Tactics and Units to counter Heavy Cavalry and Horse Archers

After playing six matches online today, I found my weakness to be fighting both heavy cavalry and horse archers. The latter really give me problems.

I play 10,000 florins a player and usually select either the HRE or France as they don't have many bugs and both the French Noble Knights and the Teutonic Knights are badass for my flanking maneuvers.

I'm an aggressive player who doesn't like to sit back and exchange archer fire for 10 mins, so I attack first 90% of the team. This gives me the advantage over my enemy, IMO, because I've been lucky enough to pull off some solid Heavy Cavalry charges on my enemies flanks early on in the fight and surround my opponents army (One battle was a spitting image of Cannae).

But, this is hard to do against an enemy who heavily invests in Horse Archers.

If any of you have any suggestions/comments or simply experiences that would help me fighting the HA, I'd be very grateful.

As for Heavy Cavalry, the main problem I have is getting my anti cavalry units to actually fight them on the open battlefield. Spearmen simply cannot catchup to horses. I've been doing a bait and surround technique where my opponents and my cavalry meet head on and I run spears around the back of his, and that can work but any worthy foe realizes it early or won't let it ever happen twice.

I don't deploy spear walls and wait for him to attack, I am almost always the one on the offensive. So I'm wondering, how would one who plays aggressively utilize his spear infantry against the opponents cavalry?

Thanks in advance.

To counter heavy cavalry use heavy spearmen and pikemen, and light infantry to flank them.

Missile cavalry is more difficult to counter. Spearmen are useless, as they get shot down before the can reach them. They are to fast for heavy cavalry. Missile cavalry against missile cavalry works well, as does normal missile units. Light cavalry is also good, to kill them quickly, but expect heavy losses.

Generally hammer and anvil, specifically can't say. It depends on what army you usually use. If you can give one or two army setups it's easier to offer some suggestion as improve anti-cavalry element.

Granadian Jinettes wipe the floor with HA but i do not know if the French/HRE can field a similar unit.

You can pin their heavy cavalry with another medium cavalry unit of yours and then send in the spears.

When I face an enemy that I know will have several units of missile cavalry I always make sure to bring along light cav if I can and plenty of missile units. With missile cav the goal is to keep them away from shooting your more valuable heavy infantry and knights. I'd gladly sacrifice a unit of light cavalry just to keep them chased around the map and away from the battle.

To me the best counter against heavy cav is heavy cavalry backed up by spearmen. As the enemy tries to flank i just charge my heavy cav into theirs and run over some spearmen to tip the balance in my favor. Once their knights are dead the enemy infantry force which is by that time engaged with mine is wide open to be flanked by whatever heavy cav and knights i have left.

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Originally Posted by JeffBag

You can pin their heavy cavalry with another medium cavalry unit of yours and then send in the spears.

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Agreed. In my experience, against a good player or even the AI, use cav. against cav. then supplement with your usual infantry/spearmen. To create such a situation, you may have to deploy your cavalry in front of you main lines and advance if you are offensive.

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Against HA's, I've never found a satisfactory solution mainly because HA's have all the advantages of mobility and range and depending on the unit, can become light cavalry.

After playing several battles with HA armies in multiplayer and also many campaigns in RTW and MTW2 on the eastern side of the map, the real weakness to HAs is later in the battle. If you have units with shields that can absorb the arrows and you stay together, even if encircled, once the HAs run out of ammo they are usually winded or exhausted and can only be used as weak light cav. That being said, if you are 1 on 1, the rest of the battle could be annoying, but the HAs won't pose a problem. If you are more offensive in nature, I would suggest advancing quickly towards their non-HA forces, since you should have superior numbers there.

Depending on your army composition, you could invest in some foot missle units deployed in loose formation, preferably armored ones like pavise crossbows or Scots Guard. They can help maximize HA losses, though are not a complete counter to HAs.

Cav with AP attack?

Pavise crossbows seems like a good approach against HA to me, will soak up the HA arrows, and deal plenty of damage back in return. Keep spearmen nearby to soak up HA charge, and some heavy cav of your own to take them out once theyre pinned.

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Thank you.

I'm going to play right now and I will try some of your suggestions.

Yeah, i'd suggest lots of pavise crossbowmen, in loose formation. They have larger units than HA's, and generally higher attack and armour.

Pavise x-bows if you want the best, any long-range missile foot unit will do (horseys + people > people :book: ), backed by something to absorb charges... if any.

Heavy cavalry? Well... heavy cavalry to counter-charge, but better in melee (armed with maces)

What about Reiters as germany? Don't those guys have enough of a punch combined with armor to take out HA's?

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Originally Posted by PaulTa

What about Reiters as germany? Don't those guys have enough of a punch combined with armor to take out HA's?

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A bit too slow, unfortunantely.

I don't play multiplayer, but HA are much easier to manage now.

Providing the army with HA has an infantry presence also, target the infantry. You will need some form of missile units to add support. The aim should be to rout the enemy inf before sustaining too many losses to HA. The HA can be targetted by your own missiles

......Orda