Rome: Total War Barbarian Invasion

[Takeda Itetsunaba]

Huns X_X I hate them it's ridiculous how many there are, and their cavalry is good. anyone have advice against them?

[Arbaces]

The topic's title is irrelevant. Please somebody change it to "Tactics against huns" or such.

Depends on what faction are you playing, if you play as a barbarian faction use your own advantage of cavalry to sorround the horse archers. Same thing you can do with the roman infantry, and don't forget to stay in loose formation. Hell I'm no good at tactics at all, wait some more answers or figure out yourself.

Arbaces.

[Takeda Itetsunaba]

k, thanks for the info.

[Ciaran]

As Arbaces stated, there´s no universal tactic, the factions in BI are way too different from each other for that. A good suggestion would be (foot) archers, they´re cheap and you get more men (and consequently more missiles per volley) than with a mounted unit. Yes, you´ll lose men, but so will the Huns, only that (hopefully!) you can afford to lose more than they can. Another important point is the strategic level, try to block chokepoints (Rivers are great, even if a lot of Hunnic units can - and will - cross by swimming, as long as they´re in the water they´re sitting ducks. Also, if playing a faction that has them, bring some Onagers to toast whole bunches) so that only one or two, at maximum three, stacks can attack you at a time. Train dedicated General Killer units, fast and strong cavalry; Sarmatian Auxiliaries are great for that. Remember, in order to kill a Horde, you have to kill off all Family members, a daunting task, if only one survives, at least one other will spring up. Loads of assassins (prepare to lose a lot, train them up on Captains) help managing Horde faction just as well as killing their family members in battle (that´s why you´ll want fast and strong cavalry units, the AI isn´t so stupid to throw their family members into the first wave anymore, and if it does, it tends to retreat the family members from the field; only "strong" cavalry isn´t bad if there´s no alternative, you have to plan a bit more ahead then, but I suppose slow, heavy cavalry is better utilized otherwise).

Such, at least is the condensed experience of two (Goths and WRE) campaigns for me.

[Takeda Itetsunaba]

thamks for the info! :)

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Draw them into a siege where you have a strong wall and large garrison. After a few turns they'll attack and you'll be able to wipe out their infantry. Without a solid core those horsemen will be a lot easier to take care of. Fight with good infantry, heavy cavalry and foot archers. If you have boys who do shieldwall use them.

[Andres]

As stated before: foot archers!

Try to pick you ground. Go in search of a mountaineous area on the campaign map. Get a (nearly) full stack army, composed of some spear-units, several light cavalry units and a lot of archers, and put it near their armies tempting them to attack you.

The AI outnumbers you and will overconfidently attack you: deploy your forces as high as possible on the mountain. Put a line of spears, archers behind them, cavalry behind them.

Take advantage of the terrain, let them come to you. Your archers will pepper them before they are close enough to fire a single arrow at your army. Their horse archers will be on skirmish mode. If they come too close (read: they are in range to fire at you), chase them with your light cavalry until they can't reach your archers/infantry anymore. Pull back the light cavalry. If they come in range, chase them again.

Your archers on top of the mountain will have longer range then the horse archers and thus they won't suffer significant losses, since the Horse Archers don't get much chances to fire a volley at your army

If they start to rout, let your light infantry chase for the general. Once you killed the general, try to slaughter as much as possible of the rest of their army.

I did this in my first BI campaign, playing as the Saxons and managed to exterminate the whole Vandal Horde in three or four turns with minimal losses.

Hope this helps :bow:

[MSB]

Or you could try the historical tactic: ABANDON YOUR LANDS, FORM A HORDE AND RUN FOR YOUR LIFE! :san_laugh:

[rich19]

Or the other historical tactic - be defeated! (Take as many with you as you can).

[Mithras]

Horde armies suck at attacking cities-deploy a large army in defence of a well fortified city and you will decimate them.

Try to bog them down in static battles around heavily forested areas-their numbers are finite. yours are not.