Horsearchers

[Cousin Zoidfarb]

Horsearchers should have armour-piercing bonuses, they defeated heavily armed knights, the compound bow was as powerful as the longbow and the archers were extremely accurate.

[Xiahou]

Yeah, thats all we need- one more unit that can kick over-priced knights asses. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/tongue.gif

[todorp]

You are right. The light horse ware deadly against heavy cavalry in large spaces and spaced formations. They didn't resisted the charge, but joined the charge, as American Indians hunt buffalo. They rode next to the knights and shot the horses and/or lasso the knight. That's how in 1204 the Bulgarians defeated the 4th Crusade and captured the Crusader Emperor. The knight's horses ware armoured only in front. Probably we need a mod to reflect this fact.

[This message has been edited by todorp (edited 10-05-2002).]

[This message has been edited by todorp (edited 10-05-2002).]

[Hakonarson]

Horse archers do quite nicely agaisnt knights if you use them properly - and using htem properly means skirmishing - shooting and running away.

Knights that charge all day get tired very quickly, they take casualties, and eventually are reduced to "charging" at a walk, exhausted, and with crap morale.

There are a couple of htings that MTW doesn't quite get right - horse archers can't shoot to their rear, so can't shoot while running away, but that's not really a biggie.

What is a little more concerning for a horse archer general is the relatively small size of the battlefields, which may not allow a horse archer army to do as they did historically - run forever if required until the knights were tired (well all day at least!!).

But in small battles the fields are certainly big enough.