Beaten by horses

Hello and thanks for reading this!

So I am still kind of new to this whole total war thing, but I am loving playing Rome Total War 2. I find myself playing as the Suebi and Arverni first off, I wanted to try the barbarians before anything else just because I am reading a lot of people playing as Sparta or the Greek states and wanted to be different, haha.

I suppose my main concern here is I am finding myself having a tough time with horse archers, what are good ways to fight back against the armies that are just 3-4 infantry and the rest light horse archers? The barbarians seem to have mainly light armored infantry that are getting chewed up by archers that they cannot reach.

Any tips and tricks are appreciated!

Thanks!

The traditional solution is massed foot archery protected by spearmen, another solution is to hire mercenary cavalry and horse archers and try to beat them at their own game, however that requires getting behind the enemy, which in turn requires a certain sort of battlefield where you can do that without being spotted.

I try to keep the horse archers moving I feel like if they are moving than they cant be shooting them arrows as well as if they were sitting still. Just seems like nothing is fast enough to catch them. I have been having better success with foot archers and slingers my last attempt a little bit ago. The extra range of the slingers I am finding makes the horses have to get within a good bit of their range before they can attack my front lines. I feel like I need to expand on that line a bit more in game and see how it goes.

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I try to keep the horse archers moving I feel like if they are moving than they cant be shooting them arrows as well as if they were sitting still.

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Historically, shooting while on the move is one of the reasons for Horse Archers being so nasty. It's traditionally termed the "Parthian Shot".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthian_shot

In R1, this was modeled quite well. As for R2, I don't play so you'll have to get an opinion from one of the R2 vets as to whether horse archers get the Parthian Shot:shrug:

You can probably determine it for yourself. Send a unit to approach a horse archer unit...when they retreat a ways, see if your unit is still taking arrow fire while the HA unit is moving away.

Also what I did whenever I encountered them was to send a unit of cavalry after them, especially if you can scatter them. They cant shoot while on the move and theres that red line so just push them to the red line and they have to stop and engage your cavalry. Cheap? Absolutely but it works. At least for me.

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Originally Posted by Hooahguy

Also what I did whenever I encountered them was to send a unit of cavalry after them, especially if you can scatter them. They cant shoot while on the move and theres that red line so just push them to the red line and they have to stop and engage your cavalry. Cheap? Absolutely but it works. At least for me.

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It depends on what faction you're facing. Huns, for example, have Parthian shot and can shoot while running in 360 degrees. Most other HA's don't have the Parthian shot so what you're suggesting works against them.

Even the Huns don't get the Cantabrian circle though, which is a shame because even the Romans used that tactic. I was quite shocked on loading Atilla to discover it's missing - but crossbowmen and horse archers get flaming arrows.

See if you can goad multiple units to attack a single one of yours, possible a single heavy infantry unit - I think it will make them clump together, as that's my experience with commanding Horse archers in Atilla.

Truth be told, they're not at good as previous games.

Just a note: OP is referring to R2, not Attila...let's not forget this is still a combined forum for both games.
@BarbaricLord, I feel your pain. Horse Archers are the one R2 unit with which I truly have a hate/hate relationship. Don't like playing with them; don't like playing against them.

As others have noted, long-range missile infantry are a good answer. Most (not all) HA's are lightly armored, so they're quite vulnerable to return fire. They typically have 125 range, whereas most slingers and archers have 150 (or at least 125 themselves). So it becomes an exercise in arranging your army formation in such a way that the enemy HA's can't get in range without getting thrashed themselves.

I would think that in most cases, by the time you get to a point in the campaign where the AI is fielding the higher-end Armored Horse Archers, then you yourself will probably be rocking well-armored infantry yourself, and the HA's fire won't be as devastating to them.

Hooahguy's tactic of chasing them away with decent melee cavalry can work as well; obviously it does the job for him. I'm just not very good at managing that approach; most of the time I either manage to get my cavalry mauled...or some other unit elsewhere that I didn't pay enough attention to because I was micro-ing the cavalry.

Well, if the OP is talking about R2 horse archers, cornering those with melee cav is a suicide since all the R2 horse archers get Parthian shot (360 degree shooting while running around).

In R2, massed foot archers work very well against HA's, even the armored ones.