How to successfully defeat cavalry

[Al Shama'ar]

Granted, the numbers were low.

Portuguese (+/- 350) 3 Spearmen & 3 Archers

HRE (+/- 250) Royal Knights, Chivalric Knights & Archers
and Urban Militia, if I remember correctly.

I was caught off guard (thought i had cavalry in all of my frontier provinces), but didnt want to loose the province (dont remember the name).

Anyway, i noticed that by moving my spearmen a unit at a time (they were grouped), and a little each time, seemed to confuse (?) the AI, because its cavalry didn't charge at me or tried to flank me. So i kept doing this with the Archers close behind reducing their ranks. Even when the archers were depleted did the AI atack.

Is this common???
Has anyone experienced anything similar?

I'd like to know how you guys handle a similar situation (facing cavalry without any to counter)

Thanx
Al Shama'ar

[econ21]

Are you playing the patched game? If you are lucky, the enemy cavalry won't close but you can't rely on it. Pre-patch knights seemed weaker vs spears.

To be honest, I don't find cavalry that essential to defend against cavalry - I find it's greatest use is for pursuit to catch prisoners, to turn a tactical victory into a massacre. I tend to use heavy cavalry vs other heavy cavalry only in emergencies - when a gap opens up - or when you get a nice opportunity for a flank charge.

Against cavalry, what you had was fine - spears to hold them off, archers to kill. You could add in some flankers, eg urban militia or better (ideally polearmed units), as spears don't kill cavarly very quickly at all but hold them very well. If you had cavalry, I would have been more tempted to have used it against the archers and urban militia than the enemy knights.

[Gregoshi]

Welcome to the Org Al Shama'ar.

Can you duplicate that tactic and get similar results?

[Tiwaz]

I usually like to put my spears in front of archers someplace high and group archers and fire them into biggest mess I can find.

AI, at least with my games, keeps a small pause when they are about to assault my positions and 120 archers firing into that group can cause serious problems to them.

On the other hand AI also likes to try to flank spears so it will be nasty situation.

[Stormer]

just get an spear army http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[Tiwaz]

They are no fun. I had great time fighting for Scotland against English with my ranged troops. 2 catapults, 3 trebizond archer units and 2 naphta thrower units in the start. Made near edge of the map on a hill defensice half circle with my HTH troops.

Majority of battle was my ranged troops raining arrows against English ranks and them eventually falling back when nonstop rain of boulders (catapults) and naphta wasn't to their liking.

Oh that was fund...

[Al Shama'ar]

to Simon Appleton:

Yes i'm plaing the patched game.
I use Ginetes a lot. As decoy, to either separate certain enemy units from the main body, so the first wave is not that strong, or to atract them into range of my archers.

to Gregoshi:

thnx. It's always nice to be welcomed.
I'll load the save file tonight and see what happens.

I just thought that the AI behaviour was a bit strange. There i was fearing flanking from all imaginable sides and those dorks just sat there, and I the greater dork, it took me 5 to 10 min before i realise they wouldnt be coming at all http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/shock.gif

[Aelwyn]

A lot of times, the AI won't know you're attacking, or planning to attack unless you actually click the enemy unit to attack. If you click behind the unit, you can just bring a unit of spears right up to cavs, and they won't move. The harder part is trying to trap Horse Archers without any cavs. Its possible, but not very fun.

[ShadesPanther]

it is really hard to get the HA without cav as one mistake they run away
or more likely
the AI magically spots what you are doing and runs away http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mad.gif

[LeeJackson]

teh biggest problem I have in facing cav with no cav is keeping them from regrouping. Routing isn't usually too much of a problem (if I have decent troops) but since the cav run so much faster they almost always regroup and then my poor spear men Have to fight them again and again