writing battle tactics/strategy guide [Archive]

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gaijinalways

10-24-2006, 09:37

I noticed when I went through the guide to MTW there is very little on battle tactics and strategy. I know many battles are different in some sense, but I thought this might be an area that some people could share on. Of course variables are;

defending or attacking

the make up of your army (type, valor, morale, shields, etc.)

the make up of the enemy army (see above)

even numbers or is one side out-numbered

the starting points that you have a choice of

terrain (bridges, hills, forests, dunes, etc.)

your generals star level versus enemies'

I noticed bridge battles, sieges, and use of HAs are covered, but I don't see much beyond that. Too daunting a task:dizzy2: ?

Scurvy

10-24-2006, 12:02

if you search other mtw sites (especially those centred around online multiplayer) there are quite a few :2thumbsup: --> however the communtiy would certainly benfit from some more :P

Don Corleone

10-24-2006, 18:05

It's taken me a LOOOONNNGG time to learn how to do it properly, but I've noticed that even on Hard (I don't play Expert) the AI is a sucker for a good feint....

This is really more of an operational tactic, as it works on both offense and defense, and across most open terrains. Due to the logistics of moving men around in close quarters, I don't recommend it in cramped quarters, at the edge of a map or in a forest (though it may work in the last).

Begin by moving a unit (referred to as unit A) (preferably one that can take some damage) at a diagonal towards an enemy unit (unit B) that should be able to beat it. Line up a unit that beats the enemy's unit, (unit C). March Unit A diagonally towards Unit B, keeping Unit C well screened. When the enemy unit takes the bait and moves unit B into position to address unit A, shift unit A away from unit B, opening a direct path between unit B and unit C. Unit B will most likely be moving to attack unit A and won't be able to stop. Most likely, he'll try to puruse unit A, allowing unit C to hit unit B in the flanks or even, if you're lucky, in the rear.

Example: I lead a unit of chivalric swordsmen northeast, towards the end of the French line, right at a unit of Chivalric knights. The knights, licking their chops ready to feast, lower their lances and begin to move towards the swordsmen. About halfway across the gap, the swordsmen move off in a 90 degree direction, now travelling northwest. The knights, not frothing at the chance to hit the exposed flank, attack, moving roughly southwest. They've failed to notice a unit of billmen coming right at them from the rear. The swordsmen turn to face the brunt of the knights' charge, so they are now facing due east. The knights charge, in a west/southwest direction, and take it in the shorts from the Billmen coming in from their right flank and rear.

The AI never fails to walk into this sort of trap. He never pauses before taking a gambit.

Rules for proper use:

-The 'bait' unit must be tough enough to take some damage for the first round.

-This works in almost all defensive postures. It works attacking on flat ground or downhill. It can take Unit C a while to get to the scene, so I don't recommend it when attacking uphill.

-WATCH YOUR OWN FLANK! The AI may respond to your gambit with a counter of his own.

-Try to put away unit B as quickly as you possibly can. By teaming up on him, you're creating a numerical imbalance for your army someplace else.

-While I used sword/knight/polearm any three units work, so long as unit A is succeptible to unit B, and unit C can take down unit B fairly quickly. Obviously, unit A is going to take some damages, so money wise, and raw field power wise, the way I described the scenario works best.

-Unfortunately, AFAIK, you cannot move units obliquely in MTW (the unit moves in any given direction but they maintain their original facing). If unit A could move off in phase 2 obliquely, it would probably sustain the attack much better.

Scurvy

10-24-2006, 23:27

I think this is a good guide (got link from tiger site)

gaijinalways

10-25-2006, 03:02

This link has some problem, can't read most of the text.

gaijinalways

10-25-2006, 03:18

I have gone to some other site, but rather than having to scurry every where or have to do extensive thread searching here, I thought a battle tactics book would be helpful.

(I don't play Expert) the AI is a sucker for a good feint....

This is really more of an operational tactic, as it works on both offense and defense, and across most open terrains. Due to the logistics of moving men around in close quarters, I don't recommend it in cramped quarters, at the edge of a map or in a forest (though it may work in the last).

On expert the AI often does this, setting up situations where they will attempt to surround one or two units that you have. I usually hope that numerical superiority will save the day (or that a neighboring unit will arrive in time to slam the AI unit and relieve the sieged unit), but it doesn't always work:oops: .

caravel

10-25-2006, 11:23

Hmmm... I've never seen any difference in the quality of the AI between expert level and hard level. The only difference AFAIK is the AI valour bonus.

Innocentius

11-01-2006, 19:07

While on the subject i have some questions in general:

1. What is the best positioning of a gun battery when defending? I roughly use this lineup:
https://img137.imageshack.us/img137/2913/lineup1bb3.png (https://imageshack.us)
The red dots being cannons, the black stripes arqebuisers or handgunners, and the blue stripes being infantry or cavalry. The arrow indicates where the units are pointed (i.e. from where the attack is coming). The exact lineup changes with the terrain of course.

2. What really is the best "standard" lineup when charging? I tend to use something like this:
https://img158.imageshack.us/img158/7458/lineup2wp0.png (https://imageshack.us)
Blue: Archers/Crossbowmen
Black: Infantry
Red: Cavalry
Green: General
Brown: Artillery
Again, the arrow indicates where the enemy is.

3. What is the best way to advance across a bridge. Note: advance, not attack. I want to learn how to get my troops across safely.

Kavhan Isbul

11-01-2006, 19:27

I personally find artillery useful in sieges, but for field battles I prefer misslile units - they give a lot more firepower. Also, they are much more accurate, except compared to certain guns in Late.
When attacking, if I have artillery within my army, the AI simply gets of its range and it becomes completely useless, as it does not move. When attacking I prefer an army of horse archers to lure the enemy in and pull it out of position. For attacks, I have discovered horse archers in all their varieties to be the best tool, as they lure enemy units into pursuing them, thus pulling them out of position.
I do not quite understand the last question about bridges. If there are multiple bridges in a battle, and the AI only guards one of them, then moving troops accross an undefended bridge should not cause any concern - simply move them over as fast as you can. If a bridge is guarded by the AI, however, then any attempt to move units over it will result in the AI sending a unit os its own to attack and stop your troops accross the bridge, or very near the bridge and it will surround your unit with its own units and wipe it out quickly (unless you are playong on easy and move a unit of Variangians accross to be faced only by peasants). The AI is stupid enough, but it tends to realize the defensive advantage of holding your units on the bridge, and it will not allow you to simply move them over without a fight.

Mystic

11-01-2006, 19:42

1.i use infantry charge to begin a battle which puts my catapults and such up front i then move my infantry to the sides of it.

Line1. Infantry*/Catapults-/Archers-/*Infantry
Line2. Cavalry+

******* ---- ---- *******
++++ +++++++++++ +++++++++++ ++++

2.i move my cavalry close up to the infantry. i take 2 cavalry units to the sides further out(moving out to sides far from fighting). as the enemy units move towards my front line i assign each infantry unit to its individual strengths (ex. men at arms vs spearmen)

3. as the infantry begins fighting i bring the cavalry i moved to the sides in behind the attackers flanking them and causing an almost instant rout and if they dont rout they get crushed anyway. my cavalry in the back is usually for support and chasing the runners.

Innocentius

11-01-2006, 20:00

I do not quite understand the last question about bridges. If there are multiple bridges in a battle, and the AI only guards one of them, then moving troops accross an undefended bridge should not cause any concern - simply move them over as fast as you can. If a bridge is guarded by the AI, however, then any attempt to move units over it will result in the AI sending a unit os its own to attack and stop your troops accross the bridge, or very near the bridge and it will surround your unit with its own units and wipe it out quickly (unless you are playong on easy and move a unit of Variangians accross to be faced only by peasants). The AI is stupid enough, but it tends to realize the defensive advantage of holding your units on the bridge, and it will not allow you to simply move them over without a fight.

Yes, I could have been more clear about that one. What I meant was: How do you secure a bridge properly?
For example, you can send pavise crossbowmen up first, tightly followed by spearman/pikemen (good anti-cavarly units anyway). With these two units across the bridge, you should be able to hold the ground long enough for more reliable troops to cross.

Kavhan Isbul

11-01-2006, 20:36

Martok

11-01-2006, 23:27

In regards to bridge battles, Kavhan Isbul has highlighted what is probably the best strategy--to cause the enemy to abandon their strong defensive position, and lure them across the bridge into the waiting arms of your men. If you don't have a calvary unit to spare for the task, however, said tactic can be difficult to pull off.

Failing that, I find that having superior missile forces (archers, x-bows, etc.) often goes a long way towards helping me win bridge battles; and this is true for whether I'm the attacker or the defender. As the defender, I can of course simply pour arrows and bolts into the attacker's troops as they try to cross the river. As the attacker, I can shower the defender with missiles until they either withdraw away from the river (thus allowing me to march across the bridge in force); or the defenders tries to charge across the bridge themselves.

Either way, attacking in a bridge battle is tricky, and you'll probably suffer fairly heavy casualties no matter what tactics you use. With experience, though, you'll learn how to keep your losses to a relatively modest level and not decimate your army. ~:)

Arciel

11-02-2006, 02:29

In vanilla MTW/VI, bridge battles are one of the battles I always hope to have, since these battles are the ones in which me or the AI have a fairly even casualty count. For trying to secure the opposite the bank, I usually send first my heavy infantry, one unit at a time. After they have fought towards the opposite end, I send missile units across then cavalry, my general being the last unit I cross the bridge with. And it does help if you have artillery to provide cover whilst you're crossing the bridge.

Jxrc

11-02-2006, 14:53

For attack across a bridge (with only one bridge), what I usually do is to send a unit of infantry (spear or sword depending on what the AI has) to cross wait until the AI start moving and stop my troops in the middle of the bridge. Of course I have a good chance that that kamikaze unit will received its fair share of arrows and bolts but for a while they will fight the IA on an even ground without possibility to be flanked. While they do so the AI troops have come in range of my own missile and and can start shooting the melee. Since the IA is usually not smart enough to send juts one unit but send all its non-missile units, this means that I get to shoot at its entire army while they one get a shot at one single unit of mine. Of course I probably shoot my own troops in the process but as the man said "we've got reserve".

If there are two bridges, the AI is no longer since the patch dumb enough just to defend one. The idea is to do about the same as described above and wait until you've have decimated a few IA unit and with a little luck the IA will transfer untis from the other bridge. Once it has done so, time to cross that other brigde with your cavalry and attack the AI next to the other bridge from the rear (the IA is not willing or able to stop the transfer of its troops from one bridge to the other or disengage troop that are just running wild at the end of the bridge without even connection to your kamaikaze unit on it). Once you've got the AI stuck on the bridge and control both ends it time for maximum prisonners without even bothering to run after them :beam:

Of course it does not work each time ... If you send a unit of vanilla spearmen or FS as a kamikaze unit and that it meets an unit of AUM or vanguard guards (I should probably add Huscarls but I've never see the IA buid one so ) in the middle of the bridge it will not last long enough for the tactic to work :no: :no: :no: :no: :no:

Kavhan Isbul

11-02-2006, 19:03

I always play on expert and I find slugfests in the middle of the bridge deffinitely not in my favor, even if I pepper the AI's units with tons of arrows. Also, I have discovered that my missile troops do much, much better when shooting at a unit which is grouping on the other bank just before crossing the bridge and then while wlaking over the bridge, than a unit in a middle of a fight. I have no diea as to why that is, but it seems to effect archer efficiency. Therefore, when attacking a bridge I simply use a unit of light cavalry (the quicker, the better) to lure the enemy into moving onto the bridge. Of course, I have a unit of spearmen at my end and plenty of missile troops. The AI will usually withdraw a little, just outside my arechers' range and sit and wait, but when I start moving with my light cavalry (mounted sergeants with a morale upgrade are agood choice, steppe cavalry get rooted easily even after a few arrows), it usually send its spearmen to meet them. Then I simply turn around and start retreating. The key is not to do it too early, because in this case the AI will stop and it will not come in range, but also not to do it too late, because if the sparmen catch up with your horsemen, they will mince them in a matter of a few seconds, and then your unit will root and it will be rendered useless for the rest of the battle. Once I have the AI in range, I concentrate all my fire on its unfortunate unit. Soon that unit will stop and turn back, turning its back and getting even more casualties, and will eventually withdraw with huge losses. Then I simply repeat the exercise, and decimate the AI's infantry one by one. It takes some time, practice and patience, and you risk running out of time, but after the AI's spears and other infantry have taken huge losses, and their morale lowered as a result (not to mention they get a bit tired chasing after your light cavalry), then the inevitable slugfest at the middle of the bridge is a much easier and quicker affair,a s long as you have a decent spear unit and a decent blade infantry unit that rested and preserved their strength while the enemy was running back and forth only to be shot to pieces by your archers for its efforts. There is one significant risk, and it is for your light cavalry to root because of the constant retreat. I had it happen once on a general (with heavy cavalry with superb morale and no morale decreasing vices) who did not lose a single man, but once he rooted, he wouldn't rally. I still won the battle though.
Of course, all the tactics about bridge battels mentioned so far, work quite well most of the time. I guess it is a matter of personal preferences what one uses, and also on what type of troops one has.

Geezer57

11-04-2006, 01:44

One factor seldom mentioned that I find critical to both bridge battles and siege assaults: the squeeze factor. Whenever you crowd men together, so that they don't have sufficient room to wield their weapons properly, they'll attack and defend at significantly reduced effect.

The way around this is to set your unit's formation, before allowing it to engage, to a width that doesn't exceed the bridge or gatehouse width. On an assault across a bridge with the typical infantry unit, I find that a frontage of no more than seven columns (resulting in very deep rank formations) is ideal. I prefer polearms or swords to spear units, as their attack factors tend to be higher. Set to this frontage, I seldom (on Expert) need more than one unit to breach the enemy's frontage, unless they're massively equipped with missle troops. But in melee my men are fighting to full effect, while all the enemy's troops are struggling at half effect.

Martok

11-04-2006, 09:02

Good point, Geezer. I hadn't thought of the "squeeze" factor, but you're absolutely right. :bow:

I have a semi-related question in regards to bridge battles: When defending a bridge, does everyone just try to jam the attacker right at the crossing (assuming there's only one bridge on the battle map)? I'm curious because I myself sometimes allow the attacker to get a few of his units across, and only then do I hit him (on 3 sides). I realize this strategy can be risky; but it often pays off for me, as the attacker tends to route faster since he's being flanked. Does anyone else do this?

Geezer57

11-04-2006, 15:07

I have a semi-related question in regards to bridge battles: When defending a bridge, does everyone just try to jam the attacker right at the crossing (assuming there's only one bridge on the battle map)?

My usual approach when defending is to use a single elite (or as elite as is available) unit just off my end of the bridge, supported by massive amounts of missle troops. But that depends on having the right army composition, right?

So if I'm missle-poor and infantry-heavy, I'll adopt either an inverted "V" (two units) or "U" (three units) formation with my best infantry, which (as you've found) forces the enemy into a flanked position as soon as they step off the bridge.

But I find the single-unit defense method is usually more than adequate, depending on unit morale, General's rank bonuses, missle support, enemy compbat power, and other factors. So that's what I normally use.

satchef1

11-04-2006, 22:09

I use the same strategy for pretty much every battle. I base my armies around the spear:
6 units of the best spears i can get
3 units of heavy cavalry
2 units of sword/axe infantry
4 units of Missle Infantry (usually hybrids so i can use them to reinforce weak spots)
1 General (additional to the above, he only joins the fight if its absolutely necessary)

I line up the spears, place the missle behind and the sword/axe on the missles flanks to protect them. The general goes behind and the cavs to his flanks.

I slowly march my force forward, sending my cavalry wide when im near the enemy. I stop my infantry when im close to the enemy (about javelin throwing distance) and move my cavs round to the enemies rear (out of missle range).
At this point the AI usually charges straight into the spears (Note: i never charge the AI. If they dont respond, i march closer) and i simply wait a couple of minutes for the mellee to really get going then hit them in the rear with my cavs and send the sword/axe inf into theyre flanks. If my lines thin too much, in go the missle inf.

Works well enough for me, even though casualties are usually reasonably high among my inf.

Innocentius

11-05-2006, 16:18

And another question: Which really is the best unit for deploying the Doppelsöldner (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppels%C3%B6ldner)-tactic? Is it quite plainly CMAA?

Martok

11-05-2006, 18:31

And another question: Which really is the best unit for deploying the Doppelsöldner (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppels%C3%B6ldner)-tactic? Is it quite plainly CMAA?
If that's your best sword infantry unit, then yes, CMAA would be who you'd want to use. A few factions get another unit even beyond that, but they don't become available until the Late period.

Kavhan Isbul

11-06-2006, 19:07

When defending bridges I rely ehavily on missile units. I usually put a good spear unit at my end, especially if the AI is attacking with heavy cavalry. I use two or three javelin units right behind the spear unit - I take them off the skirmish mod (otherwise they retreat outside of their range), and wait for the enemy to approach. Usually the AI attacks with its best unit first, but if it sends a relatively weaker unit I preserve the javelines for later and only use bows or crossbows (arbalests if I have them). As long as the spear units holds the initial impact for even less than 30 seconds, just enough to allow my javelinmen to do their damage, this tactic has spectacular results. The best I can remember was using three units of lowly Slav javelinmen to kill two units of Variangian guards with armor upgrade and plenty of valor - nothing nicer than to see how the elite of the Eastern Roman Empire disappears in a matter of seconds, and it is a rare sight indeed to see a few Variangian guardsmen from a 7 valor unit on expert to run away, greatly diminishing the morale of the rest of the Emperor's army. The only weakeness of all types of javelinmen except armored Almughavars is that they are usually not armored and get many casualties if within range of the enemy missile units.

MeglaGnome

11-15-2006, 05:45

How to defend with Arbalests.

This article describes how to defend against any threat using an army consisting of 50% or more arbalests, and achieve very high kill ratios in your favour. After surviving the early period, you want to hold key bottleneck locations with a very strong, but cost effective force, allowing your fancy elite troops (e.g. Chivalric Knights) the freedom to be an offensive army, and expand your empire. This article is about how to create that defensive army, deploy it, and manage it on the battlefield. If you hold good bottleneck provinces (e.g. Flanders as the English, Morocco as the Spanish, Lithuania / Kiev as the Russians), then you can hold and bleed white any offensive neighbour with little ongoing input of troops. Kill ratios of 5:1 are routine, and 10:1 perfectly attainable – even on the “expert” game difficulty setting. My record is 1080 enemy killed, 0 losses on my side.

There are 4 sections to this article:
1. General principles
2. Defending hills
3. Defending flat terrain
4. Optional variations

1. General principles
1.1 Arbalest overview
I’m assuming you have:
• limited ammunition set (28 bolts in the case of arbalests)
• battle time limit set (this is your defence of last resort in very large battles)
• tech access to build arbalests (bad luck to the Turks)
• Normal unit size (i.e. 60 arbalests per unit). Not so important, but it’s my standard play setting.

Arbalests are slow firing, long range, armour piercing (0.7 modifier to armour i.e. 70% of a targets armour score is negated). Massed arbalest volleys are a deadly threat to every unit in the game. Arbalests take a long time to use up their ammunition, so the initial battle (before reinforcements arrive) will be over while your initial arbalests have 10-30% ammunition remaining.

Arbalests have steel bowstrings, so are less affected by rain.

Since you are the defender, you get to set up an intricate formation before the battle, on terrain of your choice. This is normally at a map edge, on top of a hill is available. As you are the defender, the enemy must come to you, tiring themselves out, and ensuring the battle is on terrain of your choosing. If they sit back and wait for you, then you win the battle when the clock runs out, so they have to come to you.

Arbalests have a low, fast trajectory, making them less affected by wind and targets moving towards (or running away) from them. This does make it harder to fire over the heads of screening troops protecting the arbalests from the enemy.

Did I mention arbalests are utterly deadly in massed volleys? While some battles will be a slow battle of attrition (most of the attrition happening on the enemy side), occasionally it is possible to achieve sickening slaughters with single volleys. I have taken a fresh enemy unit of 60 halberdiers down to 11 routing survivors in 1 volley using 9 arbalest units with a clear downhill view.

If each arbalest unit averages 4 kills per volley, with ammunition for 28 volleys, and 8 arbalests in your initial deployment, then you’ll kill approx 900 enemy soldiers if you can create the time to fire al the ammunition. Given that about half the enemy army tends to survive by withdrawing or running away, your initial deployment will handle an army of 900 soldiers, with 900 reinforcements before running out of ammo, or using your screening troops for mêlée kills. With plentiful arbalest reinforcements its entirely feasible to shooting through an enemy army of 5000 troops without any serious melee occurring. This is especially handy for dealing with the Golden Horde and Papal re-emergences.

The aim is to create a defensive, static formation, that can’t easily be flanked, allows multiple units of arbalests to fire at a given enemy unit simultaneously, has screening troops to occupy enemies that approach too closely, and sufficient ammunition in the initial deployment to shoot through and rout the entire enemy initial deployment. All arbalests will be set to fire at will, hold formation, and hold position. All screening troops will be set to hold formation and hold position. Arbalests will be grouped into logical groups of 3-4 units, which all have a similar field of fire. This allows you to bring concentrated fire to bear on a key enemy unit mid battle without much micromanagement.
1.2 What to put in your defensive army
Arbalests:
The main killing engine of the army. I actually prefer Arbalests to Pavaise arbalests. Here’s why:
• Arbalests are cheaper to produce
• Arbalests need only a Bowyers guild, not a Master Bowyer – cheaper and faster to get the infrastructure to build them
• Arbalests are normal speed on the battle field, not slow like Pavaise Arbalests, so they can run away from trouble, withdraw quickly when out of ammo to allow reinforcements, and arrive sooner if they are reinforcements
• If you do have the luxury of producing them in a citadel with a master bowyer, then they get +1 valour bonus. Pavaise Arbalests required a master bowyer just to be build-able, so do not get the +1v. The key valour bonus is +4v, at which archery gets significantly more accurate. Most of this will come from the general, but a +1v head start is useful.
• The armour bonus is only good against enemy missiles. These will be your first victims in many battles, and are generally easy to rout, shorter ranged than the arbalests, or both. They also tend to end up shooting at your screening troops (that’s what they’re for), not your arbalests.

Screening troops:
These are not intended to do much killing, but hold the line for as long as possible to allow more arbalest fire. In 95% of battles they will hold a line and not let any enemy through at all, and not retire from the field for the entire engagement. In 30% of battles they will hardly get any fighting to do at all. They will take occasional losses to friendly arbalest bolts in the back. C’est la vie
Screening troops want to be:
• Heavily armoured
• Reasonable morale
• Good defence
• Average or better performance against all troop types
• Reasonably priced (what is reasonable depends on how rich you are)
• Not impetuous
• Not relying on a charge bonus for good melee results
• Easy to replace (i.e. not fancy mercenaries or bribed troop types)

Excellent examples are: Chivalric Sergeants, Italian Infantry, Halberdiers, Gothic Sergeants

Slightly light on endurance examples are (ideally with bonus armour): Billmen, Swiss halberdiers, Chivalric men at arms

Expensive examples are Chivalric Foot Knights (impetuous), Swiss armoured pikemen, Varangian Guards

Very bad examples are : Highland clansmen, Gallowglasses, Ghazi infantry, Urban militia, Woodsmen, Fanatics, any form of cavalry (they are too tall on their horses and get shot in the back a lot)

Screening troops will either be in formation in front of the arbalests (in a hillside defence), or in loose formation just behind them, waiting to charge out and stop approaching enemy (flat terrain defense).

The General:
Will either be cavalry or one of the screening troop units. You want at least 6 command stars. If you have the patience to farm generals against peasant revolts (I find the Mediterranean island exceptional for this) it is feasible to have many 9* generals with field defender virtue (+3* when defending). This makes the screening line much tougher to break, and your arbalest fire much more accurate. Simply choose a low value island you control, demolish all the happiness buildings and the fort (keep the port and the farmland), remove all troops, set taxes to very high and let the peasant revolt appear. Reinforce the island with a defensive army, crush the peasants when they attack, and enjoy the boost to the general’s command and virtues (and a small gold boost from the confiscation of land owner by the unfortunate peasant leaders). It’s generally best to do this on islands that have been under your control or rebel control for a long time. A loyalist revolt can have some very hard hitting troop types, and is an entirely different animal to a peasant revolt.
Take care to at least charge the generals unit at a fleeing enemy, even if there is not actual melee. If he just sits there for battle after battler you risk the “not so bold” line of vices.
As well as farming your general, you’ll be banking valour in the arbalests that shot up the peasants, and getting practise at handling defensive arbalest formations against an easy and forgiving enemy army.

Cavalry:
Use 2 units maximum, normally just one as the general. Having no cavalry is acceptable. Cavalry simply isn’t that much use in this style of battle.
In normal battle cavalry is useful for:
• Running down enemy archers (arbalest bolts do this very well)
• Running down routers (arbalest do this up to a certain range – after that, let them rout)
• Charging and breaking key enemy units (massed arbalest volleys do this)
• Running down or at least chasing off enemy horse archers (arbalests do this very well).

In short there is no pressing need for cavalry. If you do bring some use it for:
• Quickly reinforcing a weak flank (cavalry can run behind the arbalest line from flank to flank)
• Short chases of routers (don’t chase them to the opposite end of the map, as your cavalry will be unsupported)
• As reinforcements entering the map to build a larger router catching force
• As a single unit lure in the opening positioning, to ensure that the enemy approaches your formation from a good firing angle

Artillery:
In general don’t bother. Certain very hilly or bridge battles can favour catapults or serpentines, but apart from that bring more arbalests instead.

1.3 The battle phases
Phase 1 – the setup

You set up your troops according the plans I give in sections 2 and 3. This takes quite a lot of care, but will save you trying to rearrange your troops mid battle. You will be setting up at with your rear against a map edge or corner.

If you are bringing more that 16 units, be sure to cycle through the reinforcements to get all the right troops in your initial battle line, and shunt the cavalry and excess arbalests to the reserve. You should also cycle through your reserve to make sure you get the correct reserves arriving first (arbalests if your position is secure, cavalry or tough infantry if you expect the screening line to be breached).

As soon as you start the battle get your reinforcement muster flag placed slightly to one side of at the back of your formation , right on the edge of the map. This way your arriving reinforcement walk directly into an area protected by your screening troops, and you can take control of them as early as possible.

Phase 2 – the enemy approach

Basically you sit there and let them walk up to you. Since you’ve already set up in a god defensive position, them there is not need for you to manoeuvre at all. If they brought artillery, it’s wasted, as you’re sat out of range at the back of the map. If they bought siege canons, simply endure the fire. Do not move.

As they approach, your arbalests will start firing at them (they’re on fire at will).

If they try to engage in missile duel, outgun them, and focus on their freshest missile unit. Endure the fire, return fire, and do not try to chase the enemy missiles off. HOLD FORMATION AT ALL COSTS.

If they feint with horse archers, simply punish the horses with concentrated arbalest fire, and thin their numbers until they withdraw, are slaughtered or rout.

If they try to flank you should have sufficient filed of fire and firepower to damage if not rout the flanking unit, then let your screening troops hold them for a long time.

Never move out of formation at this stage of the battle. Never….

Exception to the rule: If you’ve been forced to deploy in a less than perfect location and your flanks are a bit weak, or there are forests blocking some of your field of fire it can pay to send out a lone cavalry unit as bait. The idea is not to attack all even if there is a tasty opportunity (lining up the enemy for the turkey shoot will achieve far more than a lone charge against a unit of archers). Lure the enemy onto the line of approach you want them on, them run your cavalry back to the cover of your screening line. Ideally your cavalry arrive with a decent lead, or slightly off centre relative to the line of approach of the enemy, so that your arbalests have clear line of fire without shooting your cavalry. Sometimes you do end up shooting your cavalry – but they’ve done their job, so go ahead and fire. Ideally you won’t use your general’s unit for this job, as it is a high risk task for the lone cavalry unit. Sometimes they get cornered and slaughtered, but that’s OK as long as they lined the enemy up.

Phase 3 – the turkey shoot

This is where you inflict most of the casualties. It’s the make or break phase of the battle. The aim is to hold the enemy within range of the arbalests, with as little mêlée engagement of your screening line as possible.

Initially as the enemy approach, the arbalests will fire on the closest units as they come into range. Fire will be spread out amongst all the enemy lead units. This is fine for the first 2-3 volleys. After that you need to take control of your arbalests and direct their fire for maximum effect.

You’ll have the arbalests grouped into sets of 3-4 units with similar field of fire. This way you can get 4 arbalests firing concentrated volleys of 240 bolts at a single target, all by clicking on 1 group and one target. As the enemy approach closer, your target priorities are:
1. missile units
2. cavalry
3. high value infantry (e.g. chivalric units, halberdiers, varangian guards, foot knights)
4. the enemy general
5. low value infantry (outdated units, spearmen, militia, peasants)

The aim is not to annihilate a given unit, but to inflict the maximum possible casualties over their entire army, while breaking the fighting strength of a few units. If the target does rout, that’s nice, but don’t fixate on one target.

Once a target has received a few volleys is will do one of 4 things:
1. Rout – let it run and move onto a new target
2. Scatter to loose formation. This reduces the melee ability and morale of the unit. Move onto a different target. Once the original target regroups to a close formation, shoot it some more.
3. Charge your line – if this unit is the biggest threat shoot it with everything you have to rout it, or at least reduce it as much as possible before it hits your line, then move onto another target. If it’s not the biggest threat, ten chances are the whole enemy army is charging your screening line – so move onto the instructions for Phase 4 – the rout.
4. Stand there and take it. Good. Keep shooting it until it drops below 50% strength or routs, then move onto a different target
5. Manoeuvre up and down your line without engaging. Keep shooting, but be aware that targets may move out of a good field of fire for one group of arbalests, and into another, so you’ll need to keep switching targets to ensure each group shoots at things in front of it. Chances are the entire enemy army will do this, so just enjoy the shooting time, and keep killing. This happens mostly when you have a good defensive situation (i.e. a hill), with identical strong units (e.g. halberdiers) screening all angles. The AI can’t decide where to attack, and doesn’t fancy its chances from any angle, so tries to lure your units out of formation. Don’t take the bait – keep shooting. Impetuous units like your Royal knight general or Chivalric foot knights can cause issues by charging without orders, so be ready to grab them and order them back into line.
6. Withdraw out of arbalest range. This won’t be the entire army, just the target (often their general will do this when fired at). Switch to a different target, and wait for the original to re-engage, and then shoot it some more.

Phase 4 – the rout

This is the phase where you choose to rout the enemy from the field. You’re not going to chase them all the way off the map, just initial a chain route that clears your immediate area. The enemy may well regroup and come back, but you have time to reorganise and bring in reinforcements, and you get to shoot them all over again as they approach.

When to cause a rout:
1. Your screening troops have failed, and some arbalests are engaged in melee
2. Your screening troops are heavily engaged, and you have run out of mid range targets to shoot. Once an enemy foot unit engages with your screen it’s very hard to shoot it without casing friendly fire casualties at the same rate you kill the enemy, so only do this as a last resort. Cavalry can still be shot reasonably effectively, as they stand above the infantry screening line. Once there are only a few good targets left at mid range it’s time to rout the enemy
3. You’re down to 25% ammo or less
4. If the odds where very heavily against you from the start. Not in sheer number, but in troop types for the initial deployment. If you’re trying to form a screen with 3 units of FMMA and couple of urban militia against a large army of order foot, chivalric knights and halberdiers then you probably need to go for the rout as soon as possible, and skip the turkey shoot.

How to cause a rout:
Routing occurs when a unit’s morale drops too low, this is stating the obvious. In this type of defensive battle the most common ways you can lower a unit’s moral are:
• Causing casualties (morale penalties at 10%, 50% and 80% - shoot up the unit.
• Causing high casualties in a small amount of time (temporary penalty) – use massed volleys
• Causing casualties with missiles (temporary penalty) – shoot the unit up
• Having routing units close by – rout a low morale unit first
• Locally outnumbered – make all the units friends rout. Even knights will run when alone and faced with 480 angry arbalests plus the screening line.
• Kill the general – this is the big one, and can start the rout all by itself.

The ideal way to cause the rout is to have several enemy units already shot up to below 50%, so carrying a significant morale penalty. Have half of the arbalests focus on the totally destruction of a weakened and low morale target, the idea is to make this rout on its own. At the same time the other half mercilessly targets the general’s unit. Keep firing no matter what the angle, range or friendly casualties. Note that the general himself will have multiple lives, so will probably be the last one in his unit to die. It helps if you have reduced his unit somewhat in the turkey shoot phase. Keep shooting him even if you’re only achieving 1 kill per volley.

As their general dies, all the enemy troops get a temporary -8 morale penalty. Any unit near another routing unit will probably rout at this point. Any unit at 50% strength or less will probably rout anyway. Any unit that receives the next volley of all you arbalests at once will probably rout. Once the rout start it will chain across their entire army, with the possible exception of a few fresh very high morale units like knights. As these are all that’s left to shoot, shoot them. They’ll soon run away too.

Don’t chase the routers.

If they run off the map – great – you win.
If they regroup and come back for more you get to shoot them as they walk all they way in all over again. They’ll probably filter back towards you piecemeal and it’s unlikely they will hold morale long enough to hit your screening line. Now is a good time to withdraw arbalests one or two at a time if they run out of ammo and cycle in fresh, fully loaded reinforcement arbalests.

Just occasionally you’ll do everything right, kill the general and they still won’t rout. You can either sit it out while shooting up some key units to try to rout them one at a time, or charge your screening line at them. This is high risk, and if they still don’t break, and get around the flanks of your line and into the arbalests, they you have a problem. All is not lost, but it’s going to be a bloody slugfest with equal casualties from then onwards. I’m generally happier doing this if I have very high quality troops in the screening line that can hold their own in any melee (chivalric foot knights are my favourite for this). If you do charge, don’t chase the routers once they break. Just reform the original line, and wait for them to come back, so you can shoot them some more.

Phase 5 – the reinforcements tail

This can be treated very much like the regroup of the routed enemy forces. Units will generally come at you piecemeal, and can be shot up and routed without ever reaching your screening line. If the enemy shows signs of trying to build up a whole army out of range, then attacking you can send out a lone cavalry bait to lure them in when they are only half formed up, but it’s rarely necessary. In most battles the quality of troops they’re cycling in as reinforcements is lower that the initial assault, so shooting them up will be easy. They’ll be carrying a permanent -2 morale penalty due to the death of the general, and will be locally outnumbered, so will often rout when they receive their first volley.

You’ll be low on ammunition, so keep a god eye on you arbalests. Once they are out of ammo, withdraw them immediately. As soon as they are off the map, you can cycle in some more from you reinforcements, and arrange them in the prime firing position near the front of the formation.

If you don’t have enough (or any) reinforcements it is possible to totally run out of ammunition. You will have achieved a massive casualty’s superiority, but the battle is not necessarily over. If you’re just receiving a dribble of peasants, spearmen and militias, they your screening line should be able to mêlée and rout everything that arrives at your line.

If the enemy still has large numbers of high quality troops then life can get difficult. You where probably outnumbered more than 4:1 if this has happened.

You have 3 choices:
1. Consider chain routing their current forces, and chasing them all the way across the map to keep them routing, and ultimately either hold them in their red zone, of force them to withdraw from the battle entirely. If your last units of reinforcements where cavalry then they can make this easier.

2. Hold position (ideally on your hill), and melee anything that attacks you. You’re trying to slaughter your way through all their reinforcements. This works best with durable screening troops. Keep your ammo-less arbalests on the field for intimidation purposes. They help to give the “locally outnumbered” morale penalty to the enemy. Don’t chase routers, don’t move from you’re defensive position.

3. Hold position, mêlée attackers and wait for the timer to run out. This can be the only option if they have missiles or horse archers and you have no cavalry. Again – durable screening troops help here. The worst I have had to do it sit on a hill with 5 units of halberdiers and 2 units of Chivalric foot knights while 14 units of Golden Horse archers shot at me. I lost over 200 troops to the arrows, but help the fields unit the end of the battle. I still achieved a 4:1 kill ratio due to the 1100 Mongols that my arbalests had killed earlier.

1.4 Replenishing the army.

You will rarely come out of a battle with 0 casualties. The enemy often escape with half of their army, and may well swing in more troops from other provinces to have another go at you next year. Keep the defences strong. Have at least a part unit of arbalests and a part unit of screening troops to fill in the gaps from friendly fire and small melee losses. Ideally you’ll have a land or naval route from your troop training provinces to have the option to reinforce with at least 1 full unit of screening troops every turn. If you’ve lost more than 60 arbalests then something went wrong.
The valour should begin to stack up, especially in the arbalests with their low losses and high kill rates. This makes the defensive army even stronger. The general should also improve, with more command stars, virtues along the skilled defender line, and possibly skilled last stand line. My best defensive general ever was a unit of Italian Infantry with 9*, field defender, skilled last stand and natural leader.

Next time … Defending hills

Innocentius

11-15-2006, 16:30

Real nice guide MeglaGnome:2thumbsup: Enjoyable read too, can't wait 'til the part about hills.

drone

11-15-2006, 16:33

Wow, nice first post! :2thumbsup: Welcome to the Org, MeglaGnome! :medievalcheers:

Martok

11-15-2006, 20:25

Welcome to the Org, MeglaGnome! That's an impressive first post, and a nice guide as well. :bow: Looking forward to hearing more from you!

bamff

11-16-2006, 06:16

Excellent post MeglaGnome. Looking foward to the next instalment!

:2thumbsup:

MeglaGnome

11-16-2006, 07:47

Next installment almost ready. I need to find a way to put images online so I can share the diagramd I've created.

Coming soon.....

bamff

11-16-2006, 08:00

:idea2: PitBull260 pointed this out to me in another thread:

go here www.photobucket.com make an account real quick, then upload pics on there, then when u want to post them you'll see the icons above the text that you're writing, click on the icon that will say "insert image" after you keep your curser on it for 2 secs then copy the link from your image and paste in there :)

I followed his advice and it works a treat. Hope it helps you, MeglaGnome!

MeglaGnome

11-17-2006, 00:03

2. Defending Hills
2.1 Why hills are your friend

Defending hills with arbalests is your dream battle. It doesn’t get much easier than this. Providing you have 6 or more units of arbalests and at least 5 infantry to string together a screen then you can win against most enemies. If you have the full half hex hill defence with durable screening troops and enough arbalests to reinforce with, then you will win against anything (even 8000+ golden horde nightmares on expert game setting).

Part 1 of this guide discussed the basic concepts and arbalest, the composition of your army, and the battle phases. This part will show the ideal formations to use, and some fine detail about managing them in the battle.

In summary; there are only 4 key rules to stick to, and the rest you can learn as you go:
1. Build a half hex screen protecting 2 groups of ranked arbalests on a hill at the map edge
2. Do not move off the hill
3. Manage your arbalests in 2 groups, left and right, to easily control massed fire mid battle
4. Do not move off the hill….. no really …..I mean it

Hills add hugely to your defensive strength, here’s how:
1. Arbalests shoot in a low flat trajectory. It’s very hard to get concentrated arbalest fire on one target on a flat battlefield, as the rear ranked units cannot see a clear line of fire to the target. Hills allow the rear units to shoot over the heads of the front units, allowing massed fire.
2. Hills also allow the screening units to be formed up in front of the arbalests, so the enemy has no easy path to melee your fragile missile units
3. Hills add range and accuracy to your arbalests firing downhill, and decrease the range and accuracy of the enemy missiles firing uphill. You’ve already got a localised firepower advantage, no matter what missiles they bring to the battle. The altitude advantage just makes any missile duel totally one sided.
4. They have to walk up the hill and get tired to melee your screen.
5. Your troops get a morale bonus sitting on the hill
6. If they do charge your screen, they won’t get up to full speed up the hill (depending on the steepness), so won’t get their full charge bonus (on very steep hills they won’t get any bonus).
7. Once any melee stats, your screening troops get a bonus fro attacking from up hill
8. In the unlikely event you do need to charge your screen at them, your troops will find it easy to push the enemy downhill, thus gaining the “pushback bonus”, and enjoying their full charge bonus for more than one combat round.

The map edge is also very important. A mediocre hill against a map edge is better than a steep round hill in the middle of the map. When you set up, the red “formation circle” within which you are allowed to place troops will probably only give you access to one map edge. Pick the best hill you can find, even if its just a slight rise. You’ll need to avoid setting up in a forest, but nearby forests are not the end of the world. They will block your field of fire, but the enemy still has to exit the forest to get to your screen. The forest will slow their advance, break up their formation, and they will probably route their cavalry around it not through it, so you get to shoot up their army in sections, rather than having the whole thing line up and charge you all at once.

2.2 The basic half hex hill defence formation

I’m going to assume that your army is a fairly generic catholic army made up of:
8 Arbalests
6 Halberdiers
1 medium cavalry (e.g. obsolete Feudal knights, Mounted sergeants, Polish retainers, valoured up Jinnettes)
1 High period Royal knights – the general

For the battle itself I normally position the camera over the hilltop, at the rear of my formation, looking at the enemy line of approach, pointed downhill so I can see most of my screening line and the front rank or arbalests. This way I can supervise most of the melee and all of the firing without having to move the camera.

https://i144.photobucket.com/albums/r169/melgagnome/halfhex1.jpg

Setting up the units:

1. Arbalests.
Set these up first, as they will define your formation, and show you the area that your screening troops need to cover. The unit guide by Frogbeastegg has an excellent picture shoeing how to arrange 2 ranks of crossbow style troops on a hill. Basically if you move the camera to a position in front of your formation, and you can see the feet of the rear rank over the heads of the front rank, then they have a clear field of fire. If not, then space the ranks out a bit more until it works.

Set the units like this:
• Each arbalest unit will be arranged as a 30 man wide, 2 rank deep formation, facing the enemy line of approach.
• Close formation. Loose foramtion does give better sighting through the unit for rear rank troops, but the formation as a whole ends up getting H-U-G-E, and its impossible to screen it all effectively. You also loose the concentration of fire.
• Hold formation (+2 defence if they get into a melee, -2 attack – but who cares, the screening troops will clear any penetration of your formation, the arbalests need to keep shooting)
• Hold position. This is very important. If the unit is not set to hold position, then it will move to orient itself for the best filed of fire for the target it has at that moment. This can mean you loose a lot of firing time as the arbalests are moving instead of shooting, and your beautiful clean firing formation gets all out of shape, with arbalest lines crossing each other and sticking out in front of the screening line. You end up with high friendly fire casualties, and arbalests getting killed in melee – not good.
• Fire at will. This way if you fail to notice an idle unit in the middle of the chaos of battle, it will pick a likely target and shoot it. As arbalests take so long to exhaust their ammunition, its better to have the firing constantly at something random, instead of idle waiting for you to manually give them the optimum target. You will of course be managing them to shoot at the right target most of the time. It also meant that the arbalests will engage the lead enemy units as they some into range; this is your cue to pay attention and start choosing targets.
• Grouped into 2 groups of 4 units each. There will be a left flank group and a right flank group. When you direct their fire mid battle you will be selecting an entire group and massing its firepower onto one unlucky target. All this take 2 mouse clicks. Take care to check which group (left or right) in the unit display at the bottom of the battle screen corresponds to which group on the ground. It’s easy to get crossed over in the set up, and you don’t want to be ordering your left group of arbalests to fire at targets on the right flank and vice versa. Once you’ve finished the full set up just select one group before the start of the battle, and notice which actual units have their standard flags wiggling up and down. This is the group you have selected, so now you know which group is on which side of your formation.

2. The Screening troops

The screening troops are not really there to inflict massive melee casualties. They’re there to buy time for the arbalests to fire as many volleys as possible into the enemy. They do this in 2 ways:

1. Offering no easy path to attack the arbalests. This way the enemy mill around in the killing zone trying to feint and lure to disrupt your formation. You of course ignore this and reward their cunning tactic by shooting them up as fast as you can. This is why I prefer Halberdiers as screening troops. They have no real weakness against any particular troop type. Spears as screen tend to invite a charge by swordsmen. Swordsmen as troops tend to invite cavalry charges. Halberdiers can deal with both, so the AI often delays attacking the screening line for quite a while.

2. Actually being slow to die in a melee. In pure melee terms your screen is outnumbered. It’s better to take 5 minutes to chop through 1 unit of attacking enemy with very low casualties, than rip through them in 1 minute with higher casualties. You’re not going to get any flanking opportunities anyway, and once you have killed the first enemy unit, the next one behind it can engage your screen. Better to jam up the battlefield in front of your screen with a very slow melee, and shoot up the enemy units as they queue up waiting to join the fight.

Never leave a gap in the screening line, even if you have to stretch the troop formations very thin.
Never create a gap unless you are sure you can defeat the local enemy and reform before any other enemy arrive.

Spear based troops:
• Set these to be a formation 30 men wide, 3 ranks deep with a short 4th rank to provide replacements into the 3rd rank. This way to get the full spear formation bonus, but stretch the width of the covered area to 30 men, instead of the 25 you normally get with the classic 25 x 4 rank spear unit formation.

• Close formation, Hold formation (to preserve the formation bonus, and get +2def , -2 attack) and hold position to keep the screen in place. Remember: killing slow and dying slow is better than killing fast and dying fast. This may mean that you get a small melee breaking out one end of the spear formation while the rest of the troops watch. That fine. It’s a small melee, so there is slow dying and slow killing happening. Let it happen. Even if it’s a fight you expect to loose eventually (e.g. Chivalric Men at Arms vs. your Chivalric sergeants), let it happen, and try to drag out the fight as long as possible. Don’t throw extra screening troops at the mêlée unless your spears area about break. If they’re just loosing – fine, leave them to it and carry on shooting. If they’re wavering, then help them out, but this will make holes in your screening line, so managing the battle gets a lot harder, as the enemy will try to rush to holes.

Swords and militia:
• These are not ideal, but if you have to do it, set them up in a 2 rank x 30 man close formation, hold position and hold formation. Put then at the front of the formation on the steepest slope in your half-hex. The idea is to invite a cavalry charge, but force it to charge up the steepest hill, along the centreline of your formation, so suffering concentrated fire of 8 head on arbalest units. As long as you catch the cavalry early (as soon as they form up at the front of the enemy army), them chances are the first few cavalry units won’t even hit your screen.
• There are some occasions (fighting an evenly matched enemy unit, with no other enemy units near the line) that you will want to put your swords onto engage at will, to allow them to fully engage and disperse an enemy unit. You don’t want to let them chase the enemy routers down the hill, and you want to get them formed up again to close the gap in your screening line as soon as possible. This is the weakest part of your line, so inviting further enemy pressure at this point is not ideal.

Pole-arms

Billmen and Swiss halberds are not ideal (although +2v billmen from Mercia with a master spearman and armourer bonuses are quite nice :-). Treat them like militia who do well against cavalry.

Halberdiers are my bulk screening troop of choice.

• They are reasonably priced, reasonably easy to produce, available to many factions and very very slow to die.
• Their morale is not great, so I build churches and monasteries in halberd producing provinces before armourers.
• Non armour piercing enemy foot troops can’t really hurt them, and they will chop them up eventually.
• Enemy knights can hurt them a little, but with the hillside advantage, the halberds +3 attack and +1 def vs. cavalry and the armour piercing bonus the halberds will dispatch knight faster than their bases stats would suggest.
• They’re also arrow proof due to the high armour.
• Their biggest weaknesses are enemy arbalests (which you target with massed fire as a matter of priority while they are at the front of the enemy army – once they get overtaken they can’t see very well to shoot), and enemy pole arms – which are generally slow moving, so take an age to crawl up your hill, so you can shoot them up a lot before they arrive
• Set up your halberdiers in 2 x 30 troop lines.
• If you need to stretch the formation to screen all of the hex then do it. A rank of 40 backed by a replacement rank of 20 is acceptable. There is little need for a dense formation to resist a cavalry charge as the hill and the massed fire will have taken the fire our of anything that does arrive at the screening line on horseback. It’s worth noting that a unit of 60 halberdiers can be stretched to cover a 40 man wide space much more effectively than a 100 man unit of Chivalric sergeants.
• Close formation, hold position, hold formation. You might take them off hold formation in similar circumstances to those for swordsmen, but I rarely do it. Better to drag out the local melee, and rout the rest of the enemy army with massed fire.

Chivalric foot knights

You only get 40 men to a unit, but they are like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre version of Halberds. They are just as durable, but kill very fast too, and have sky high morale. If your general was a Chivalric Knight, and you dismount that unit then the effect is even more hyperactively homicidal.

• I’m quite happy to have a 30 man wide formation with a 10 man replacement rank. Note that this provides the same coverage as a 100 man Chivalric sergeant unit.
• If the enemy thinks the line looks thin and weak at this point they are in for a rude shock.
• They re good for screening the corners of the hex. Line them up so they overlap the flank of the other corner unit. That way the other, lower morale unit, gets its flank covered (so gets morale bonus), and the high morale foot night doesn’t need the bonus anyway.

3. The cavalry

This includes your general if he’s mounted and not part of the screening troops.
The cavalry is only there for luring the enemy onto the correct line of approach, and emergency bracing of a failing screen.

Most of the time you want to keep them well out of the way. They are set in a 4-5 rank deep formation to keep it compact and out of the line of fire of the arbalests, even if they have to fire to the flanks. The cavalry are not deployed in a useful fighting formation; you’re just trying to store them somewhere safe. Knights have a bad habit of getting bored and charging off, so keep them on hold position, hold formation, and be ready to catch them and turn them around if they do charge without orders. They’ll just get in the way of the hail of bolts if they do, and get themselves killed. For very unruly knights try forming them up with their backs to the enemy. They’ll loose their shield bonus against missiles, and get a slight morale penalty, but you’ll have time to turn them around if you do need to attack with them.

2.3 Off Centre attacks

It’s a rare battle when the enemy simply marches up to you in a straight line, dead centre and lets you shoot them. Changes are the AI will fancy trying to flank you, or will start the battle in a distant position off centre to you, or the terrain will offer a less steep approach to your position that is off centre. None of this is a problem if you’re ready for it.

In normal conditions arbalests have an effective field of fire about 45 degrees either side of straight ahead. Beyond that their fire becomes less effective, as the view of the rear rank is closed off by the front rank. Beyond about 75% the front rank are also becoming blocked by the man standing next to them.

If you follow the basic half –hex defence as shown above, then you’ll have a devastating kill zone of 45 degrees either side of dead centre where all 8 arbalest units can be brought to bear, some ability to fire out to 75 degrees either side, and a narrow gap of 15 degrees against the map edge where you really can’t fire at all, and the enemy can safely close to melee your flank screen.

Even if they don’t actively flank you, an initial charge from off-centre can spread as the follow up enemy troops walk around the sides of the initial melee to engage, and they can spread all the way up your flank where you can’t fire.

The solution is shown in the diagram below: at set up, angle both your arbalest groups about 15 degrees towards their respective flanks.

https://i144.photobucket.com/albums/r169/melgagnome/halfhex_offcentre.jpg

I’ve shown some contours in red here. This particular hill is steep from the front, but less steep if approached from the side along the map edge. This will tend to make the enemy approach you from one flank or the other, so you need to angle the firing zones out towards the flanks. It is very worthhile trying to lure the enemy using a cavalry unit into the centre zone. Even if you succeed they will almost certainly try to manoeuvre towards a flank, but they will have to do that move within firing range, so will be shot up as they march.

This angle formation is a good standard to use, as it can deliver solid firepower in any direction, so the enemy don’t really have any options for surprising you or forcing you to redeploy to a different formation. It allows you to keep to the golden formula: they manoeuvre, you shoot.

If the terrain invites even more obvious flanking, then angle the arbalests further out – up to 30degrees is fine as you will still have a small kill zone for all 8 arbalests covering for the centreline.

Often you will have a battle where one group of arbalests has far more firing opportunities than the other, and runs low on ammunition. The front unit of the frequent firing group will run dry first. Simply run them to the back of the formation, and then withdraw them to allow reinforcements. At the same time run the rear arbalest unit from the other group to take the position of the retreated unit. If you can afford it, stop shooting during this manoeuvre to avoid friendly fire accidents, but if you’re hard pressed then keep shooting, you’ll only loose a few men. This way the lightly pressured flank will loose firepower where it’s not needed, and you can keep maximum fire going into the heavily pressed flank.

Asymmetric formations

On some battle maps it will be very obvious which direction the enemy will want to approach from. Defending a hill that has a ridgeline leading to it will funnel the enemy along the ridgeline, as they try to attack with the minimum altitude disadvantage. Where this direction of approach is not dead centre you will want to skew your formation towards the direction of approach.

https://i144.photobucket.com/albums/r169/melgagnome/halfhex_asymm.jpg

Some things to note about this set up:
• The arbalests are pointed in the direction of the enemy threat. Group 2 on the right will fire more often at good targets, so will run out of ammunition first.
• It is worth trying to lure the enemy more to the left using the cavalry. Once the cavalry gallop back behind the screen the enemy will probably march back up to the ridgeline, but under heavy fire
• Most melee is likely to happen on the right, so the general in on the right to offer close morale and physical support to the halberdiers
• Our best halberdiers (most valour) are positioned to receive the brunt of the enemy assault.
• The left flank looks weak. The halberdiers are stretched thin to cover the line, and the group 1 arbalests do not have good firing angles to the left flank. This is mitigated in two ways. 1: it’s a very steep slope for the enemy to attack up. 2: the group 1 arbalests are actually arranged so that the left end of each unit line is much lower down the hill than the right, so if the unit has to fire at a target far to the left then the troops to the right end of the line can see over the heads of the lower troops to the left. It’s nowhere near as effective as firing forwards, but they can thin out an enemy unit flanking to the left. If you do get a lot of pressure on the left there will be room and time to rotate the rear 2 arbalest units in group 1 anti-clockwise to face the threat and fire down the steep slope with a good view.

Next time ... fine tuning the hillside defence, including.....
forests
hillside slope profile
getting stuck in the middle of the map

Martok

11-17-2006, 20:38

Another excellent write-up, MeglaGnome! :yes:

I'm particularly interested in your next installment, as I've always been a bit baffled by the following situation: What do you do if the only hill on the map (or rather, the only hill the defender has access to) is also heavily wooded? Do you still use it, even though your missile units will be hindered? Or do you place your men in a more open area, even if it's flatter? Either way, you're choosing between the lesser of two evils. :wall:

Kavhan Isbul

11-17-2006, 23:22

Superb guide, MeglaGnome, and I am really looking forward to your next installments, especially to the one which will deal with a flat land with forest patches, such as Lithuania for example.

Innocentius

11-17-2006, 23:48

Great guide MeglaGnome! Enjoyable read as well as useful. I found out that this - fairly simple - tactic works superbly well, even when the circumstances are not perfect. I managed to win a battle in my Serb-campaign having only 2 units of arbalesters, 1 unit of halberdiers, 2 units of Vo- sorry, can't remember the full name:embarassed: , the ones that look like billmen anyway, 2 units of horse archers, 2 units of the Vo-cavalry and 1 unit of armoured spearmen against a pretty superior Hungarian army (tooks some heavy casualties though, as the Huns had some 6 units of Pavise crossbowmen and 1 unit of Mounted crossbowmen, which ultimately forced me to attack them instead).

MeglaGnome

11-19-2006, 21:38

The next guide will be a while....

I have a hous to buy :2thumbsup:

Lithuani is indeed very challenging, and also an important bottleneck... so I will be covering it.

Kavhan Isbul

11-21-2006, 19:50

MeglaGnome, I tried your guide under some unusual circumstances, in the Pike and Musket Mod, and it worked great. I think you are absolutely right - it will work perfectly under any circumstances and I can perfectly see how you can kill thousands of enemies (and not just peasants) on expert without a single casualty. As long as you have a hill. Now I am really eager to see the enxt part about woods and flat provinces (or both, as in the case of Lithuania).

Agent Miles

01-04-2007, 15:39

In flat terrain provinces, eight demi-culverins are a good replacement for the arbs. They fire right over your infantry screen and really rake the enemy, even at considerable range. I had one enemy unit rout to my side of the map and the DC's were able to pivot 180 degrees and continue to fire.
With eight culverin, three Chivalric Sergeants, four Steppe Heavy Cav and a peasant 9*(another story), I was even able to attack a larger force of Golden Horde. The guns killed 200 Mongols and their leader before they ran out of ammo. I routed what was left. I withdrew the gun crews, so I could have brought on eight more units, if I had needed them.

It looked like this:
https://s132.photobucket.com/albums/q36/AgentMiles/Mongols%20Run/

Kavhan Isbul

01-04-2007, 17:40

I do not think you can bring artillery as reinforcements.

Agent Miles

01-04-2007, 17:47

Correct. I meant eight units, other than artillery, could have then entered the battle once the guns were out of ammo.

Geezer57

01-04-2007, 18:31

Hmmmm, I always thought artillery reinforcements arrived as crew, without the weapon. Never tested it, though, so I could be wrong. I always place them at the end of the reinforcement queue, anyways.

Innocentius

01-08-2007, 17:14

As this thread has more or less developed into a battle-discussion thread, I could just ask here i guess.
Lately I have, much thanks to MeglaGnome's guides, developed a basic strategy for battles, that indeed works very well, but gets a bit dull and repetative in the long run.

In Early it goes like this:

R S S S S R
A A A A
C G C

S=Spear units of any sort
A=Archers
C=Cavalry
G=General
R=Random (mostly FMAA, Militia Sergeants or other good infantry).

And in High/Late I usually use MeglaGnome's tactics adapted to the present terrain - arbs in front if the land is too flat - and with other polearms than Halbs if possible. I sometimes use good spear units (Swiss armoured pikemen or Latin Auxillaries), but that means no major difference.

If I play with horse archers in (which I do more and more often now, as I've finally learnt to handle them), I place them away from the main body of the army, to harass the enemy's rear. Of course, this tactic comes in as many shapes as there are battles, but that's the basic line-up I use. It has proved to be highly effective (particularly against the Horde, who lack good infantry to break my polearms/spears), but as I've already stated, it gets repetative after a while.
On the positive side is that this way of fighting makes unit producing for each province (except those specialised for certain units, like Ile de France for CK and CFK) very easy. Slot 1: Spear/Polearm. Slot 2: Archer/Arbalest. Repeat in slot 3 and 4, and in slot 5 you can place either a cavalry unit or another good infantry unti (like CMAA).

Anyway, so, do you people have any other tactics that differ from such a "simple but effective" lineup as mine? If so, please share them.

caravel

01-08-2007, 17:49

Personally I wouldn't deploy in quite that fashion though I do use many of the tactics cited. The biggest no for me is edge camping (as per diagram). I find this to be a big exploit that the AI can't deal with, so I try not to position my formation that close to the map edge. Also Halberdiers deployed as a screen instead of Chivalric Sergeants, which is what I would use in such a case doesn't make that much sense to me, unless you've got a terribly good general I wouldn't be relying on them. If the Halberdiers were charged from several fronts by a decent higher valour cavalry, they will probably take considerable losses and break. Armoured up CS would hold the line and have a rank bonus. They die slowly and allow you to bring on many reinforcements of other types while they are still "in service". Really it depends on what you're facing. Nesting the arbalesters in that manner doesn't always pay off either. It depends greatly on the contours of the hill. You may find them shooting each other or the screen. I prefer to deploy arbs in an in-line formation up front, with a line of chivalric sergeants directly behind them, swords behind them and flanking troops such as Halbs or Billmen on the wings, with some reserve cavalry and the general near the back. The whole formation forms a kind of blunt crescent. If woods are available some polearms or other flanking troops may be placed there. If the AI is silly enough to charge the arbs, or if they come under heavy fire, then they will skirmish and I will redeploy the CS forward of their position. Once the cavalry are pinned, the flankers can do their dirty work, the reserve cav can then chase down the routers. Nine times out of ten the AI goes into Benny Hill mode (rout, return, rout, return etc). Works for me anyway! :2thumbsup:

Agent Miles

01-08-2007, 19:18

You can always try this!

https://s132.photobucket.com/albums/q36/AgentMiles/Peasants/

Although I prefer this:

https://s132.photobucket.com/albums/q36/AgentMiles/TacticsMTW/

Innocentius

01-08-2007, 21:56

Yeah, the crescent-shaped formation is a classic one, "closing the circle" behind the enemy. I've never been a fan of spear units once polearms are available though. Spears break easily when attacked by CMAAs or even Halberdiers.
Halbardiers can take some serious pounding (and are pretty much immune to all missiles apart from arbalests and longbows) before routing, especially if they come from a province with a church at the very least (+1 Morale to a unit with 0 morale makes a lot of difference). Adding to that, they are better for the final mop-up than spears are (in case any enemy unit is still standing to fight). But of course, I tend to use other polearms than Halbs if possible.

Realised my "picture" of my formation was a bit unclear, so I drew this masterpiece to illustrate it better:
https://img381.imageshack.us/img381/5368/wegweguf3.png (https://imageshack.us)
Red is spears etc. etc.
Sometimes I place the green guys/infantry in a straight line with the archers if the terrains does not allow them to "slope".

Hehe, over-teched crap units is among the funnier parts of the game:yes:

caravel

01-08-2007, 22:22

Scurvy

01-08-2007, 22:42

Overall it wokrs quite well in sp, although i prefer having greater freedom with units, ie, horse archers to tire and basically occupy my attention, instead of all standing still

i also dont like putting my line near the edge, firstly because its unfair on the ai, but alsoo because if units do rout they dont have time to rally, i also dont like having units quite so packed together to avoid chain routs and mass damage from ranged

i always put my ranged in front of my inf, basically out of habit from mp, this means my inf are at full strength to face any enemy, and give the ranged units more open fire (they can just run behind inf when enemy charge)

the problem with the cresent shape (from mp, not really sp) is that the enmy can just concentrate its best sword units at the centre, and hold the rest of the line with spears, so central unit eventually breaks causing gaps, the corners of unitts can also be vulnerable... when facing cresent like formations i like to have a lot of cav go to one flank and try to either flank the enemy or draw the units (in green on small diagram) out of position to cause chain, when attacking hills it can also be fun to attack the front of the line and then get units to follow until the line becomes more disorganized etc.

(i dont really like that type of formaton btw :beam: )

:2thumbsup:

Innocentius

01-09-2007, 00:40

I have this thing about using the right unit for the right job. e.g. as the Turks a line up of JHI instead of Saracens would probably be better but at the same time wouldn't feel right... :2thumbsup:

Pah! Who needs tactics when you have JHI!:beam:

I once wanted to test the full effect of JHIs, so I decided to cheat instead of slooowly building up to them, as I wasn't attempting a serious campaign. Anyway, within a few years, I had an army of 16 units of JHI with gold armour and all the morale boosts available. I put them under a 2 star general by giving one of those titles to one of the units basically, I didn't want to waste space on a mere Sipahi of the Porte:juggle2: and then let them mop up around the black sea, Balkans, the Adriatic and finally Rome. Although the enemy fled much of the time, and I never stayed to besiege a castle, I had a few "interesting" battles. Seems like the years of the mid 14th century was a BAD time to live in Balkans.

Innocentius

01-09-2007, 21:43

Ha, speaking of the Turks and different tactics, I had one of my best battles in a long time today.
I was playing as the Turks in late, and was in pretty good state when a massive Crusade arrived in Trezibond. I had a good setup of units (including a couple of JHI) while the crusaders were mostly crap units, I recall them having no less than 5 units of Spanish Jinettes, a pretty hopeless unit against Turcoman Horses...
Anyway, what was so special about this battle was the map itself. It was either a hillycoastal or mountainscoastal map (I'll have to check which map it was) with a nice, curved, hill about in the middle of the map, ideal for your army. The hill was hard to flank with steep slopes towards the ocean and wooded areas and impassable ground (map edge) on the other flank.Placing my army along the outline of the hill, I achieved some kind of S-shaped army that worked surprisingly well. Rather than wasting time trying to explain, I'll show it by yet another masterpiece of mine:
https://img273.imageshack.us/img273/8698/wegwegys9.png (https://imageshack.us)
Red being either JHI or SI, blue Ottoman infatnry (ie archers), brown AHC, dark green Turcoman Horse and light green my general. I know there are too many units in the pic, it's only their for explaining, not for an accurate account of the battle.
Perhaps my lineup wasn't perfect, but it worked just fine. As the approach for the enemy was so short I didn't risk my THs by putting them up front and saved them for the rout instead. Anyway, there would have been no space for them to either retreat nor flee if I would have.
Anyway, from the citadel-like position that my general had, I could pepper all the enemies who moved into the "crescent". I put my peak units (JHI) to defend my general and attract the enmy to go for the weaker parts of the formations. Whenever the Jinettes came to close, I charged with my AHC and drove them off and then quicjly retreated back. After a few miserably failed attacks I finally got the enemy general and then it was all just a rout that lasted for a couple of minutes. My formation didn't brake or waver the slightest during the battle untill I ordered chase.

Martok

01-10-2007, 00:32

Well done, Innocentius! ~:cheers: I have to admit I don't think I've ever seen a battle formation like that before, however. Was that simply how the countour of the hill was shaped then?

Adrian II

01-14-2007, 18:33

Anyway, so, do you people have any other tactics that differ from such a "simple but effective" lineup as mine? If so, please share them.I see no Horse Archers in your line-up. HA's are my favourite missile troops - not just the Turcoman version, but any kind of HA that is available.

They always operate separately from my main foot soldiers, harassing the enemy's nastiest units and pulling his formation apart before the battle starts. The latter aspect is more important than the number of 'early deaths' and possible morale penalties I wreak upon him.

My HA's start at a different point of the map than the rest, always pretty close to the enemy lines, but taking height and possible venues for withdrawal into account. I work them in couples (or trio's), one couple on the left flank and one on the right. Once your HA's have killed 10-20% of some enemy unit, the enemy General will send Spears, Heavy Infantry or even Cavalry after them. In the latter case, I let my HA's lure the enemy horsies into my own line of Spears which will can them for next week's breakfast.

In a defending role, I can beat a regular Byzantine army with Kataphraktoi, Byzantine Infantry, Trebizonders and Pronoiai into submission with a good number of Horse Archers plus some decent Spears and a half-decent General. The point being that once the enemy reach my line of battle, their formation is torn up and their main units are seriously worn down and quite / very tired.

In 'Paint' it looks something like this, with the HA's in bright red:

https://img329.imageshack.us/img329/1407/horsearcherstacticsvp3.jpg (https://imageshack.us)

Odin

01-15-2007, 17:59

I see no Horse Archers in your line-up. HA's are my favourite missile troops - not just the Turcoman version, but any kind of HA that is available.

They always operate separately from my main foot soldiers, harassing the enemy's nastiest units and pulling his formation apart before the battle starts. The latter aspect is more important than the number of 'early deaths' and possible morale penalties I wreak upon him.

My HA's start at a different point of the map than the rest, always pretty close to the enemy lines, but taking height and possible venues for withdrawal into account. I work them in couples (or trio's), one couple on the left flank and one on the right. Once your HA's have killed 10-20% of some enemy unit, the enemy General will send Spears, Heavy Infantry or even Cavalry after them. In the latter case, I let my HA's lure the enemy horsies into my own line of Spears which will can them for next week's breakfast.

In a defending role, I can beat a regular Byzantine army with Kataphraktoi, Byzantine Infantry, Trebizonders and Pronoiai into submission with a good number of Horse Archers plus some decent Spears and a half-decent General. The point being that once the enemy reach my line of battle, their formation is torn up and their main units are seriously worn down and quite / very tired.

In 'Paint' it looks something like this, with the HA's in bright red:

https://img329.imageshack.us/img329/1407/horsearcherstacticsvp3.jpg (https://imageshack.us)

Excellent post. Like you I use HA whenever i can to break up enemy formations, it really works well when they are on the offensive. If I have a real cheap HA unit I will use it for the harrassing role (when the AI is defending) in addition to missle absorbtion. The Ai will often commit several missle units to combat your 1 HA unit.

This helps alot when you have to climb hills with infantry to get at the AI. My issue with HA is simply that if its a low valor unit, or a low command unit they will often run on you (they do rally eventually) this kills this harassing strategy.

Adrian II

01-16-2007, 17:20

My issue with HA is simply that if its a low valor unit, or a low command unit they will often run on you (they do rally eventually) this kills this harassing strategy.Indeed. Generally speaking, only HA's with Valour 2 plus a 1/2 Valour bonus from the General can really operate behind enemy lines or close to the enemy front line.

However, my point (and yours, I daresay) is that most people play far too conservatively, and the following is probably no news to you and other veterans.

The various formations suggested in FrogBeastEgg's Beginner's Guide are truly meant for beginners. They are defensive, almost porcupine-ish formations that leave no room for maneuver, flexibility or a reversal of initiative during the battle. They may be perfectly alright if you want to play safe with Catholic armies wearing sensible shoes and mackintoshes, but I prefer my battles a little spicier.

Anyway, if you fight with more or less equal armies in Expert mode, any high-Command AI General will take merciless advantage of such anal formations. He (it) will order his troops in formation according to the rock, paper and scissors rule. E.g. if you have a Spear line out front, the enemy will send in his Swordsmen first; if you have Swords out front, he will send in his Cavalry; &cetera. This leaves you with no other option but to reorganise with Hannibal ante portas. If he approaches your battle line obliquely as well, you're truly cooked...

I usually put some Archers (most likely Horse Archers) out front to discourage any premature approach by the enemy. The rest of my army hangs back in various tiers, which I compose into a proper battle line in the run-up to battle, and according to the situation. A good battle comes in stages that leave room for regrouping and/or withdrawal. Don't give away your game at the start.

A good way to help yourself to 'loosen up' is to fight steppe battles involving lots of funny horsies, fast footmen and missiles. Try fighting with Cavalry units only, it gives you a fast learning curve.

EDIT

Another exercise consists of playing custom battles with a few units at the time, just to get the hang of the movements and rhythm of various units. Once you develop a feel for this, you don't have to calculate during your battles anymore; you take the right decisions intuitively.

Try fighting a Valour 0 unit of Byzantine Infantry with a Valour 0 unit of Mounted Crossbows. If you autocalc, this is a sure loss. If you command your MC's, it is a sure win.

Shoot the Byz up on Skirmish, withdrawing from hilltop to hilltop at an easy pace to wear them down. As soon a they turn away from you*, charge into the rear of their formation. The combined bonuses will allow you to kill, say, a dozen of them. Then withdraw (not in 'Hold Formation', which will never allow your horses to disengage, but in 'Engage at will'!) and start shooting on Skirmish again. This attack will cost you about 6 horsemen, but the remaining unit will raise its valour to 1. Keep shooting from heights, wait till the Byz are temporarily immobile before you fire, give your MC's time to aim and fire. All this helps you to get the most kills. By the time the Byz are down to about 50, make sure you are positioned between them and their edge of withdrawal. They may rout any moment. When that moment approaches, charge into them again, from the flank or at least obliquely. This will break them and leave you with 100 dead Byzantine Infantry on the field and a unit of 30 Mounted Crossbows with Valour 2 to toy with in future.

* They will turn their backs on you sooner or later. When the AI registers that they need to recover, it will send them to regroup on a hilltop where they 'feel safe'. That's when you should strike.

caravel

01-16-2007, 18:00

My issue with HA is simply that if its a low valor unit, or a low command unit they will often run on you (they do rally eventually) this kills this harassing strategy.
This is referred to as the "benny hill" code (slapstick british comedy often featuring the man himself engaging in speeded up motion chase sequences). After alot of skirmishing and constant retreating the unit will start taking a morale penalty which gets steadily worse until they rout. You can reset it by simply ordering them to attack then call it off a split second later and continue as before.

Adrian II

01-16-2007, 18:30

This is referred to as the "benny hill" code (..)I like that. :laugh4: I can hear the corny theme music in the background.

The Unknown Guy

01-16-2007, 18:37

My standard battle tactic: Find a nice big hill. Armored units-Archers-Arbalesters. Aim the arbalesters at the enemy king. Nuff said.

Adrian II

01-16-2007, 18:44

My standard battle tactic: Find a nice big hill. Armored units-Archers-Arbalesters. Aim the arbalesters at the enemy king. Nuff said.You make it sound really exciting.. :brood:

Smaller battles with unequal odds and totally different units on either side are much more interesting, particularly if they require careful maneuvering and the occasional change of rhythm in your attack.

Try something else. For instance try a running battle against a solid Catholic army with only some Horse Archers, a unit of Kwarazmians and two units of Spears. It's amazing what you can do to split them up, inflict casualties and get out again. If you listen carefullly, you can hear the AI burn its circuits in frustration in the background.

Sensei Warrior

01-17-2007, 03:04

My standard battle tactic: Find a nice big hill. Armored units-Archers-Arbalesters. Aim the arbalesters at the enemy king.

Nuff said. You make it sound really exciting.. :brood:

I have to agree with Adrian II on that one. I once said if I wanted to play an easy game where the battles didn't require much thought, I'd play a Catho faction. Wind 'em up and turn 'em loose.

My most memorable battles were the ones where I held off a gigantic army, with 4-5 units through nail biting seat of your pants tactics. The least memorable ones were when I pranced out my 9 star gen who is leading a 16 unit army that all have gold plate and gold weapons. Those get boring to the point of auto-calcing.

OT: Speaking about 9* gens and gold plated armies, Adrian II, can I end my Expert, GA, English Campaign? I'm about 50 years from the end, I have at least 100 points more than anyone else, a ludicrously huge army, and 2mill in the bank. My biggest adversary (the Hungarians) have been reduced to their starting provences and short of starting a war with the Pope there is nothing to do. You and Vladimir encouraged me to try an Expert game, so I feel its only fair to ask for release before I quit altogether.

caravel

01-17-2007, 11:40

I couldn't agree more. I've had some horrendous battles with constantly routing demoralised and exhausted troops having to rallied and brought back to face the enemy yet again. Against all the odds I've pulled it off, which is extremely rewarding. Getting troops like arab infantry to gain valour and turning them into a decent fighting force is also satisfying.

Adrian II

01-17-2007, 12:33

I've had some horrendous battles with constantly routing demoralised and exhausted troops having to rallied and brought back to face the enemy yet again.Those are always the best. So, you too know the feeling after you have beaten off 2100+ enemies, when you are down to 16 very tired Archers with near-empty quivers, one Valour 7 Royal Knight (totally exhausted), 21 Spearmen (exhausted) and 18 Vikings (totally exhausted) - and then the enemy marches in those last 200 Peasants in his reserve...

Adrian II, can I end my Expert, GA, English Campaign? I'm about 50 years from the end, I have at least 100 points more than anyone else, a ludicrously huge army, and 2mill in the bank.It doesn't sound like you need anybody's permission, Sensei Warrior. :laugh4:
But for what it's worth: you are hereby honourably discharged.

Try the Polish for a change. Learn to bleed. :sweatdrop: ~:)

P.S. Respect, man, for a 'first' in Expert you have done extremely well.

caravel

01-17-2007, 14:08

Those are always the best. So, you too know the feeling after you have beaten off 2100+ enemies, when you are down to 16 very tired Archers with near-empty quivers, one Valour 7 Royal Knight (totally exhausted), 21 Spearmen (exhausted) and 18 Vikings (totally exhausted) - and then the enemy marches in those last 200 Peasants in his reserve...
I remember playing as the Egyptians defending georgia from the mongols in a battle that lasted for over an hour (it could have been longer, I rarely watch the clock) involving about 1500 men on my side and around 5000 on the mongol side, with enemy reinforcements constantly coming on long after mine had dried up. By the end I had a few shattered remnants of Saracen Infantry (had stood their ground to the end and, unlike the missiles and cavalry, had only been relieved once), Nizaris (empty quivers, totally exhausted from charging out of trees and attacking anything that moves and looks vaguely mongolian again and again), a remnant of an AHC unit, and 1 Ghulam bodyguard - the general (:sweatdrop:), in total about 200 men, no more. I had the nizaris hiding in the woods with the saracens up front, all totally exhausted of course. The hill was thick with corpses. These men had been holding out by the skin of their teeth, facing wave after wave. The last wave had caught them short and almost decimated them. The Nizaris had saved the day with a well timed charge and some serious meleeing with the MHC! Then the MHAs and MWs arrived in large numbers... Luckily they had already suffered such a defeat they these "tail enders" withdrew immediately and my men won the day. :2thumbsup:

Sensei Warrior

01-17-2007, 15:34

To Caravel: Now thats what I'm talking about. That battle evokes all the imagery of a desperate last last. If it was part of a movie you be holding your breath at the outcome. Those are the truly memorable ones.

It doesn't sound like you need anybody's permission, Sensei Warrior. :laugh4:
But for what it's worth: you are hereby honourably discharged.

Try the Polish for a change. Learn to bleed. :sweatdrop: ~:)

P.S. Respect, man, for a 'first' in Expert you have done extremely well.

OT: Thank you my Leige :bow: . I was thinking of doing an AAR for the next one so you guys get the benefit of all my dodgy tactical knowledge. Its going to be a Danish, TD, in Expert, and one of the rules is going to be win by 1205.
Unfortunately its not going to be pretty, I'm not that much of a writer like bamff and the others in there.
OT OVER

If I glean any really well executed tactics from that campaign I'll post it up here as well.

The Unknown Guy

01-17-2007, 16:06

I had a "monty python" victory once, against the overwhelming armies of Aragon which were defending at a bridge battle against my jihad. I was losing, when one of my -forgotten by my part- catapults (which for some stupid reason I had set to fire at will) loosed a stone, which smacked right onto the King of Aragon :p

Martok

01-17-2007, 22:04

Ah yes, it's battles like that that I like to save for replays. :yes:

I had a "monty python" victory once, against the overwhelming armies of Aragon which were defending at a bridge battle against my jihad. I was losing, when one of my -forgotten by my part- catapults (which for some stupid reason I had set to fire at will) loosed a stone, which smacked right onto the King of Aragon :p
Yeah, I've won a few battles like that (where one of my artillery crews got a "lucky" shot on the the enemy general). While not very realistic, it *is* pretty funny when it happens. :laugh4:

Kavhan Isbul

01-17-2007, 23:21

Ah yes, it's battles like that that I like to save for replays. :yes:

Yeah, I've won a few battles like that (where one of my artillery crews got a "lucky" shot on the the enemy general). While not very realistic, it *is* pretty funny when it happens. :laugh4:

I do not see why it would not be very realistic, as long as it does not happen every single time. There were battles, won with a lucky artillery shot killing a general in history, the siege of Malta comes to mind (more P&M time period battle, but still). I personally have never been able to kill an enemy general with a piece of artillery, and have neither lost any of mine generals to ballistae, catapults or cannons.

Eltharon

01-17-2007, 23:48

Lets not forget Simon De Montfort, who got smashed in the head with a rock in the siege of Toulouse.

The Unknown Guy

01-18-2007, 12:40

King Felipe I of Aragon "Aargh!, they´re routing! let´s chase and kill them!"

Bodyguard 1 "But my liege, there are some catapults installed there"

(Voice in the background "Fire le vacche!"

Felipe I "Pah! They couldn´t hit an elephant at this dist.."-THUD!

(It is even funnier when the AI for some reason brings trebuchets into the battlefield and you use horse archers creatively to make their rocks hit their own formations...

BTW: In the horse archers tactics section: The Parthian Shot works. The Caracole doesn´t.

Adrian II

01-18-2007, 14:58

In the horse archers tactics section: The Parthian Shot works. The Caracole doesn´t.:laugh4:

The Footshot seems to work flawlessly in each and every game I play.

On the other hand, I once shot a re-emerging Pope outside the walls of his own Rome. I had some footmen, some Cavalry and one Culverin in Rome. Its first shot from over a mile away was dead on target. The 3000 strong Papal resurrection army (mostly Handgunners anyway) lost all hope and fled across the border into oblivion.

Don Esteban

01-18-2007, 17:32

Lets not forget Simon De Montfort, who got smashed in the head with a rock in the siege of Toulouse.

On a similar but not entirely identical vein

Harold Godwinson killed by a fluke arrow in the eye

Scottish king (Constantin III ?) killed while supervising a bombard which exploded

seems these things happen remarkably often

gaijinalways

01-20-2007, 14:49

Battles where your units are depleted from a previous battle or because you have temporarily overexpanded always give me the chills. I sometimes will be fighting a battle with a few too many missile types or with some peasant fodder. One favorite tactic I use is hiding some peasant units (or holding them back on a flank) and getting them to charge AI missile types. Sometimes getting the peasants to actually engage is not necessary, just the forced movemnt of the AI missile troops gives my troops a reprieve. When they do engage them, you still can't count on them beating even vanilla archers:furious3: . Well that's why they're called peasants:laugh4: !

Innocentius

01-27-2007, 21:04

Had a very nice, and a bit unusual, battle yesterday as the Teutonic Order. The Lithuanians invaded Lithuania after having been kicked out of there almost 50 years earlier (they had overgrown themselves like the AI usually does in the east). Now, I can't say that this was a very hard battle. This was pretty late in the game (1380ies something) so all my units were pretty teched up and I had a rather good (4 star) general. Adding to it, the enemy units were really crappy, but it still made up for a nice battle. The only thing that I had against me was being outnumbered 4:1 and that the enemy general was an eight-star one.
I had my army deployed like this:
https://img264.imageshack.us/img264/1736/wegwegkq6.png (https://imageshack.us)

The red is arbalesters, blue halberdiers and brown Teutonic Knights. The dark green is forests (the map was plainsinland since it was Lithuania so there were no height features). The black arrow is enemy approach, the purple is approach of enemy Horse Archers, Lithuanian Turcopoles and Lithuanian Cavalry. The orange arrows are the approach of enemy general (Lithuanian Cav.) and infantry (mostly Woodsmen, Lithuanian Infantry and Halberdiers).
This is a perfect example I think of a planned tactic that is pretty static, but that worked out perfectly. Since my troops were placed in the way they were and there were forests all over the map I didn't have much space to move (or well, I had a lot of space, but all of it was flatland), but the AI responded to my positioning just as I had hoped for.
The archery duel between arbs. and HAs/LTs was - not surprisingly - very easy and the enemy routed quickly. Once most of the horse archers were gone the main body of the AI army started moving, and it sent some Lithuanian Cavalry towards my arbs.
All of the enemy troops approaching were further weakened by my arbs. and the LC attacking them in particular. Once the cavalry reached my arbalesters I duly retreated them and let the enemy come into the forest were they were all slaughtered. Once most of the cavalry was gone I simply ordered all-out attack and mopped up the AI's infantry.

Adrian II

01-27-2007, 21:27

Had a very nice, and a bit unusual, battle yesterday as the Teutonic Order. (..) let the enemy come into the forest were they were all slaughtered.That is a nice, straightforward gambit guaranteed to do the job, Innocentius. Did you consider that Halberdiers lose their rank bonus in woods, and are thus less effective against Woodsmen and the like? Not that it would make a big difference...

If I were you, the one thing I would most certainly change is the concentration of your Cavalry units. I wouldn't like to put them all in that single spot which doesn't seem like a very attractive starting point for a charge. This way they could only charge head-on, which is unfortunate if the enemy has some spears left to counter them.

I think I would hide at least one unit of Teutons in the woods at the end of your right flank. Once the enemy's initiative has petered out, you can move them out of the woods and let them sweep (majestically, as the cliche has it) across the plain, charging into any unit that has its flanks exposed (practically all, at this point) or into the enemy's most effective ranged units.

But maybe I overlook aspects of your battle. It's just my :2cents: on your very effective set-up. :bow:

Geezer57

01-27-2007, 22:43

Did you consider that Halberdiers lose their rank bonus in woods, and are thus less effective against Woodsmen and the like?

Good commentary otherwise, Adrian, but the quoted section bears re-examination. All axe-equipped troops lack any rank bonuses - they get a bonus against higher levels of armor, and the polearm subset of axe troops gets a bonus against cavalry, but it isn't dependent on ranks. Those guys fight just as well in two ranks as in five ranks - the only time they benefit from more ranks is when receiving a charge, and that applies to all other non-spear/pike infantry as well.

So putting them in the woods behind the Arbalesters to intercept incoming cavalry is a great deployment. Not only do the Halberdiers get a bonus against the cavalry, but the enemy cavalry attack/defense is drastically lowered in the woods.

Innocentius

01-27-2007, 23:57

That is a nice, straightforward gambit guaranteed to do the job, Innocentius. Did you consider that Halberdiers lose their rank bonus in woods, and are thus less effective against Woodsmen and the like? Not that it would make a big difference...

If I were you, the one thing I would most certainly change is the concentration of your Cavalry units. I wouldn't like to put them all in that single spot which doesn't seem like a very attractive starting point for a charge. This way they could only charge head-on, which is unfortunate if the enemy has some spears left to counter them.

I think I would hide at least one unit of Teutons in the woods at the end of your right flank. Once the enemy's initiative has petered out, you can move them out of the woods and let them sweep (majestically, as the cliche has it) across the plain, charging into any unit that has its flanks exposed (practically all, at this point) or into the enemy's most effective ranged units.

But maybe I overlook aspects of your battle. It's just my :2cents: on your very effective set-up. :bow:

Like Geezer57 pointed out, halberdiers have no rank bonus but I agree I could have perhaps deployed my cavalry better. The whole idea behind the placement I used was to attract the enemy to my center as the AI targets the general. As the enemy had no spears however, this was not a problem.
A cavalry unit hidden in the woods to the right would have been very effective, a fact I didn't consider unfortunatley.:sweatdrop: Everybody's got to learn sometimes.

Adrian II

01-28-2007, 00:42

Like Geezer57 pointed out, halberdiers have no rank bonus but I agree I could have perhaps deployed my cavalry better.Well there you have it; I stand corrected by you and Geezer57. :bow:

My feeble excuse is that I hardly ever use the polearmed troops because they are so easily shot up by enemy ranged units. I know the upside is that they are cheap, but in my style of play this is outweighed by the downside, i.e. the quick turnover of individual soldiers. This slows down the making of elite units by way of merging. My Generals prefer to command battle-hardened 'old hands'.

Glad I cut a better figure with my suggestion about the Knights. :sweatdrop:

P.S. I like discussing various battle orders and different tactics in this thread. I will come up with another diagram of one these days. Hope you guys will join.

Innocentius

01-30-2007, 10:52

My feeble excuse is that I hardly ever use the polearmed troops because they are so easily shot up by enemy ranged units. I know the upside is that they are cheap, but in my style of play this is outweighed by the downside, i.e. the quick turnover of individual soldiers. This slows down the making of elite units by way of merging. My Generals prefer to command battle-hardened 'old hands'.

That's an interesting thing you bring up there, as it's the complete opposite of how I construct my armies. Could you please explain more about it, like which units you use and how to "train" them?
Personally I compose my armies by the 'cheap to produce - cheap to replace' rule. Best available polearm unit (Billmen, Voynuk Blades, Janissary Heavy Infantry, Swiss Halberdiers or just Halberdiers if nothing else is available) combined with best available ranged unit (Longbows, Janissary Infantry, Arbalests). I don't use Pavise Arbalests although they're better for archery duels, since they're that tiny bit more expensive, which makes a big difference when you're mass-producing them, and because they're slow which makes them hard to use in flatlands. To this I add a few units of CMAA if in High, in Late I just add another pair of Arbalests and Halberdiers (I always keep the same number of Halbs. as Arbs.). And finally two units of best available cavalry, with my general among them (most often Chivlaric Knights or Gothic Knights if I ever manage to tech up to them). Sometimes I use best available infantry (JHI or CFK) instead.
That's my stereotype army, although they of course differ somewhat from time to time. I try to get some mounted archers unit in as well (light-cav/router-chasers and archery in one), especially when attacking. When I attack I usually bring more infantry and cavalry and less ranged units as well.
There are however four factions that can't use this tactic, namely the Egyptians, Almohads, Byzantines and the Bulgarians. The Bulgarians are almost the same as most other factions, except they lack all kinds of really heavy cavalry or knights.
I don't play too much with the Eggies and Elmos, so I don't know too much about how their roster works really, all I know is that it's über in Early, but I'm talking High and Late now. The Byz can use Latin Auxillaries in XL, but they're expensive and are spear units after all. For what I know, all these three latter factions are very dependant on their cavalry, which is unfortunate for the Byzantines as even Katatanks get outdated sooner or later.
The Turks are also somewhat of an exception really. An army with JHI and JI is pretty unbeatable and works the same way as an English Longbow-Billmen army does, but is so expensive that you can hardly afford more than one or two.

zarker

01-30-2007, 15:07

Good question. I do not know, really, as I always try to lure the AI to attack me over the bridge, usually by moving a unit of light cavalry slowly over, then when the AI bites the bait withdrawing it and leaving to my archers to do the job. Then when I have finished off the enemy's spearmen by luring them onto the bridge and killing them with arrows, I attack with my swords and heavy cavalry. I have not had a case in which I attacked a huge AI army which could bring reinforcements over a bridge, so I have never had to secure the opposite bank. Besides, it seems to me to be much more favorable to lurse the enemy onto the bridge, rather than trying to cross it and secure it and then fight on the other bank being outnumbered and unable to spread your forces well.

I usually use a couple of small units of 'leftovers'. taking it in turns to lure enemy units into archer range. This also helps to tire the eenemy out as they rush forward to attack and retreat. I only use disposable troops as lures (peasants generally) as they can take quite heavy losses from enemy archers. I keep this up until out of arrows, then send heaviest troops over 1st and just slug it out.

Defensively, I place archers so the bridge exit is just in range, then charge them when a few of their units are across. Funny, how in Rome TW my tactics are much different defensively - placing three heavy units right at the bridge exit in a 'V' formation (this works best in Alexander exp with some spear units). I dont fully understand why this works in RTW, but not in MTW...?

Odin

01-30-2007, 15:44

zarker

01-30-2007, 16:12

I am willing to bet you spend a lot of your time in the East? I, like you dont use polearms as the bulk of my force. I concede it defys most convential military logic that infantry wins wars. I view polearms (unless its a real gem of a unit) as "clog fodder" I basically use these cheap spears and the like (woodsmen, vikings, slav warriors) to clog up a section of the enemy line and either flank or use missle troops.

My armies are horse heavy, which I concede works due to AI tendancies really... I do emply a quality unit or two of swordsmen if things get ugly but polearm units are support for my horse tactics, not vice versa.

:)
Interesting. But dont these cheap units tend to rout rather quickly?

gaijinalways

01-30-2007, 16:56

Not if they have battle experience. I have had some cheap troops survive, especially as later in the game they are better armored and have better fighting stats. I also don't like the pavaise albasters as they are just too slow:help: in moving in a battle for retreating or attacking. If you are sitting on the mountaintop, only then do I like to use them. Same for the halbs, they just move like molasses, though they are useful as defending for acting as a 'clog' on the flow of the enemy, especially on a bridge. You can even friendly fire on them with arows, taking down more of the opposition!:shame:

I tend not to use missile cav that much, should probably practice with them more. I get frustrated when they rout with no injuries!:furious3: Xbow cav I like, they have some punch, a bit slow, but fun to use.

Odin

01-30-2007, 17:41

:)
Interesting. But dont these cheap units tend to rout rather quickly?

Yes, but thats also not always a bad thing. When your primarily using a horse based army having units break away from the main formation when chasing a router allows you to isolate them.

While it isnt ideal to have them route, the first goal (in my book anyway) in the "clog" strat is to flank. Also there are valor bonus's spread out all over and if you get lithuania (as an example) and its got a 1 valor bonus for woodmen then thats your "clog" polearm.

Don Corleone

01-30-2007, 19:45

It also helps to pump up the cheap unit's morale with a religious building or two. Tuscan UM's, with a monastery and even basic armour and weapon upgrade, can actually pack a punch.

Agent Miles

01-30-2007, 21:24

Peasants too!
https://s132.photobucket.com/albums/q36/AgentMiles/Peasants/

Adrian II

01-31-2007, 07:37

That's an interesting thing you bring up there, as it's the complete opposite of how I construct my armies. Could you please explain more about it, like which units you use and how to "train" them?I am very busy these days, but I don't want to appear impolite or indifferent so instead of an interminable expose I will give you the very short version.

I am the kind of guy who, when he plays the Danes, ends the year 1453 with four or five complete, fully upgraded, Valour 5 Huscarl units in his (otherwise modern) army. They are originally from Sweden (hence the weapons upgrade and silver shield) and they have been merged and merged again from, oh, over fifty Huscarl units raised before 1205. These guys have great stats, great names and a great 'presence' on the battle field. Flankers of course, but don't you dare move a unit of green JHI into their sights, or they will be eating Janissary kebab that night.

EDIT

Just to make sure I had a quick look at the stats.

Huscarles: Charge 4 Attack 4 Defence 4 Armour 3 Speed 6, 10, 11 Morale 6 Cost 425 Sup 75
Janissary Heavy: Charge 4 Attack 5 Defence 3 Armour 3 Speed 6, 12, 13 Morale 8 Cost 725 Sup 67

If you compare a fresh gold-shielded JHI unit from Constantinople to a silver-shielded weapons-upgraded Valour 4 Huscarl unit from Sweden, both fighting under a four-star General, you get the following stats:

Huscarles: Charge 4 Attack 11 Defense 10 Armour 6 Speed 6,10,11 Morale 10
Janissary Heavy: Charge 4 Attack 7 Defense 5 Armour 7 Speed 6,12,13 Morale 10

I have calculated the Huscarls’ defense without counting their large shield, which protects against ranged attacks but is slung across the shoulders (and hence goes unused) in mêlee. Since the Huscarls are non-armoured however, the JHI in turn go without the bonus they get against armoured troops.

If the Huscarls flank the JHI, it’s their 11 Attack against the JHI’s 5 Defense, plus the +5 flanking bonus.
Of course the JHI can always outrun the Huscarls…

/EDIT

Oh, and whenever I have the time, I train my freshly-raised troops against Rebels first. I let them suffer a bit and gain valour, then I merge them in such a way that the lousiest Generals are eliminated and the best remain in charge. Rinse and repeat and you have, say, a Valour 3 CS with various upgrades and a 3-star General who doesn't run when the enemy shout booh.

Always leave a Rebel enclave in your territory for this purpose. Portugal in particular is always happy to oblige and rebel, rebel and them rebel some more.

Sensei Warrior

01-31-2007, 08:24

I think Adrian II might be of the 'newer isn't always better' group of players. He lovingly treats all of his units with the same type of reverence we would treat a nine star general in terms of training and reoutfitting.

If I'm right I sit somewhere between you and Adrian. I will build halbrediers and arbalests and etc., but you'll still see a valoured up armed to the teeth band of Celtic Warriors, Fyrdmen or an Elite band of Urban Militia or even Spearmen in my armies. The constant recombining of partial vetran units, with a little spit and polish, can give those fancy JHI or new fangled Gothic Knights a serious run for their money.

Don't laugh or I'll have to introduce you to Tancred de Normandie, or the core of elite Highland Clasmen I had in my last English Campaign. Tancred and his army of elite hodge-podge vetrans toured all of Afirca, the Middle East and most of Eastern Europe

The more I see the performance of Vetran units the more I seem to slip into Adrian's ideology. I don't keep a pet rebel provence for training grounds, or at least not yet. ;)

Adrian II

01-31-2007, 12:53

I think Adrian II might be of the 'newer isn't always better' group of players. He lovingly treats all of his units with the same type of reverence we would treat a nine star general in terms of training and reoutfitting.Indeed. But there is an extraneous reason for that, too. Forgive my fragmented answers, but I am writing this in the middle of a long day's work.

After I bought my first M:TW VI years ago and played it for while, I had to give it up due to all sorts of other pressing business. So I gave my copy to someone else. A year ago I bought a new one because I had more time on my hands. This new copy however had a bug, or maybe my computer has a tweaking issue - anyway, it turned out I couldn't fight battles with an army of over 960 troops because the battle screen would go pitch-black.

Instead of crying all over the tech and modding forums about my issue, I decided to make do. This has been very instructive. Since I couldn't field armies of 960+ soldiers I had to concentrate on quality instead of quantity in my armies. I never have more than 960 soldiers in any province, even if a province is about to be attacked by 2500 ululating Mongols. If they do attack, they will face five Valour 5 CS units, four Valour 3 Pavise Arbalest units, backed up by an assortment of battle-hardened flankers and Cavalry. Raise these stats by 2 because of the General's bonus and you get the picture. It's a slaughterhouse. I may have to withdraw due to exhaustion, but not before having kicked 2000 Mongols buckets without losing so much as one hundred men myself.

Lately I have take to ''Rebel-training" my Guns as well. It is amazing how much damage a Valour 3 Culverin (plus General's bonus) can do. But it is time-consuming to always be moving decimated guns crews across your campaign map.

One type of unit that really benefits from training-and-merging is Chivalric Knights. Man, the beauty of a Valour 4 CK unit charging across the battlefield and routing enemy unit after enemy unit in a single charge (higher Valour = higher attack and defense value) is a sight for sore eyes. And sore is what they usually are at 1 am, after the day's work is done... :yes:

Odin

01-31-2007, 16:21

It also helps to pump up the cheap unit's morale with a religious building or two. Tuscan UM's, with a monastery and even basic armour and weapon upgrade, can actually pack a punch.

This is very true, and coupled with Adrians merging technique you have a relatively low cost unit with enough valor to enact the "clog" strategy. A lot of men die, and it certainly isnt the most efficent use of a military budget but there does come a point where money isnt an object (much earlier when you are producing 100 florin units).

A noted down side to this strat is that when you invade the AI looks at the number of troops you bring, not necessarily the quality and often it will abondon a province. This hurts when you want to season up a 2-3 star general and get him expirence.

So the tedium then becomes how much of what do I bring to ensure a fight?

Innocentius

01-31-2007, 17:22

A noted down side to this strat is that when you invade the AI looks at the number of troops you bring, not necessarily the quality and often it will abondon a province. This hurts when you want to season up a 2-3 star general and get him expirence.

Ah, one of the best exploits in the game. Eliminating a faction by peppering them with thousand and thousands of Spearmen:laugh4:

Odin

01-31-2007, 18:35

Ah, one of the best exploits in the game. Eliminating a faction by peppering them with thousand and thousands of Spearmen:laugh4:

Yes I concede its explotive, but there in lies the cunudrum of how many forces to bare. If used properly you end up with some pretty seasoned troops along with some positive combat vices for your general/heirs.

The additional down side to the "clog" is that you never really get much use out of superior foot men as your army is horse based. The clog tactic also forces the action and you can get caught yourself if your too aggressive.

It beats the heck out of lining up a bunch or arbelasters and targeting the enemy general unit then mop up, at least for me :laugh4:

gunslinger

02-09-2007, 04:10

I learned my lesson about the value of high-valor troops the hard way. I was in a defensive battle against the Castille-Leonese (XL version of the Spanish) in Navarre or some such place with high hills. The Castillians left a unit of Jinettes exposed near my left flank. I didn't have many arrrows left, so I sent a full unit of mounted seargeants charging straight down the steep mountain into the Jinettes. I checked my right flank for just a second, and then I came back to find that my Mounted Sergeants were reduced to less than 10 men and routing. I grumbled a bit about the fact that Jinettes were never that effective when I played the Spanish, and then I sent a full unit of Chivilric Knights straight down the mountain in a perfect charge guaranteed to send those uppity Jinettes packing. This time I stuck around to watch the action, and found that I didn't even have a chance of disengaging my Knights before they too were reduced to the level of combat ineffectiveness. About then I finally noticed that all that yellow laundry flying around in the air above the Jinettes was valor flags. I didn't get a good count, but it looked like about ten of them. I don't think the Jinettes lost more than five units in those two charges combined. A fresh unit of Italian Infantry finally got ahold of those Jinettes on a hill to the side of the main battle and fought them until my Italians were nearly exhausted. I think I had about 40 - 50 Italian Infantry left when the last Jinette finally died fighting.

Now I always scan the valor of enemy units in the pre-battle screen just to avoid nasty surprises. I also have my own little core of Hobilars and Mounted Sergeants who sport 5 or 6 valor without a general's bonus.

gunslinger

02-09-2007, 04:10

gunslinger

02-09-2007, 04:10