HA vs HA - tactical help required

**zooeyglass** · 03-11-2008, 18:34

Originally Posted by Sarcasm

Cantabric Circle is your friend.

my best friend!

**Sarkiss** · 03-11-2008, 20:36

i always put them in loose formation + cantabian circle and seek higher ground. as said above, combination with foot archers works quite well.
that diagramm looks interesting, but i havent tried this tactic yet. must be difficult to cirle around like that when facing similar mobile HA army.

**Parallel Pain** · 03-11-2008, 22:02

When I was Saka VH/VH I faced Parthian cataphract archers and noble archers. I also faced a lot of sauromatae noble archers

I would never be able to outshoot them (and curse it they had the ground) as they had good armor and +7 attack. As my arrows wouldn't do enough damage, I needed to take them in melee. But as long as they had arrows it wouldn't work.

So I picked out the two noble HA I had (out of an army of 7 other light HA and 2 generals) and put them on loose formation and Cantabrian circle and had them target units of the Parthian second line. That way all Parthian HA would pepper my noble HA. I'd just let them shoot until they run out of ammo. Then I brought up my HA and shot them until I'm out of ammo. Then I swarmed.

I found this to be the most effective way. Foot archers always loose in a shootout like this I found.

Of course the arrow fodder lost a lot of men. Against about 7 HA my 2 noble HA got cut down to 6 and 11 respectfully from 25. I used this tactic whenever I can't outshoot the enemy HA (which 90% of the time against HA except when I fought the Yuezhi, I actually outshot them). The ratio is about 1 noble HA for every 4~5 enemy ranged unit.

**pezhetairoi** · 03-12-2008, 00:07

Which is nice if you were near your resupply base, but far from it, retraining/merging can become quite nasty in a bit.

**Parallel Pain** · 03-12-2008, 04:12

which is fine because you only need to do that when you cross paths with one huge army, which means either you are defending (close to your own settlement) or you are attacking (close to enemy settlement). And after you win you either retrain back at your settlement or take their now-relatively-defenseless settlement and retrain with their own nomadic structures.

**antisocialmunky** · 03-12-2008, 04:36

I usually make peace with the other HA factions and kill the AS enough to field heavily armored cavalry against them.

**Dharkaron** · 03-12-2008, 05:01

I am currently playing a Sarmatian campaign and the bane of my existence is the Saka. The combination of the family members late bodyguards, their cheap heavy lancers and the ubiquitous Noble Horse Archers eat any lightly armored horse archer army alive when defending a settlement. I find that in the open steppe however the lightly armored Sarmation horse archers are more than a match for the standard Saka army I have faced, even to the point of having less than 10% casualties. The trick in the open steppe is to be very spread out, using the circle formation, and let the Saka Heavies chase your lightly armored horse archers around, turning off the circle formation when chased otherwise they get caught, while concentrating the fire of the remaining units onto the Nobles. With roughly even numbers, and slightly favorable terrain, you should come out on top with few casualties. When defending a fixed point without walls however, the standard Saka Army I see is very difficult to stop without your own nobles to turn the tide. The standard Saka army I see is about 50% nobles, a single family member, and a mix of those cheap heavy lancers and other light horse archers. I hope that made sense.