Quote Originally Posted by Midnj
Well Parallel, I kind of see what you mean but I mean it's rare for the AI to have a ton of archers/slingers and javelins it's only going to apply when they camp some hill somewhere.

On level ground, any army that is mostly archers/slingers is going to get mauled because they either don't have enough cavalry or infantry to win the battle.

I normally try to get to level altitude first and it's rare that isn't possible. Supposing it's not - your skirmishers donj't actually need to survive long enough to run them out of ammo, they only need to survive long enough to cover about half the time it takes to go from "in range" of their ranged units to engaging them in melee. We're talking 10-20 seconds typically. Even 8 archers concentrating on one skirmisher unit won't wipe it out completely in that time frame.

Once your line infantry overtakes your skirmishers just charge... you are only going to lose a smattering of men before you engage the enemy and their ranged units are no longer a factor.
This is true most of the time, but I do remember one battle on a steep hill - in Sicily I think - where I could quite literally shoot across the whole length of the battlefield, as the hill was so steep...

That was some screwy battlefield actually it was basically a sheer cliff with no flat area at all. Easy win though.