How do I deal with Boyers???

[fester]

They even destroy my spear men charging head on to my perfect ranks and routing them. What are they some kind of ck horse archer. The people of Novogrod remain safe from Danish rule until I find an answer.

[Vladimir]

Carefully. That's the best advice I can give. Just treat them like souped up horse archers and you'll be fine. The counterweapon for HAs is foot archers. With the Danes those usually aren't a priority.

[macsen rufus]

Shoot them! A couple of units of archers giving some concentrated fire should whittle their numbers down a bit. If you have any slav javelins (don't know how big your Danish empire is yet :beam: ) they can do a lot of damage if you can get them close enough (try pinning the boyars with spears and bringing javs to a flank.)

The next thing you can try is to get them trapped in the woods with some huscarles or halberdiers.



some kind of ck horse archer

Yes, not far off! They are armoured royal bodyguard units, so have to be tough :2thumbsup:

[caravel]

Protect your foot archers with a spear wall or lose them, and concentrate on shooting their generals unit (probably royalty).

[Jxrc]

If your general has about the same number of stars as his Russian adversary you should have no major problem getting rid of Boyars with a little patience.


Usually the AI uses those like regular HA except that they are more willing to charge if the circumstance are favourable (isolated missile unit, spear unit facing the wrong direction, etc.)

If you have enough archers, the easiest way is to create a spearwall before them and shoot the boyars just like you would shoot any HA. I will take longer because of the armor but you will eventually get there. It's even better if you have X-bows (so bribing the rebels in Livonia is good since they are the only X-bows available in the Early period). Mercenary mounted X-bowmen are handy as well.

If you do not have any archers (or not enough), I assume that you have some vikings (or even better huscarls) or cavalry available. The trick here is to have the Boyar engage one of your spear unit and attack them from the flank or rear with your cavalry of viking (taking advantage of the AP bonus). You will tell me that even the AI is not dumb to do that and that you need hours to get the Boyar cornered before you can do that ... Good point indeed. A possible trick is to lure the Boyars into charching one of your spear unit. To do so move the spear unit towards the boyars, once the boyar start moving away from yours spears, order your unit to make a U-turn and come back to you. The AI will see a chance of charging the spearmen from the rear and will probably not resist the temptation. The boyar will first move "very fast' towards your units and then launch their attack. This is the moment for a speedy second u-turn for your spearmen who will end up facing the charge if your timing is right (its a matter of balance here, if you turn too soon the boyars will retreat, if you do it late .... you'll end up with many dead spearmen ...). It may sound a bit difficult when you read this but try it once and you will see that it is not that difficult to make this work. Of course do not use this when there are three or more boyar units cause then you have a great riks to see the AI attack one single unit of yours and destroy is one charge. Honestly, I am far from being very good at moving troops around and I usually manage to get rid of boyars this way ...

[mfberg]

Bribe them! Any army with Boyars that doesn't include an heir is a good unit for bribery. If you can get a couple of Boyars on your side you can use them to help deal with their own kind. Other than that crossbows, arbs, and pavise crossbows and arbs are your best bet.

mfberg

[Kavhan Isbul]

Boyars are one of the most annoying units in the game, when you have to face them (together with Almohad Urban Militia, Kataphrakts and Turcoman Horse Archers). The only good thing about them is that the AI cannot produce them and only gets them through heirs. The key is to concentrate on killing off the heirs and not the grand prince himslef, if possible, because the ruler's retinue regenerates every turn and if you kill him, his successor gets 41 new boyars, even if he had only few left in his retinue.
I can add little to what others said before me, but one thing is obvious - you need multiple units per each unit of boyars, and vanilla spearmen will not do the job. Feudal sergeants are recommended, or fyrdmen if you have VI. England is usually vulnerable early and has few ships, so an invasion there might be a good idea anyway. And for javelinmen, who are a great way of dealing with armored uber units - boyars, kataphrakts, mongol heavies, feudal knights, armored spearmen, etc., you have a few options. You can either get Slav javelinmen in Pomerania, Prussia and Lithuania (only a spearmaker needed), or you can get Kerns from Ireland (I believe only a town watch was necessary).

[Martok]

There's two primary methods to deal with missile cavalry: Use massed missile fire against them, or pin them down with 2 or more cavalry units. Since the Danes lack decent cavalry early on--even RK's can't take on Boyars in a straight-on fight--your best bet is to use gobs of archers (or X-bows, on the off-chance you have them). You should also tech up to train Feudal Seargents as quickly as possible, since they can withstand cavalry attacks better than vanilla spearmen.

Of course, since Boyars do have good melee abilities and (as you've already discovered) will quite possibly charge your spear wall at some point, it's wise to also prepare a pin-and-flank maneuver against them. While cavalry is generally preferred for this, Viking infantry should still serve you well enough. I find Landsmen are pretty good for flanking cavalry, since they have solid attack *and* defense stats, yet aren't as monstrously expensive as Huscarles.

[Sensei Warrior]

What are they some kind of ck horse archer.

That's pretty close to the mark. Exerpts from froggie's unit guide say:

Boyars
Charge 4 Attack 3 Defence 5 Armour 5 Speed 9, 20, 22 Morale 6 Cost 550 Support cost 105

Teutonic sergeants
Charge 4 Attack 3 Defence 5 Armour 6 Speed 9, 20, 22 Morale 4 Cost 375 Support cost 40

Chivalric knights.
Charge 8 Attack 5 Defence 5 Armour 7 Speed 9, 20, 22 Morale 8 Cost 675 Support cost 85

As you can see yes they are very similar to CKs and TSs and should be treated as such. I know when I first encountered Boyars I said hmm, fancy HAs, this shouldn't be too hard, just before I got my backside handed to me.

Now I see them and I treat them just like I would treat Knights or other Hvy Cav., very carefully.

Jxrc and Martok explain it very well. Lots of Archers, multiple units to a Boyar Unit. Be prepared to brush up on your flanking skills.

With the Danish, I attacked them early on. I used Feudal Sarges as a soak unit, and a pinning unit while I flanked them on 2 sides if possible with Landsmen and/or a unit of Spear types. Cav will also work here. The whole time peppering them with archer fire. When I was fighting Nov, my armies had very little Cav so I was using Melee Units. Landsmen have an AP bonus IIRC, so they are a good choice along with the odd Huscarle if you can. Units with armor will stand up better to the Boyars missile fire if you have any

I know it sounds excessive but remember these are the Nov's "royal unit", so in that case you really wouldn't bat an eye to deal with a unit of Royal Knights in the same fashion.

[Alpha666]

Depends on the terrain IMHO.

If wooded it is quite easy. Well "easy" it was for me, since i have now quite good units as billmen/helberdiers with +2 A + 2 D + good morale. I hid these in the woods and use some hobilars as "bait". As soon the Boyers follow your hobilars ( or light cav of any sort) just direct them so that they need to pass near the woods or sometimes they even enter the woods. Then chop them up with the anti cav units.......It even works at attacking. Why ? It seems if you bombard the defenders with cannons and longbows they sometimes/often charge instead stand still....Culverines work wonders to demoralize the enemy.