Camel Killers

No offense to the mighty camel consortium, but I was wondering what the best way is to deal with a camel-heavy enemy army in the desert. I've done okay using spear units to pin them, and militia units to flank them, with some missle units, maybe horse archers, to force them to come to ground of my choosing, and a little light cavalry to nip round the back and mess with any desert archers they brought along. Still, I have a feeling that I'm not doing it the best way. I think I saw a post somewhere that said that sword infantry can rip up camels, but that has not been my experience.

I assume you're playing as a catholic faction? If so then Feudal Sergeants combined with regular archers should make light work of them. Camels are technically cavalry so sword units used directly would not be the best idea - flank with them yes, but the camels must be pinned first. Archers are good because the camels are poorly armoured and fall quickly under concentrated fire. Also if you can rout one unit of them then you can probably start a chain rout.

What my esteemed colleague said: Pin the camels with FS, and then take 'em down with archers. Flanking them with sword units is nice if you have some to spare, but they're not actually necessary in my experience (at least not usually). Obviously valoured-up camel troops can potentially be a problem, but generally speaking you should still be able to handle them with a good old-fashioned combo of spears & arrows.

Well try not to hit your own men in the back with your archers. It's a good idea to fight such battles defensively, i.e. let the camels come to you. This saves your men tiring also. Take the archers off fire at will and wait until the camels come within range. Enable fire at will again and your archers should loose their arrows without turning or coming out of formation. As the camels approach disable fire at will again and click drag the Feudal Sergeants into position in front of the enemy. If you time it right then your archers should be skirmishing out of the way of the charging camels bringing the latter nicely onto your spear points.

If you're not playing as catholics, but either the Turks or Byzantines, then try wearing them down with horse archers in addition to everything else (if you are a catholic and you hold Tripoli (and I think Antioch as well?) then Turcopoles are an option).

For the Byzantines in particular Treb Archers and Vanilla Spears can do well against camels in most cases. It's important to use the Treb Archers as flankers when opportunity presents itself (in terms of stats they're hybrids not archers). for the Turks you have Muwahid Foot, Saracens and numerous hybrids (not to mention camels) available so camels should not be much of an issue. The same goes for the Egyptians and Almohads.

In all cases avoid cavalry if possible due to the camels vs horses penalty. Only charge/chase down broken camel units with your cavalry.

Thank you everyone. I suppose I should have said that I was playing Byzantines early but modded in such a way that it is harder to tech up to the better units. Thats why I was using urban militia for my flankers. I wanted to save my limited supply of swordsmen to guard my western frontier. I could get results, but the casulties to my flankers were heavy. Perhaps next time I will try Martok's idea that flanking is not necessary, or else bring more Trebs so I can shoot and flank too. They sound a lot more useful than UM in this situation, and I can spare enough from the western frontier. Other than that, I've been pretty much doing the things you guys said.

Alan merc cavalry was actually useful now and then to draw off a camel unit or attack some archers, but I think I would have been better off leaving them at home. Horse archers can do these jobs, plus they can shoot and are good for drawing the enemy toward me.

I never had problem with camels unless heavily outnumbered/ fighting uber strong general. There are only two camels in vanilla. Bedouin is basically mounted peasant; a spearman alone can rout them but I use mounted sergeants . I use concentrated fire on Berber ones with fire-at-will off so they don't loosen formation and then pin em with feudal sergeants ideally or cavalry. I rarely bring infantry except archers and couple of spearmen [for ghulams] to desert so I usually use archer/cavalry to deal with cavalry.

What Caravel said.

You can also tease them incessantly with Horse Archers, which is good if you need to draw them right away from your (necessarily stationary) heavy cavalry, but the killing power isn't as devastating as full units of infantry archers, and Camels don't tire anywhere near as medium/heavy cavalry in the desert... obviously. Tiring the opponent is generally the goal when teasing with Horse Archers.

(And, I know I'm a broken record about Organ guns, but they are more effective against slower cavalry like Camels who struggle to reach your lines. Lots of hills in the desert, too! Yeah, I know, Organs aren't the most efficient unit, but they're heaps of fun!! OK, I'm going to stop crapping on about them now. Done.)