Low Gaul morale

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Originally Posted by vartan

You can hire many toxotai for the money it takes to hire a few toxotai kretikoi. Take the initiative in the battle; don't let the battle come to you, but rather take the battle to your opposition. In close range, your numerous archers will prove that their blood was worth something.

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But if you're in an area where you can hire tons of toxotai, you might as well just hire tons of sphendonetai. They only have 1 less missile attack than toxotai, their range is significantly longer than toxotai, and their attack is of course armor piercing. Plus, they carry twice as much ammunition as toxotai, and toxotai only have a unit number equal to slingers anyways.

In my personal campaign experiences, sphendonetai are consistently more useful than toxotai, and judging by the stats, it makes a lot of sense. The only situation where massed toxotai might be more effective than massed sphendonetai is if the enemy brought only unarmored troops, and even then I'm not so sure, because the difference in attack is pretty marginal and may be outweighed by the range and ammo differences.

Depends on whether you use slingers historically. I.e. putting them right out in front of the army, or right out on the wings for enfilading fire. (Where they are vulnerable both to enemy missiles and to enemy cavalry charges.)

(The Romans, to be different, had the Accensi right at the rear of the army, where in actuality they wouldn't see any action in a normal battle that was going well for the Roman side - they were a reserve to help the Triarii in case everything went pear-shaped and the rest of the army ran away.)

Archers have one advantage over slingers - you can put them behind your army, and they can safely fire over the heads of a protective line of infantry in front of them.

IMO, in EB, losses from slinger 'friendly fire' if they shoot from behind a friendly unit should be MUCH higher - since that would be downright dangerous if you did it in real life, telling slingers to aim over the heads of friendly men in front of them! So firing with slingers placed behind a friendly unit is an 'exploit', IMO.

Not just that Stu. The toxotai can use flaming arrows to demoralize enemy units. The best option would be to combine and have both slingers as well as archers in one's army. We already know slingers pierce armour and flaming arrows demoralize enemy troops.

EDIT: Scato mentioned one critical thing and that is how archers can be positioned behind your own troops as their trajectory is higher than slinger trajectory.

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Originally Posted by vartan

Not just that Stu. The toxotai can use flaming arrows to demoralize enemy units. The best option would be to combine and have both slingers as well as archers in one's army. We already know slingers pierce armour and flaming arrows demoralize enemy troops.

EDIT: Scato mentioned one critical thing and that is how archers can be positioned behind your own troops as their trajectory is higher than slinger trajectory.

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I usually try and have both slingers and archers, however, I almost never use toxotai, if I'm campaigning in Hellas I'll just recruit merc Kretans, and everywhere else that has toxotai available generally has a better alternative nearby (Skythians, Syrians, Persians, etc. are all near/in areas where toxotai are recruitable). Truth be told I only use flaming arrows very rarely anyways, so I tend to see sphendonetai as all around more useful than toxotai for me personally, but obviously, others may have different tactics.

Scato, that is a good point about friendly fire, I didn't really think about how the game allows that. I'll admit I do generally take advantage of that exploit, usually without really thinking about it.

Toxotai happen to be a truly terrible archer unit, especially when you take their recruitment area into consideration. To the East lies vast expense of Asia, filled with all sorts of nasty characters with terrifyingly powerful weapons. To the North are the massive forests which reduce their effectiveness to nil. The only faction they can stand toe to toe with are the Romans, who don't even have their own archers. Truly a sad, sad existance.

Arrows will still cause plenty of friendly fire if they're too close to the melee. But slingers fire their bullets at a nearly flat trajectory regardless of distance, so there is no alternative.

Throw at me all the slingers you have. You shall have no room to talk once your slingers are lying on the ground because they have been shot down by arrows. They are for winning the missile fight and overall against barely armoured units. (Note: When it comes to units, among other aspects of the game, 99 percent of my brain is thinking from a multiplayer point of view, so you'll have to excuse me.)

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Originally Posted by WinsingtonIII

Truth be told I only use flaming arrows very rarely anyways

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To be historical, my house rule is that I only use flaming arrows when I'm defending. When you're defending a fixed position, and the archers just wait for the enemy to come into range, the fires (braziers, hot coals, or trench filled with burning oil) that they need to light their arrows are right there, just where they want them. But the archers couldn't realistically run around carrying those fires around with them. So if the archers move position, I imagine they move away from their fires and therefore they can't fire flaming arrows anymore.

Simply put, I roleplay that archers can only fire flaming arrows as long as they don't move after the battle starts.

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Originally Posted by Titus Marcellus Scato

To be historical, my house rule is that I only use flaming arrows when I'm defending. When you're defending a fixed position, and the archers just wait for the enemy to come into range, the fires (braziers, hot coals, or trench filled with burning oil) that they need to light their arrows are right there, just where they want them. But the archers couldn't realistically run around carrying those fires around with them. So if the archers move position, I imagine they move away from their fires and therefore they can't fire flaming arrows anymore.

Simply put, I roleplay that archers can only fire flaming arrows as long as they don't move after the battle starts.

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Interesting aspect of roleplaying..... :idea: :thumbsup:
Well, did they don't have matches at that time?

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Originally Posted by Cute Wolf

Interesting aspect of roleplaying..... :idea: :thumbsup:
Well, did they don't have matches at that time?

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Nope, no matches. They had flaming torches, but you can't hold a lighted torch and fire a bow at the same time, so the archers would need a slave to carry the torch. You'd probably need one torchbearer for every 4 archers.

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Originally Posted by Titus Marcellus Scato

Simply put, I roleplay that archers can only fire flaming arrows as long as they don't move after the battle starts.

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There are many things EB's MP veterans would be upset about if they saw it occur in battle, but going around using flaming arrows wouldn't be one of them. It would be just fine!

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Originally Posted by vartan

Throw at me all the slingers you have. You shall have no room to talk once your slingers are lying on the ground because they have been shot down by arrows. They are for winning the missile fight and overall against barely armoured units. (Note: When it comes to units, among other aspects of the game, 99 percent of my brain is thinking from a multiplayer point of view, so you'll have to excuse me.)

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I'm pretty sure sphendonetai can defeat toxotai in a missile duel...

Most archers will certainly defeat most slingers in a missle duel, but I'm saying that sphendonetai specifically are better than toxotai specifically, and I stand by that statement, because toxotai are terrible.

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Originally Posted by vartan

There are many things EB's MP veterans would be upset about if they saw it occur in battle, but going around using flaming arrows wouldn't be one of them. It would be just fine!

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Those are really, people used to win every single battle in campaing and then frustrating when they see that a player outsmart them! I mean... to say that clicking benind a phalanx to make your units run threw is cheating, ok (though i've some issue with that one too) but to say that fire missile is treachin... I mean common, what's the next step? soon we'll hear... Ha no, you cannot use heavy infantry against my Legions, it's cheating. Fire arrows is a ''special ability'' and ought to bu used wherever and whenever the player wants. If it dosen't make sens for some of u, well, use your imagination and imagine there's 1 slave per 5 archer carrying touch and that's it... The hell with cheating dad gummit

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Originally Posted by Duguntz

Those are really, people used to win every single battle in campaing and then frustrating when they see that a player outsmart them! I mean... to say that clicking benind a phalanx to make your units run threw is cheating, ok (though i've some issue with that one too) but to say that fire missile is treachin... I mean common, what's the next step? soon we'll hear... Ha no, you cannot use heavy infantry against my Legions, it's cheating. Fire arrows is a ''special ability'' and ought to bu used wherever and whenever the player wants. If it dosen't make sens for some of u, well, use your imagination and imagine there's 1 slave per 5 archer carrying touch and that's it... The hell with cheating dad gummit

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I'm relativley sure Vartan told us to use flaming arrows is no problem in multiplayer ;-).

Yeah. The barb charging tactics we use involve 1 unit with fire arrows.

If we were to complain about anything it would be that fear penalties don't rely on numbers so 1 set of flaming arrows or 1 unit of Gaesatae scares pretty much all units in a certain radius that is about 1/2 your main line.

I'm not saying it's cheating to use flaming arrows. Just that I like to roleplay these things, some people don't, that's fine. Each to their own.

My understanding of fire arrows is that their use was relatively rare - it was much more common for archers to fire an ordinary arrow than a flaming one. Otherwise accounts of ancient battles involving archers would nearly always include descriptions of flaming arrows streaking across the sky. If it was easy to fire flaming arrows, you'd want to use them most of the time because they are scary, and demoralise poorly-disciplined enemy troops. But relatively few accounts of ancient battles specify that flaming arrows were used, so I assume that they were relatively rarely used because using them was not easy for some reason, and firing ordinary arrows is much easier and faster.

My houserule just enables me to keep my use of fire arrows to a minimum, and not use them all the time to scare the AI troops and give me easy victories.

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Originally Posted by antisocialmunky

Yeah. The barb charging tactics we use involve 1 unit with fire arrows.

If we were to complain about anything it would be that fear penalties don't rely on numbers so 1 set of flaming arrows or 1 unit of Gaesatae scares pretty much all units in a certain radius that is about 1/2 your main line.

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So it does not make sence to use more than one scaring unit in your army?

It does make sens to use more than one, if you fight on a large area. keep them far from missile though! in general i use 2 scary units in ambush... in the heat of battle when moral is depleted on both side, i spring those fear units... in general, the ennemy rout... one at each end of the battle line... plus a xtrong center as i don't know if those in the center are affected by the ''fear radius''.

And for my older post, yeah, I tought Vartan was speaking about those who'd think it's cheating to use flamming arrows... it's my mistake, sorry!

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Originally Posted by Kival

So it does not make sence to use more than one scaring unit in your army?

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Save it for the visitor message page Duguntz. And Kival it doesn't make sense* unless you realize that no unit is unstoppable. If your scary unit routs, what scary units have you left?

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Originally Posted by vartan

(...)make sense*

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Ups. Thanks, I make that mistake far to often... Nonetheless, it is a good idea to have some additional fear unit in your backhand but i did want to know if you get a bonus for more than one unit at the same moment.

On my newest Roman campaign, the Gauls still rout really quickly, but it's nearly impossible to get low casualties. They don't fight for long, but they do some damage for the short time they fight.

Try Guard Mode on until the time to charge and break them. Check my Sweboz guide for the specifics. It cab easily be modified to apply for Romans as well.

An interesting discussion on something I have thought about a lot, the Gauls vs. Sweboz thing. When playing EB I played Eurobarbs exclusively, mainly Arverni/Aedui, Sweboz and Getai but also the Britons as well. Having played all multiple times on regular RTW.exe at Vh campaign/Hard battle difficulty, and completing the campaigns for all factions multiple times I have observed the following about their relative strengths.

With respect to morale just about any army without a good general will route, especially on normal battle difficulty. The computer's tactics are sloppy, move a couple troops and the AI will shift much or all of the army around tiring out the troops, leading to easy stamina loss. The computer makes little use of terrain, so seizing high locations and skirmishing competently with missile troops (iaosatae are ideal IMO west of Cretan merc territory, more cost effective than Medininkas in skirmishing) leads to reliable wins against the typical Eurobarb infantry spam armies. Iaosatae have the advantage of being fast moving, which enables them to run back and forth and outmaneuver tired opponents fairly consistently so, used competently the Celt slingers give one major advantage against Sweboz. Aside from skirmishing the main point of EB is to hit opponent on flank and/or rear, especially when they are tired, to create chainroutes and I find all troops to be effective at this, the main thing is being skilled enough with the user interface to micromanage troops a bit on the flank, that done just about any troop will do, from the standard troop of the line Bataroas/Botroas/Dugunthiz/Clubman on up to high lethality cavalry charges, the stab in the back works almost regardless of who performs it as long as the enemy is somewhat tired, and the general is either absent, or killed. So if the original poster switched and played a Celtic faction against Sweboz, I think he would find them easy to route also. Playing Celts on Vh/H I routinely route and massacre Sweboz infantry hordes with ease by out skirmishing with the superior range slingers, and then routing a flank with leuke epos javelin showers and charges. The only difficulty there ever is in routing Sweboz is if they hide in woods or if they have a strong general, in which case route/destroy their cavalry and tire out the Sweboz warlord from the front and lance him in the back.

Overall having used all Eurobarb cavalry as well as celt chariots I say that for cost effectiveness the Gallic leuke epos is the best cavalry around when used competently. They are relatively cheap, fairly easy to recruit as a levy or a merc, they have Very Good stamina, they have 6 javelins with 55 range as opposed to 4 short range for the Sweboz ridonez, Leuke epos shift directions very quickly which is very important in high micromanaged skirmishing, and they have the high lethality AP melee attack. Due to the glitch that AP lancers/chargers retain AP high lethality in prolonged melee combat, this enables Leuke epos to outperform Ridonez in hand to hand, simply because AP 0.30 lethality >>> 0.15 no AP. Its that simple and believe me I wanted to like Sweboz light cavalry, but it was only with reluctance and much gameplay that I realized how dominant and more cost effective the Leuke epos is when micromanaged skillfully on the flanks.

I see people praising Wargozes and Gaesatae and naked fanatic spearmen due to their fear effect, and I have played with all but believe me when the enemy is starting to tire just about any charge or missile shower on the flank/rear is sufficient to start a route, fear is nice but not necessary, the main thing is cause casualties and hit the flank. On hard battle the AI troops have big morale bonuses, especially when a general is present, and while fear is often effective at starting a chainroute, I always think about the high cost of gaesatae and wargozes/naked fanatic spearmen. Leuke epos at about 490 gold upkeep can routinely route the enemy cavalry with jav/skirmishing and AP charges, and then mop up the flank/rear of the enemy battle line with AP charges and have stamina to spare to ride down the enemy troops. Playing huge army size I have used Gallic light cav to get upwards of 1,000 kills in so many battles that it becomes routine and German light cav, with inferior stamina and weaker charges/fewer javelins and no AP charge simply are inferior to Leuke epos bottom line. I have played both extensively and with high micro skills the Leuke epos tends to rack up crazy chevrons and insane kill totals, Sweboz armies always fall with little effort to slinger skirmishing and light cavalry dominance way before the Sweboz can recruit heavy cav.

So while the Sweboz have the advantage in cheap troops with the 4 chevron Jugunthiz skirmishers and Chatti clubmen spam, the Gauls have a major edge in quality, from high armor Neitos/Arjos and superior light cavalry and the uber Gaesatae. One might also mention the Virodusios naked spearmen which is the cheapest fear/morale boost in the game, great at bolstering a line. So while the Sweboz have excellent cheap levies, the Gauls have the edge in quality. I might also mention the overrated Germanic warlord elite infantry, they are pretty good but side by side with Celtic lesser kings on Hard battle difficulty, I found that the Celt lesser kings outperformed my Sweboz warlords simply because of their large shields/superior armor gave them greater survivability against the ubiquitous javelin volleys. So people who adore German warlords should play Gauls, and try out a battle line of 5 or 6 units of Neitos heavy swordsmen flanked by Helvetian phalanx, the reality is that the Sweboz have great lethality across the board with the Heavenly Pillar of Tyr and 3/4 chevron levies, but due to their low armor they go down in droves to long range missiles (read sling bullets) and their cavalry is overpriced and underpowered and not even a match for leuke epos one on one due to the latter's greater javelin range and missile count, superior stamina, and AP high lethality spears.

So having pretty well mastered both factions, my advice is that if you want to crush the world with the Sweboz, forget about their cruddy low ammo archers and their overpriced no AP low lethality light cavalry, just build a T3 government and a temple of Tyr in a Celto-germanic city, and levy 4 chevron "Celto-Germanic" Leuke epos and slingers from the Celto-germanic cities to complement the Sweboz skirmisher/clubmen/spearmen hordes. With a T3 government its very easy to levy them at 3 or 4 chevrons, and 4 chevron slingers are far more lethal than Germanic archers, and much cheaper than Medjininkas, and Leuke epos is the most cost effective cavalry in north Europe bar none and at 4 chevrons they pretty well dominate any non-HA cavalry Europe has to offer.

Good post, Geticus!

I have to impose house rules on myself to stop winning battles so easily on medium battle difficulty. In a half-stack army of 10 units, I permit myself to have only one unit of slingers and only one unit of skirmisher light cavalry. This stops them dominating the battlefield - they can soften up the enemy, but the main part of the work still has to be done by line infantry, swordsmen and spearmen. My main use for slingers is as town garrisons - they are only allowed out to fight nearly rebels.

About the flaming arrows.

I only use them when defending in sieges.
Flaming arrows in field battles is IMHO just another vanilla absurdity.
Only slightly less silly than flaming pigs.

Certainly not something to use when playing a realism mod.

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Originally Posted by Trax

About the flaming arrows.

I only use them when defending in sieges.
Flaming arrows in field battles is IMHO just another vanilla absurdity.
Only slightly less silly than flaming pigs.

Certainly not something to use when playing a realism mod.

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Precisely. It's just one more of those things one considers when writing up a set of boundaries in a tournament. I don't think it was considered last year, but it could be barred from use if people come to a consensus.

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Originally Posted by Titus Marcellus Scato

Good post, Geticus!

I have to impose house rules on myself to stop winning battles so easily on medium battle difficulty. In a half-stack army of 10 units, I permit myself to have only one unit of slingers and only one unit of skirmisher light cavalry. This stops them dominating the battlefield - they can soften up the enemy, but the main part of the work still has to be done by line infantry, swordsmen and spearmen. My main use for slingers is as town garrisons - they are only allowed out to fight nearly rebels.

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Yeah I hear you, I suppose it depends on how you want to play. I like infantry slugfests but I find cavalry dominance to be very satisfying , and I think that ancient warfare tended to work that way at the higher level-- Assyrians and Egyptians were chariot dominant, Alexander raised Hellenic warfare to the next level with elite cavalry charge power, and Hannibal's supremacy in the field over the Romans was based on strategic mastery all around but above all IMO on cavalry superiority over the declining and increasingly mercantile Roman equestrian class. Numidian light cav played a big part. But beyond I suppose it's just the way my Gallic style developed, I originally wasn't interested in Leuke epos due to their low stats, but used them just to have some cavalry to mop up fleeing enemies. But eventually I ran two or three on one flank and started micromanaging the cavalry wing and found that their skirmish first-charge later worked real well at slowing down the enemy approach, it's a kind of missile trap with sling bullet rain from the front and light cavalry javelins from the flank and back, turn to face the Leuke epos and the slingers eat you alive, continue charging the slingers and my light cav shoot you down in the back, which is where the speed, maneuverability and missile count of the Leuke epos wins out. The other thing is to be able to "devour" isolated opponent troops by simultaneously charging them from 2 or 3 sides at the same time. This is pretty micromanagement intensive but the stakes are huge, because a well timed 2x or 3x cavalry charge can annihilate an enemy cohort in 5 or 6 seconds. Do this a few times on one flank and it leads to an easy win, and I find that AP high lethality chargers with very good stamina are the best at it, and Leuke epos are the kings in Europe. In fact I have done many battles, especially siege defenses, where I lead out an FM + 2 or 3 leuke epos against a Sweboz horde (2 or 3 thousand+ with no FM, lots of low tier levies, the usual Rhineland Sweboz spam) and wipe them all out by getting uphill of them, routing their cavalry (if any), charge/routing the archers whenever possible, and javelin skirmishing the infantry masses so that they are a little dispersed and tired, and devouring one isolated troop after another with 3 way triangular charges led by the FM with Leuke epos hitting flanks/rear. The morale loss from troops routing becomes contagious and the FM keeps trampling through one troop into the next and the Leuke Epos keep dive bombing the flanks, any tired infantry that come up to help out in the routezone get morale loss contagion and route pretty quick from FM contact and leuke epos flank/rear charge. At the end of the battle there are 2 or 3 thousand plus casualties all by cavalry since I don't have the patience to draw out the swordsmen and slingers against mostly low grade spam infantry. All this is just a lesser version of proper steppe tactics and in reality the kings of cavalry warfare IMO are Sarmatian warlords and Roxolani riders, but they are out on the steppes and their economy and infantry suck, so I find that Gauls have a good combination off all- decent heavy cav, good light cav, good economy, high lethality durable heavy infantry and cheap long range missile troops. So in Eurobarb warfare I see the Gauls having a small edge over the Sweboz, and if the Aedui/Arverni win the civil war in Gaul quickly and mobilize everything for a blitz on Rome, I see that war between Roma and Gaul as determining the superpower in west Europe. If the Gauls pillage Rome and wipe out the Romans completely by 257 or so I give them a slight edge to hold off the Casse and Sweboz, build supercities in Gaul and get Time of Soldiers by the mid 240s, and overpower all Europe with Neitos-Arjos-Helvetian phalanx-Gaesatae battlelines thereafter.

Geticus if you can consistently pull that off, that is, the flawless intertwining of skirmisher cavalry and missile infantry on the multiplayer battlefield, I'm certain you would find yourself a line of men waiting to battle you! It sounds exciting.

I have an Aedui game going right now. The starting seems way less annoying than the Arveni starting for some reason.

Anyways, good advice, thanks. Those Leuce Epos and Celtic slingers are amazing, I already knew this from my Sweboz and Roman games.

I still think the gaul spearmen suck. I just use them as garrisons, to hold the line and to boost my numbers now, and they seem to work well enough so far against other gauls. Slingers, swordsmen and cavalry really do most of the work in my battles.

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Originally Posted by vartan

Geticus if you can consistently pull that off, that is, the flawless intertwining of skirmisher cavalry and missile infantry on the multiplayer battlefield, I'm certain you would find yourself a line of men waiting to battle you! It sounds exciting.

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Thanks man, I was consistently at that level as of last December when I deleted the game, I played solo EB at a high level last year during a lot of professional downtime due to the depression here in the US, this was my game of choice most of last year until I in my opinion conclusively mastered the high lethality Eurobarb factions (I did not play Lusotannan). Though I am a Roman military historian I couldn't bring myself to play Rome since the Ped. Ex. and Campanian cavalry always bothered me, and the Polybian principes just seemed too damn good, and phalanx warfare on EB always bored me, I only cut phalanxes down, don't play them, so having pretty well played the Britons, Gauls, Sweboz and Getai at full tilt to factional victories a few times I finally quit playing and deleted the game. But EB is IMO the best tactical strategy game I have ever played, I really wonder if anything surpasses it in any genre, there is just so much historical and cultural content, and aesthetic quality, and too much intelligence packed into the game. My problem is that although I am a hardcore wargamer and play at a high level I am not all that computer literate. So I watched a lot of the tournament matches from Hamachi and enjoyed many of the matches but every time I stopped by the groups were full, and the reality is that a lot of people are playing there merely to set Cretans/sagitarii on autofire and the phalanx/hoplites/cohorts in defense mode and watch their opponents tire themselves out rather than proactively step forward and win. Very few of the many Hellenistic faction players actually use sarissa phalanxes offensively to any good effect. But if I pick the game back up I might check in with you or others and see if any one wants to get hewn down by longswords, routed by gaesatae and trodden under Celtic hooves ;) I might add that my slinger/leuke epos sandwich probably wouldn't work very well against Cretan spam and Sagitarii Auxilia, so against those types of MP players a regular infantry assault + flank surround/slaughter style would likely be necessary. If everyone on EB multiplayer played at a high level, that is all the battles would amount to, a big evolving oblique attack dominated by flank micromanagement. Defensive arrays in line would accomplish very little.
But for army micromanagement the main thing for me was that I had a system for hotkeying eurobarb army groupings, which didn't vary too much between Celtic and Getai and Sweboz armies. So I always know what keys are for my left flank infantry, center infantry, right infantry, infantry reserves (if any), left and right cavalry wings (or sometimes light and heavy cav wings) and missile groups. Typically I'd just group all slingers into one mass of three or four at hotkey 7 but sometimes with Sweboz I'd have multiple archer and slinger groups. Getai I'd have horse archers in addition to Elite Dacian/Skythian archers, but IMO as long as one is very systematic in arraying the army and hotkeying groups, then that speeds up complex multivector movements. Aside from that I use a keyboard with a circular gaming keypad on it, and customized the EB tactical controls on it, which was very useful in rapid micromanagement;)
If I pick up the game again I might come around and look you up but right now I have pretty well whooped the gaming bug. I really overplayed EB last year and I hate the CTDs, I only played on huge unit size and had CTDs every 3-4 hours, often during battles in the late game, so though I consider EB to be the elite classical strategy game, I am pretty well burnt out on it.

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Originally Posted by Unintended BM

I have an Aedui game going right now. The starting seems way less annoying than the Arveni starting for some reason.

Anyways, good advice, thanks. Those Leuce Epos and Celtic slingers are amazing, I already knew this from my Sweboz and Roman games.

I still think the gaul spearmen suck. I just use them as garrisons, to hold the line and to boost my numbers now, and they seem to work well enough so far against other gauls. Slingers, swordsmen and cavalry really do most of the work in my battles.

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Yeah using the base levy spearmen in the field is a great way to thin out your population, little more. Some people tout the virtues of Massilian hoplites, but for me the early line consists solely of Northern and Southern Gallic longswordsmen, preferably from Bibracte where the weaponsmithy is, with slingers skirmishing in front and then retreating through the line when the opponent closes, and the cavalry wing. FM typically is the sole reserve, just skirmish and dominate the flank with Leuke epos and/or swordsmen and get 'er done.