"Metal Storm" Hungarian defence

[Roark]

By the way, I've now been getting casualty ratios closer to 40:1 now! Those Crusades and Mongols just keep coming, because my empire is now at a size where I've suddenly become unpopular with absolutely everyone who can put an army together. Allies: 0

Out of curiosity - what level of difficulty do you play on? I find that gunpowder units loose almost all of their effectiveness when playing on expert, or on hard if their valor is low. The AI doesn't rout as easily and will always make it to your army. I personally play at expert, and have found that gunpowder units, even handgunners, rule supreme once the enemy is broken or their general has died. They basically never make it to your lines, but it doesn't keep them from trying and getting shot doing so.

I play on Hard, mainly because I find the morale boost that the enemy gets on Expert is actually a little detrimental to them, as they will invariably fight until the units are depleted to the point of uselessness before they break. On Hard, they will (more sensibly) break and run after a bit of a hammering, but can still rally later on and return to cause trouble later with decent unit strength (which is actually desirable and more challenging for me) rather than tiny unit fragments.

I also suspect that playing closer to a heavy cavalry power will make it more difficult to build up to those wonderarmies you can produce on turn 60

Not sure what you mean here, bro. Could you explain further?

Just out of curiosity,how does that army fare in bridge battles against.say the mongols? I can see the bridge being piled up with many dead mongol heavy calv as they attempt to cross very quickly,but if they did cross and charged your line,you'd have problems quickly,that is if they survived the barrage they'd get..

The army is deadly on bridge defences, except that I would make sure that my arqebusiers had extra armour, and I wouldn't take Organ guns for 2 reasons:

1. Their range is so pathetic that they can easily be shot up quite badly by enemy archers, or even missile cavalry, on the other bank.
2. Everything is so bunched up on a bridge defence that it is quite easy to hit one's own troops with Organ guns, which just plop multiple projectiles into the seething mass of troops (including friendlies!). When I have as few footsloggers as I do in this army, the last thing I want is to rout them myself and expose my many missile troops to an enemy charging down a bridge ramp. As you've noted, the halberdiers (as blockers) are vital and need to be cared for as much as possible.

I would therefore swap out my organ guns for as many serpentines as I could muster and target enemy units at the rear of the pack, or even those waiting to join the fray at a distance.

If there was a second bridge, I would bring more Szekelies and a Royal, and send them around to the enemy's flanks or rear.