spearblocks

This questions comes about from most people saying that Saracin infantry are better than muwahids. But I have personally found Muwahids much more effective than Saracens. I use spearmen as blockers and not attackers for the most part. I remember the best battle that I had with them was in Georgia against the golden horde where I had 6 Muwahids to start out with. I put them in the front line and on the flanks and angled each one so that my front and flanks were protected and a few cavalry to protect the rear and missle troops stacked in the middle to shoot down the Mongols. Everytime the MHC charged they got blocked by the wall of spears that they could not get past while neither taking casualties or inflicting any they blocked the cavalry allowing the archers and artillery do there work. The MHC would charge time and time again only to pull back and try to charge again while slowly being decimated by arrows till they were depleted enough to safely bring my inferior cavalry around to route them and for a while the only casualties they were taking were from missles. As the battle went on I was running out of missle units and the spearmen were getting depleted and finally withdrew all my troops as I was outnumbered 6000 to 2000.

I have had plenty of other battles where they held there ground tying up a unit until I could hit them with something good. Now I have had there spearwalls breaken in battle and sometimes I would see the A.I. try to charge up to 3 times into them until they finally broke the block and it seems the only way to get in at them is with a high charge value. The only unit in early era that I have never seen in the early era not get tied up by them is the Varangian Guard but what unit does hold up against them.

Now I very rarely ever see saracen infantry do a successful spearblock. My only guess it is either there high defence value or a high discipline value makes spear units block much better. The thing I noticed is if they are are just standing still they repulse most charges and of course if they are facing uphill you can almost forget them holding a block.

So my question is what value is it that allows them to do a succesful block is it the high defence value or does discipline have a factor in spear units our is it the size of there spears as you know they are from Africa

I'm not really saying that muwahids are better than Saracens its how your using them, maybe when you are defending Muwahids are much better as you can have them hold the line and let your missle units do the work and then bring in the flankers. Where as on attack you need to be aggressive and the Saracens can do much better job

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] ]This questions comes about from most people saying that Saracin infantry are better than muwahids. But I have personally found Muwahids much more effective than Saracens.

---

You're right. Me too. I've had the same experiences.

The reason MFS are that good in Early, is because they have a high starting moral. They can hold enough time, even with heavy casualties, for the enemy to be encircled and destroyed. Other spear units from the same period can't do that good. They rout easily.

Besides, they are fast and only a 30/60/90/120 men unit. So, they can be used for other roles.

One of the reasons why SI is better at attacking and MFS at defending is:

-When you're defending, most of the times you have the height advantage, so enemy missile troops aren't an imediate threat. In defense, high missile resistence isn't that important, because your archers will have depleated enemy archer units by the time they can damage your spear units. So Armour bonus isn't as important. The high morale for holding a charge is.

-When attacking, most of the times the enemy has the upper hand on terrain deployment. So, high resistance to missile threat is important. This is, because before you reach the enemy, their archers will have inflicted heavy casualties on your units. So a 50men armoured unit will always fare better in this situation than a 30men unarmoured one. Morale penalties due to high casualties will impair the MFS more than the SI.

I've generally found SI to be better when defending (against the horde at any rate) as their armour protects them from horse archer fire and their larger unit size means I don't need to deploy as many to cover the front line and can have more room in my army for archers. Setting them to hold formation and hold position I've never seen them break against a charge, but then again I've never played on expert and I'm a big believer in Mosques and Ribats.

Muwahids are definitely better in the desert due to their speed and lack of armour so I tend to only use them in that sort of terrain, or in a more attacking role where their speed can be an advantage in flanking the enemy.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] ]I've never played on expert

---

In my opinion anything less than expert is childsplay. Expert usually feels too easy for me anyway. The AI is so pathetic it really needs all the advantages it can get.

Muhwaids are an unusual type of spearmen I must say,their best purpose is for flanking,not direct charging,altough they have a superior attack rating,and the spear bonus.