with 200 florin spearmen, which nicely fixes the heavy cav assault, I send another unit around (infantry or cav (boyars)), and make a nice Mongol-Heavycav-sandwich. Then there's the job of stringing out all my spearmen (can u imagine, late period and I'm fighting with spearmen. Halbadiers just to slow in these steppe-battles) and driving the horse cavalry off the field. Another province gained... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/redface.gif
I wouldn't say they've become wussies, since they counterattacked Novogrod and Muscovy immediatly after I invaded smolensk (te uppermost GH-occupied province), but after succesfully defending those, they pose no real problems (i'm much scarier, well, scared, pfwaah, of the Poles and expanding-into-HRE-Danes).
Once on the battlefield, I face forces comprising of Cav archers (more than 50%), foot warriors (20%), Heavy cav (20%) and a mixed other rubble of archers or steppe cavalry.
And then the boring starts, just enduring countless retreats of them horse archers..
The only thing I really watch out for on the battlefield is their heavy cav. So, when I finally decide that I cannot lure the cav archers into a fight with infantry, I attack them with my steppe cavalry. This is retalliated with an attack from their heavy cav, I pull the steppe cavalry back and advance with 200 florin spearmen, which nicely fixes the heavy cav assault, I send another unit around (infantry or cav (boyars)), and make a nice Mongol-Heavycav-sandwich. Then there's the job of stringing out all my spearmen (can u imagine, late period and I'm fighting with spearmen. Halbadiers just to slow in these steppe-battles) and driving the horse cavalry off the field. Another province gained... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/redface.gif