English wall tactics:

[SwordsMaster]

I was messing around in my English (Early, Hard) campaign till I had 3 full HRE staks sitting in Flanders, ready to attack my 950-men strong army with a 6* heir-natural born killer as a commander. The battle was set as follows:

Me:

3 pav xbows
4longbows
2 armed spears
1 RK (gen)(8men)
2nobilars
2FMAA

neither the spears nor the RKs were complete

Setup for battle:

LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL
NNNNN PPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP WWWWWWW
LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL GEN
IIIII IIIII

where: L:longbows
P: pav xbows
W: FMAA
N: Nobilars
I: spears
GEN: general

HRE:

6 archers
5peasant
3UM
4feudal knights
3xbows
2 FMAA
3 roundshield spears
2halbs
gen: 4 star RK (6men in unit)


You can guess what happened: My longbows shot them down from a good distance, and the archers ran away before shooting a single volley.
when their heavy cavs approached, my loongbows kept shooting, then withdrew and I switched the Xbows to fire at will. they sent a simultaneous volley into the charging FK, which aided with the longbow fire from behing made them retreat before engaging.


Long story short, My problem was that my longbows run aout of ammo, but by then, they started to bring in the peasant-UM reinforcements, whic were first shot by my pavs and then run down by the cavs. My general unit alone killed 91 and captured 43.

Post battle screen:

Germans: lost: 1639, killed 102 (my front line unit of longbows and some nobilars and FMAA)

Me: lost 102, captured 528.

Hope this helps someone. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-yes.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/barrel.gif

[Bezalel]

It is best to save longbows for shooting up infantry. Good players will find creative ways to waste your longbow arrows on crappy archers or xbows.

[English assassin]

Good effort And don't forget, as many people have pointed out on the Org before, that Longbowmen make OK light infantry once they are out of arrows.

[ah_dut]

Gah methinks you have too many ranged units swordsmaster, although i can't talk as a Turk player

[Peredhil]

I always add a fair amount of ranged units in my armies against the AI. They seem to have trouble countering them, and you get a nice morale penalty.