Italian infantry kicking my butt

[Crayno]

First of all my compliments for the forum and the helpfull people in it and a special thanks to Frogbeastegg and all the others that made the guides,they've been most helpfull sofar.
I've only recently bought Medieval total war and I'm loving every inch of it ~:cool:
As for my post: I would like to ask you some advice.
I'm playing as the Danes and everything is going fine and dandy sofar(Although I restarted a couple of times after learning more).
However at this time I have control of Morocco and I'm being invaded by those evil Italians ~:joker:
At first I used my standard defense formation:
6 Chivalric sergeants
2 Pavise Arbalester
3 Archers
Some royal cavalry since my royal line seems to be very furtile and I have to do something with all those princes ~:p
The Italians have 6 regiments of Italian infantry and boy was I surprised when I thought I would win easily being on top of a steep hill.
Even going up a steep hill the Italian infantry slaughered my CS.
So I got rid of the CS (Heavy armoured troops IS a bad idea in the desert)and replaced them with some Feudal sergeants,got rid of the PA and added 2 more archery units and 2 viking units.
And they still kick my booty ~:mecry:
My general has 2 command and the enemy general 3 command,almost all troops on the battlefield have 2 valor so all that is pretty much evenly matched.
I hope you veterans can help me out here because I'm at a loss,thanks :bow:

P.S. Love the smileys ~:wave:

[Khan of ED]

You should use sword units if you have any and outflank outflank out :bow: flank.
Make them run after your cav. Tell what else do italians have

[ThijsP]

MAybe with the lightly armoured FS run around a bit and get those armoured italian infantry tired. During the running keep your archers shooting if possible. OR just use some swords with sergeants holding the line and swords flanking it would'nt be a big problem.

And welcome ~:cheers:

[Blodrast]

Hi Crayno, and welcome to the Org !
Yes, you obviously like the smileys ~:p

Well, there are lots of things you can do to kick the Italians' butt in response.

Good thing you've noticed that high armor troops tire faster in the desert.

One thing would be to deploy your troops as far back as possible. This will make the Italians to have a long march to you, and they will get tired in the process. Don't worry, Italian Infantry isn't particularly happy in the desert, either !

Another thing: it is true that heavily armoured troops get tired faster in the desert; however, if your CS will just stand at the top of a dune, they will not get that tired, so you can still use them if you like, and if the battle won't take a long time.
However, some people aren't big fans of CS because of their crappy morale. Seeing as your general doesn't have too many stars, this will affect you too in this particular battle. So you can use some FS just to hold your line for a while.

Of course it is a good thing to bring some missiles to pepper them for a long time; you can also deploy the bulk of your troops as far behind as possible, but deploy some archers as far in the front as possible, to pepper the Italian Infantry all the way to the bulk of your troops, retreating continuously with your archers. Of course, for this you'd use some fast archers: bulgarian brigands, desert archers, etc, but NOT pavise troops.
You can still get pavise if you want to engage in a missile duel with them, but from what I understand that is not the case here. And do use _archers_, not arbs or crossbows. You don't need AP for Italian Infantry, and you wanna drop as many missiles in as short a time as possible on them.

Last, but not least, probably one of the best things you could do is use Horse Archers.
You will certainly manage to attract at least a few of the Italian Infantry to chase you around, all the while peppering them with arrows and getting them exhausted.
You can also use foot missile troops in combination with this.
But, in general, using HA is a good idea.

hth

[maestro]

I'd use Chivalric Men-at-Arms instead of chivalric seargents. You don't get the spear bonus for ranks but you get armour piercing, heavy armour and good morale. And you can use thinner lines to wrap around the enemy for that flanking bonus. Watch the Itis die horribly with a smile on your face :D

[Ludens]

I agree with Blodrast completily: set-up far away from them, have them march towards you and pepper them with arrows. The problem is that II have a large shield and are not particulary impressed by ranged weapons, so you need to get behind their back. That's why I recommend horse archers, preferebly mounted crosbowmen. If you can pin them and get javelin troops in their back, that's great, but javelins do require some skill.
Chivalric men-at-arms probably work better than sergeants, but they are armoured and do NOT have armour piercing. Use them in a thin formation to wrap around the enemy.

Lastly: you are playing the Danes and you don't use Vikings? Standard Vikings are some of the best early infantry and they are available real early. And I won't mention the VI Viking units...

[Sinner]

Got to agree with Ludens on the ever useful Vikings. Unlike the CMAA, they are armour piercing and their large shield has full effect (CMAA has 0.5 modifier). The base attack and defense/armour stats are lower than the CMAA, but this can be partially offset by training the Vikings in Norway for the valour bonus, then perhaps routing them via Sweden for retraining if you have a Metalsmith there.

Add in that Vikings are so cheap, especially for the Danes, plus are so easily available - Fort instead of Castle & Swordsmith's Workshop - and you'd be able to have a couple of Vikings for every CMAA, maybe more. Even without Norway's valour bonus and upgrades from armourers and metalsmiths, I'd rather have a pair of Vikings, using the second to hit the Italians from the flank or rear.

And I'll mention one of the unmentionables: Viking Landsmenn. Also fairly cheap, very easy to get (Fort Motte), elite, and improved defense and armour over the basic Viking. The only negative is that they can only be built in Denmark, Sweden and Norway, and they're only available in Early. Plus it's very tempting to neglect them to build up to those ultimate Early death machines: the Huscarle. *wipes drool*

[maestro]

Chivalric men-at-arms probably work better than sergeants, but they are armoured and do NOT have armour piercing.

Oh yeah, I knew that ~:doh:

[Tozama]

I am also currently playing as the Danes right now.

When faced with a problem like the one you describe ALWAYS fall back to the primary premise of combat comparisons in MTW:
Cavalry-Spears-Swords equates to Rock-Paper-Scissors
in that Spears beat cavalry, swords beat spears, cavalry beats swords.

No its not absolute and yes I can beat up low valor vanilla spears with my 7 valor Chivalric Knights but generally speaking if you follow the rock-paper-scissor concept you WILL resolve all hard situations you encounter.

As suggested above, if you're Danish I'd train Vikings in Norway for the +1 valor bonus and if you have metalsmith in Sweden retrain them there for the weapon bonus. Use them as anti-spear infantry. They will chop Italian infantry to pieces. The key to using vikings is to CHARGE them since their defence rating is rather low. So parked on a hill on defense I will let my enemy get right in my face and then charge my whole line downhill (for another charge bonus by the way) into his spears. My cav will swing around the flanks to charge the rear of any area I am losing the melee in or go straight for his general in an attempt to cause or route or at least lower his morale.

Other than vikings if you're Danish, Fuedal or Chivalric men-at-arms will always do the job on spear formations.

Another thing I noted you are doing wrong is using more archers when you have arbs you can build. On defense 5 or 6 arbs behind a decent wall of men will decimate most anything that comes at them.

In the desert against a lot of Italian infantry my stack would be:
(1) Royal Cav. - General
(1) Royal Cav.
(1) Mounted sarge (less armor in desert heat and fast cav.for flanking)
(4) Arbs - Pavise arbs are even better if you can build them yet
(4) Vikings or CMMA
(4) Fuedal Seargents to form pinning spear lines

You could even modify this to 5 vikings and 3 spears if you seem to be facing an unbalanced high number of italian infantry in a particular battle.


In my current game I have gold armor in Norway producing +1 valor vikings that then go to a level 2 metalsmith in Sweden for retraining. Sweden has a relequery for the morale bonus as well. The final result is rather expensive but very affective attackers with gold shields and upgraded weapons with good morale. Under a decent general I can spank anything I meet on the battlefield with them as my core.

[Sinner]

I have a similar build strategy while playing the Danes ~:).

With Sweden I initially concentrate on the metalsmith and merchant, with my basic build order being Fort, Keep, Castle, Metalsmith, Citadel, Metalsmiths Workshop, Fortress, Metalsmiths Guild, Master Metalsmith and the merchant buildings added in where appropriate as long as I have ships in the water, with how desperately I need money or whether I'm in any major wars determining if they're given priority over the metalsmith. In Late I then like to build up to County Militia so that I can also upgrade Pikemen as my main pinning troop, other buildings get added as time and money permit.

With Norway I initially just have a Fort so that I can get Vikings and a Shipyard for Longships, then as long as I have the money I add a Keep, Spearmaker, Swordsmith and Armourer so that I can build Huscarles (in Early) with Landsmenn available after the Castle, but the cheaper +1 Valour Vikings being preferred. If I can I'll build up to Master Swordsmith for +1 Valour Huscarles and maybe also build up to Master Armourer after that.

Denmark is already built up at the beginning and I use that to quickly get to Master Armourer and Cathedral, quickly getting Huscarles with the Swordsmith/Armourer. I prefer the Cathedral over the slightly quicker Monastery/Reliquary route (16 years vs 14 years combined) since it is cheaper, adds a small income and allows access to the other unique buildings, especially Military Academy for the Discipline bonus.

A Bowyer gets squeezed in whenever I can, although I generally wait until I add another region to build up to Arbalesters.

Longer term I try to grab Scotland for Highlanders to give me fast infantrymen I can easily use in the desert; Navarre or one of the other Iberian regions for Spanish Jinetes; and one or more of the steppe regions for Steppe Heavy Cavalry. The latter tend to be my only heavy cavalry other than royal knights unless I later manage to pick up Toulouse for CKs, although that's a nice-to-have rather than a must-have.

EDIT: Ooops, sorry for the straying off-topic. My bad. ~:0

[Crayno]

Just wanted to throw in a quick thank you for all the answers,most helpfull indeed :thumbsup: