Surprised by the Hashashin!

[Third spearman from the left]

It's great when after playing MTW for so long it can throw up something new for you to play with. I've never had the Hashashin before and wanted to know if anyone had any tips for their use in the field?

While your here you can also tell us about any new units in any of the mods that 'float your boat' and make MTW great to play again and again.............

[Scurvy]

i'v only used them a few times online and only once on sp, but they are only any good for defedning... hide them at start somewhere in the middle of knowhere, and the either snipe the enemy gen or flank large amounts of men, they can do afir bit of damage, i reccomend using them in 2's and 3's to have any great effect, and they cant take on many infantry and no cavalry one vs one... think of them as nizaris that can hide :P

[Odin]

In XL mod you can build sherwood foresters as the english that have similar effects. I personally dont like the unit types as there 12 man size dosent equate to much punch.

As scurvy said, you can use thier stealth for advantage but to what end? I suppose, as sun tza would say, in warfare it is best to make your strategy. For this reason hashashin work because the AI will adjust to them once they are spotted.

Placed at the right place they can set up a decent ambush. Try setting them up near a tree line with some hidden units within and maximize the effect. In all honesty they dont make it onto my unit roster often.

[Scurvy]

small units are great fun to mess around with, although i really stress the need to use them in groups :P 12 are useless but if you have 36 they can take on most units.... similar in beserkers in that way...

[Geezer57]

The most creative use I've read about, involving little units that have the "hide" ability, is in castle assault defenses. One fellow used Hashishin, hidden just inside the outside ring wall and well away from the gatehouses, to keep all his arrow/balista/catapult/etc. towers firing long after other troops had retreated into the inner keep. Sherwood Foresters should work as well - just make sure that "Fire at Will" is turned off, so they don't give themselves away prematurely.

[ajaxfetish]

Is there any ambush advantage if they start firing from hiding, or does it only do any good if you order them straight into a melee attack?

As for cool mod units, in XL I like the Wallachian Mercenary Cavalry, just as fast as steppe or saharan cav, but with some decent staying power. They make excellent scouting/pursuit/envelopment troops. Then of course it's hard to beat Klibanophoroi. Armor-piercing kataphracts with bows have few natural enemies and a wide range of prey. It almost feels like cheating to use them!

Ajax

[Third spearman from the left]

Is there any ambush advantage if they start firing from hiding, or does it only do any good if you order them straight into a melee attack?

As for cool mod units, in XL I like the Wallachian Mercenary Cavalry, just as fast as steppe or saharan cav, but with some decent staying power. They make excellent scouting/pursuit/envelopment troops. Then of course it's hard to beat Klibanophoroi. Armor-piercing kataphracts with bows have few natural enemies and a wide range of prey. It almost feels like cheating to use them!

Ajax



Wallachian cav are good, just managed to build them recently with 1+ valour. Which faction build kataphracts with bows?

[ajaxfetish]

The Byzantines (only in XL, though). They're about as multi-purpose powerful as Boyars and Steppe Heavy Cavalry. Their one weakness compared to these others is their slower speed (and swifter fatigue). You can't run them around quite as much, but their armor and AP makes them even better in hand to hand, so you don't have to run them around as much.

Ajax

[Poleaxe]

I only played as the Byzantines in XL once and if I remember correctly the Klibs dissapeared early, which was a major headache because all my heavy cavalry was Klibs and not Katatanks. Lesson learned.

[ajaxfetish]

Hmm . . . I'd forgotten about that, but now that you mention it they do disappear in late, along with Varangians. So they're very handy in the early game, and if you build enough of them they should be able to last, but will start to get much more precious as of 1320!

Ajax

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

I'm usually finished by 1350 as the Byz anyway.

[Third spearman from the left]

I'm playing XL mod and I know that VH did not mean for some units to disappear in High and Late eras. It might be that some of these were meant to carry over into the high era at least. VH is drawing up some very early plans for a new patch to XL, so drop him a line with anything like this so he can make the changes if needs be. He won't have had the time to test out all the new factions and units so small info like this would be useful I'm sure. :2thumbsup: