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I've been reading a few replies on some of the other threads regarding the benefits of naptha throwers. I'd be grateful if anyone could give me some pointers on using them effectively in both attack and defence. At the moment I cannot get enough performance out of them to justify putting them in a line up in place of virtually any other unit.
Thanks
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Naphtas take a long time to throw their grenades and have very short range.
I tend to use them in a similar way to how I use javelinmen: pin down the unit you're attacking with spearmen and lob the grenades above them. When possible attack downhill and never attack uphill or your own spearmen will receive most of the impact. Naphtas are also very useful in bridge defense but again, you'll need either to wait for the enemy to cross the bridge and start coming up or to get your naphtas on the bridge, otherwise they'll burn your own troops.
I guess in principle you can also use them to attack a flank but they're very vulnerable so they'd need to be protected by another unit from being flanked themselves.
Stop the enemy's elite (best) unit with your spears, and have these guys do their stuff, the better the unit you use these against, the better the outcome. Imagine getting 30+ of those JHI with one shot... Not worth it?
Naptha are very tricky to use, but very effective if you get it right.
Darwbacks: Short range, long loading/firing time, innacurate and pretty much random, chance of killing themselves or your own units.
Advantages: Devestatingly powerfull explosions, fast and manouverable, long enough range to fire over a unit, arc of fire, indisciminate killing regardless of health or armour of the target. Not particularly vunrable to archers. Reasonable moral.
The best use I have got out of them is in castle sieges, position them just inside the gate (not a for style gate, keep or higher) and when the enemy come and attack it, they will throw grenades through the gate, killing the enemy very well because of he enclosed space.
other than that, unless yo can get a good downhill position to fire from they are much better use to flank or rear attack with. Pin an enemy unit, the most expensive you can find, with something cheap, vanilla spearmen work well. (not peasants as they won;t last long eneough) move your naptha throwers round to the flank or rear and let loos a volley, remeber not to have them set to skirmish or they will never get close enough to fire.
The volley will kill loads of units, some of which will be yours, but the fear effect is often enough to make even high class knights flee, and your spearmen may well hold together because they get a moral boost for your killing of the enemy, not to mention you being on the flank and the moral boost for that. If the enemy didn;t rout, try again, if they did, start working your way up the line of battle.
They have enough armor ot to get wipe out by archers, so you cna safely ignore one or two of them firing at your naptha, and if you oly take along one unit it still has enough firepower to really change the course of the battle.
They are probably best used against royals, knights or the golden horde, all of which are igh armour/high defence units which take a hell of a lot of killing normally.
My favorite time to use naptha is when playing the Byz on early and invading Sicily on the first turn. If you play it right, you can destroy most of the garrison with only your naptha throwers. https://forums.totalwar.org/forum/no...ns/biggrin.gif
Whenever i play as any of the muslim factions or the byzantines naptha is great. I always une it to fire against the enemies general in the hope of killing him.
In my game however naptha throwers have a gigantic range bigger than any thing else infact and i don't know why??? ~:confused:
For you naptha-lovers the XL-mod, by Vikinghorde, has naptha-catapults!!! They rock, in fact, the whole mod is superb - almost MM-class. Try it!