Saladin's Campaign: Acre

[Sternness]

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The battle at Acre is giving me a real headache. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-wall.gif It's of course the last one in the Saladin campaign, where you start off nose-to-nose with the French army. I've tried various strategies, and so far have had the most success by throwing my spears and peasants to tie up the army's cavalry while my horse archers retreat up the hill to the rear. Of course, the problem with this is that the French have so many Knights, and once my spears bite the dust, the rest of my army becomes Knight-fodder.

How have the rest of you approached this battle?

[son of spam]

Yeah that one is a b**** to play. Your strategy is the one I use too, but I usually try to avoid getting the peasents to rout, since that spooks the rest of your army too. I move the spears into the knights' path, and let the impetuous knights charge right into my spearwall. On the other flank, I have Saladin's v5 BG, which can hold off tons and tons of those knights. After that, I use saracen inf, peasents, murabitin, archers, and Mamluk HA wherever appropriate. Try to draw off knights with your HA or your peasents.

Another thing is to use your light cav or a really lucky peasent to chased down all the archers once the enemy melee units are engaged. This is critical, since otherwise their archers will cause a mass rout.

Flank as much as possible (though opportunities usually don't arise), use Saladin early on in the battle, and don't be scared by random units routing, I don't think you can prevent that.

[Sternness]

Hmmm, I haven't been giving much attention to the enemy missile units, so perhapse that's part of my problem. I'll also try throwing Saladin into the melee sooner. Thanks for the advice. Wish me luck.

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UPDATE: I did it From what I can tell, the key to that battle is preventing routing. This time around I managed to take out all of the missile units with my Khwarazmian Cav, while all the knights were fighting up-front against my Saracen Infantry (I actually squeezed the Khwaras right up the middle between two units of knights, and slaughtered my way through some fanatics to get to the archers).

With the archers gone, my army indeed lasted longer. I eventually managed to slay the Frankish king and rout the rest of the buggers off the field.

And boy it was worth it. Those two Richard battles were GREAT Thanks again son of spam.

[son of spam]

Glad to be of help http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/ht_bow.gif