HA vs HA - tactical help required

hey everyone,

so i'm toddling along in my sauromatae campaign, all going smoothly, except now saka have decided to wander into my neck of the woods, with 10 units, 5 of which are their killer elite HAs. I'm using mostly Scythian riders (aorsi riders in fact) and the bog standard horse archers, and finding the saka a tough cookie to crumble. please can anyone share tips for HA vs HA battles. obviously against infantry it's a completely different approach (circle, fire on flanks and rear)...but against HAs...well.......help please!

EDIT: i should add, i find that the losses i sustain are so often man for man against the Saka that it's simply becoming a battle of numbers - more men=men left after all the arrows have been exchanged and equal numbers killed.....is there anyway that you don't just lose man for man?

The only solution I've found is to use foot archers in combination with your own HA, to increase your firepower at minimum cost. Get the enemy HA to start shooting off their ammo on your foot archer cannon fodder, before you send in your own HA.

And I still needed to have superior numbers to win.

try getting subeshi archers-if mercenaries are available in sarmatia (I dunno-I play AS and they're everywhere on the frontier)

Try disrupting the enemy HA lines with your heavy cavalry family members while your HA shoot at them, your heavy cavalry is unlikely to take much damage frontally from the arrows and if it takes any it doesn't matter after the battle, since it will replenish for free.

Also have your own HA in loose formation to minimize casualties.

I have the same experience with my Parthian campaign against the Saka. While I was able to win the battles, it was always pretty close, but they have simply many more units with their AI script, with my one or two cities I couldn't hope to match them. Foot archers are surely helping, but the Saka have always nobles in their armies, they are armored and they charge and kill my foot archers easily. Smart move.

My idea is to concentrate fire, but only for a short time. Do not try to kill the whole enemy unit before switching to a new target, but shoot at it until they have lost about 60% of its soldiers. Then go on to a new target. I use this tactic because I have the impression (might be wrong) that the more soldiers there are, ie the more density the unit has, the more of your own arrows will hit something, and the more are hit and die, the less arrows will come your way. The efficiency of your concentrated fire is higher with fully manned units, so to speak, you don't kill whole units faster or make them rout, but you kill individual enemy archers faster, protecting your own troops. After you have circled through the reachable units, you can go on and try to destroy or rout them totally.

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Originally Posted by Tiberius Nero

Also have your own HA in loose formation to minimize casualties.

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I do, of course, use loose formation. i think between tiberius nero and dubius cato, there may be an answer....

of course, foot archer, HA and FM combo is ideal here, and remembering to use a loose formation and cycle targets to whittle down the enemy. disruption and fluid movement are also essential - i will persevere - thank you for your help.

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Originally Posted by Dubius Cato

My idea is to concentrate fire, but only for a short time. Do not try to kill the whole enemy unit before switching to a new target, but shoot at it until they have lost about 60% of its soldiers. Then go on to a new target. I use this tactic because I have the impression (might be wrong) that the more soldiers there are, ie the more density the unit has, the more of your own arrows will hit something, and the more are hit and die, the less arrows will come your way. The efficiency of your concentrated fire is higher with fully manned units, so to speak, you don't kill whole units faster or make them rout, but you kill individual enemy archers faster, protecting your own troops. After you have circled through the reachable units, you can go on and try to destroy or rout them totally.

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I do the same, Saka are the bane of my early Pahlava campaign, seems to help me at least.
Cheers

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Originally Posted by overweightninja

I do the same, Saka are the bane of my early Pahlava campaign, seems to help me at least.
Cheers

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those saka FMs caused me trouble both as baktria and now as sauromatae - do they have no weakness??:help:

As Baktria, my Anti-HA-Army-Army includes Persian Archer-Spearmen (cheap as hell, as archers ok and if HA charge them, they do quite a good job with their spears), Persian Archers (more range than HA AFAIK), HA (mostly Dahae) and General's Bodyguard. My HA advance and pepper the enemy with their arrows and lure them in range of my Persian Archers who do the main damage dealing. If the enemy HAs want to charge my arhcers, the Archer-Spearmen can break their charge fairly good (assumed they're not to heavily armoured); then the General's Bodyguard finish them off.
I haven't faced any armoured/heavy HAs so far, but I guess that a) Persian Archers outrange them and thus can lure them closer and b) Medium or Heavy Cavalry would do the trick against them, since heavy HAs should be slower and clumsier then standard HAs. However, this tactic is purely hypothetical since I never faced heavy HAs so far.

In my limited encounters with standard armies against HA and foot archer armies, I simply sent the entire army at a charge at the enemy to give them minimal time to fire and to close the range. Perhaps this is still the most suitable tactic. Perhaps even more effective for you, because when you chase them trying to close to melee, they are firing into your front while you are firing into their backs. And once you catch them (one HA caught will make the entire unit turn and fight), your heavy cavalry can break them. That, or a simple concentration of horse archers on the same unit in charge.

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Originally Posted by pezhetairoi

In my limited encounters with standard armies against HA and foot archer armies, I simply sent the entire army at a charge at the enemy to give them minimal time to fire and to close the range. Perhaps this is still the most suitable tactic. Perhaps even more effective for you, because when you chase them trying to close to melee, they are firing into your front while you are firing into their backs. And once you catch them (one HA caught will make the entire unit turn and fight), your heavy cavalry can break them. That, or a simple concentration of horse archers on the same unit in charge.

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it's a little bit about divide and conquer also - a large stack can still be split into its component parts, especially as HAs are very mobile and thus often get drawn apart - i will try the charge attack, that seems a possibility also.
just always seemed one of the best ways to deal with HAs was have heavily armoured troops on whom they would waste their arrows, and then some kind of chaser to pin them and obliterate them.

Try to manoeuvre your own HA in a way that more than one of yours target only one of theirs. In other words, concentrate your arrows on one flank, while avoiding the other....and keep moving


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Y = you, X = enemy

Cantabric Circle is your friend.

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Originally Posted by Sarcasm

Cantabric Circle is your friend.

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my best friend!

i always put them in loose formation + cantabian circle and seek higher ground. as said above, combination with foot archers works quite well.
that diagramm looks interesting, but i havent tried this tactic yet. must be difficult to cirle around like that when facing similar mobile HA army.

When I was Saka VH/VH I faced Parthian cataphract archers and noble archers. I also faced a lot of sauromatae noble archers

I would never be able to outshoot them (and curse it they had the ground) as they had good armor and +7 attack. As my arrows wouldn't do enough damage, I needed to take them in melee. But as long as they had arrows it wouldn't work.

So I picked out the two noble HA I had (out of an army of 7 other light HA and 2 generals) and put them on loose formation and Cantabrian circle and had them target units of the Parthian second line. That way all Parthian HA would pepper my noble HA. I'd just let them shoot until they run out of ammo. Then I brought up my HA and shot them until I'm out of ammo. Then I swarmed.

I found this to be the most effective way. Foot archers always loose in a shootout like this I found.

Of course the arrow fodder lost a lot of men. Against about 7 HA my 2 noble HA got cut down to 6 and 11 respectfully from 25. I used this tactic whenever I can't outshoot the enemy HA (which 90% of the time against HA except when I fought the Yuezhi, I actually outshot them). The ratio is about 1 noble HA for every 4~5 enemy ranged unit.

Which is nice if you were near your resupply base, but far from it, retraining/merging can become quite nasty in a bit.

which is fine because you only need to do that when you cross paths with one huge army, which means either you are defending (close to your own settlement) or you are attacking (close to enemy settlement). And after you win you either retrain back at your settlement or take their now-relatively-defenseless settlement and retrain with their own nomadic structures.

I usually make peace with the other HA factions and kill the AS enough to field heavily armored cavalry against them.

I am currently playing a Sarmatian campaign and the bane of my existence is the Saka. The combination of the family members late bodyguards, their cheap heavy lancers and the ubiquitous Noble Horse Archers eat any lightly armored horse archer army alive when defending a settlement. I find that in the open steppe however the lightly armored Sarmation horse archers are more than a match for the standard Saka army I have faced, even to the point of having less than 10% casualties. The trick in the open steppe is to be very spread out, using the circle formation, and let the Saka Heavies chase your lightly armored horse archers around, turning off the circle formation when chased otherwise they get caught, while concentrating the fire of the remaining units onto the Nobles. With roughly even numbers, and slightly favorable terrain, you should come out on top with few casualties. When defending a fixed point without walls however, the standard Saka Army I see is very difficult to stop without your own nobles to turn the tide. The standard Saka army I see is about 50% nobles, a single family member, and a mix of those cheap heavy lancers and other light horse archers. I hope that made sense.

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Originally Posted by Dharkaron

I am currently playing a Sarmatian campaign and the bane of my existence is the Saka. The combination of the family members late bodyguards, their cheap heavy lancers and the ubiquitous Noble Horse Archers eat any lightly armored horse archer army alive when defending a settlement. I find that in the open steppe however the lightly armored Sarmation horse archers are more than a match for the standard Saka army I have faced, even to the point of having less than 10% casualties. The trick in the open steppe is to be very spread out, using the circle formation, and let the Saka Heavies chase your lightly armored horse archers around, turning off the circle formation when chased otherwise they get caught, while concentrating the fire of the remaining units onto the Nobles. With roughly even numbers, and slightly favorable terrain, you should come out on top with few casualties. When defending a fixed point without walls however, the standard Saka Army I see is very difficult to stop without your own nobles to turn the tide. The standard Saka army I see is about 50% nobles, a single family member, and a mix of those cheap heavy lancers and other light horse archers. I hope that made sense.

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it did. thank you everyone for the tips. i dreamt that when i faced the two lurking half stacks of saka they turned out to have become eleutheroi because saka had been destroyed by baktria. of course, it was not to be....

the tips are great, and i will try a range of things - clearly cantabrian circle, using the mobility to the max, and maybe using a noble unit as a "target" so that it can take the arrows would be the way forward....will report once i try it.

thank you again,
f