Beating Horse Archers

It is just a matter of using what you have.

If you have crappy hobilars you need to use them properly against HAs. Send the hobilars in to drive the HAs away and absorb arrows. They will chase the HAs all over the map and make them waste half their arrows. The hobbies will eventually route but who cares, they are terrible anyway.

If you have "fast moving" units, sick those on em to start a melee. It doesn't matter if they are terrible in melee (desert cav) because you will send some heavy units to kill them once they are bogged down.

Meanwhile your main force can crush the rest of the enemy's army without them pesky HAs.

In MP, it is more of a pain, but you usually have high quality foot archers and heavily armored units to counter them.

And remeber, you have something terrifying to HAs, something real ones never had to fear. You have a red line that they can't cross and that they can be smashed against... use it!

This is a big problem for me as I rarely play big HA factions.

What I do is either bring enough archers/artillery to thoroughly out fire any HA that comes near or I just send my heavy cav to chase them until they get cornered at the red lines

personally, as i play with western fractions with weak/no horse archers, i simply pile everything into the main static enemy lines. so while i am wiping out their main units, the H.A. will either run back to help, which is when their wandering units will be too slow to respond to my counter charges from my victorious mounted units, fresh from plowing into enemies from their behinds, who will be re-ploughing into the uncautious h.A.

if the H.A. choose to duel with my supporting archers, they will lose the archery competition. if they choose to charge, they will be caught behind by another reserve unit.

sure i will lose men, but if i choose to chase them off with my little ponies or my armoured tin-cans i will lose even more men. better for me to catch them with their pants down when they try something stupid.

EDIT: I do believe I was still talking about the battle, not the...private entertainment *cough*.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by IvarrWolfsong

And remeber, you have something terrifying to HAs, something real ones never had to fear. You have a red line that they can't cross and that they can be smashed against... use it!

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Wise words, these, and funny too.

This is in reply to a specific question. It deals with strategy and unit usage. If you don't want to read a hint then roll on by.






You have been warned











This is kind of a reverse post for me as I normally write about how to use HA's.

Some tricks and comments
You seem to be able to beat them but you want to obliterate them. Well, that tis hard with any unit especially fast ones. You should settle for making them so small that they are not a threat to you and then taking the cities associated with that faction. Once they become bandits they are easier to kill

Here is what I do when facing lots of HA. Some of it is counter intuitive and will only work against the computer or a VERY stupid player. It often works against the computer because the computers sees the high value unit and says "Aha! an isolated unit" which is exactly what you want it to do

General rules
1. Unless you are using lots of HA's yourself then let them attack you. You'll never catch them if they can run away so why try? Instead move to a spot where you threaten the faction that controls the HA's and let them attack you then you don't have to be fast just tough. You might call this an offensive defense.

2. Fire begets fire and archers fight other archers. But, foot archers have a longer range and are more accurate than horse mounted ones. Elite archers have an even longer range. An archer unit on a hill top will have even more additional range. So, Elite archers, Longbow men, Trebizond Archers, Guard Archers etc on a hill can, or so it appears have nearly double the range of a horse archer. Horse archers are also easier to hit than a foot archer because they are on horses and horses are a big target.

How to get them
Put your archers on a hill.

About 1/3 way down the hill in clear view and between your archers and the enemy units; place a well armored high value unit with outrageous moral that carries a huge shield like a Varangian Guard but a heavily armored Spear or pike unit that can form a defensive circle will work even better. Cheap units won't stand there long enough and you need a unit that won't break. Their job is be a target. However, because they have good armor and shields they are hard for archers to kill and can soak up lots of arrows. Set them on "HOLD" If you have a general in the group it is even better.

Wait for the HA's to come because you are on a hill you can start killing them way before they start shooting back. The AI will normally try to attack the high value unit by flanking it. So what? Let them come it is what you want. When they flank the unit down the hill they are perpendicular to your archers and easier to hit.

Have three groups of archers shoot at a single group of the HA's the few that survive a single volley from 180 Trebizond archers will route. Most HA units have a morale of 5 and are easy to break

If the HA's actually get behind your bait unit then charge a few infantry down the hill if you want. It is a good way to maybe kill some enemy without using arrows

If the enemy attacks with melee troops then you are still OK because a single Varangian guard unit can easily beat two or three units of most other infantry. And, you can still decimate the approaching units with your archers. As the melee units get close then charge your remaining heavy infantry.

Here is kind of a typical Byzantine Infantry army that I will often use.

1 X General
7 X Militia Spearmen or Byzantine Spearmen (preferred) or Mercenary Spearmen
7 X Militia Archers or Trebizond Archers (preferred)
4 X Heavy Infantry (Byzantine Infantry or Dismounted Lancers)
1 X Varagian Guard or Dismounted Latinkon

That is an army that if used properly most horse archer units are really scared of

I like how this topic has been a part of every game since the original STW (of course it was easy then, when the medium Cav could just run them down). Suppose it is going to be a topic with ETW too? Dragoons (equivalent to Crossbow HA I suppose) maybe even true HA from the Sick-Man of Europe. Too bad it is too early to get Sioux or Cheyenne warriors. I'd love to use them on the plains of central North America (where I'm from) to kick the muffins out of whitey.

Anyway, I just hammer away with my own archers (I'm a big fan of archers which is why I like the English and Byzantines so much). If I don't have Longbows or Trebizonds I try to tech up very quick to get the Pavise crossbows (like when I'm waiting for the Mongol horde) and just let the HA make fools of themselves.

However, that does't anihillate the HA. Only thing I can do about that is ignore the HA, smash the enemy core, and then make an HA sandwich between what is left of my infantry and cav. And that usually fails.

Basically I hate facing HA without fast melee cav. But that is all I can do to help.

Azi

Gray Beard pretty much said it all. The key to decimating horse archers is regular archers, but if you really want to kill a significant number, you need to keep the HA's stationary, and rain them with multiple units of archer fire at once. 3+ units of archers focusing their fire on stationary targets will kill a significant number of HAs. Of course remeber to take the quality of your archer units into account, so your milage may vary.

I'm looking forward to E:TW as well. Cavalry will still have impact, I'm sure.

When I was playing as Norway vs Mongols in Kingdoms Teutonic campaign, I simply set a few units of war clerics or merchant cavalry militia at the horse archers at full pelt at the start of the battle. They usually chased them off the battlefield or at least removed them from the main battle area, where I attacked the Mongol infantry and other troops.

If there were any horse archers left once the main Mongol force was destroyed then I took my leisure going after them.

One thing I found in Kingdoms was that the Mongol armies tended to rout very quickly if hit hard enough all at once. (With all that missile power you don't give them time to shoot you to pieces.) So they actually took relatively few actual casualties as so many ran off.