How to assault cities with Horse Archers?

[Atraphoenix]

Yes, true you can assault cities with them.
Do not call Parthians or other steppe factions weak in sieges. I do not know whether Parthians or other steppe factions did or not in history what I mostly do with my horse archers armies but we can do it.
What you need is
1-a good army of spies
2-if not one pesky infantry unit to carry the ram.
3-and of course a horse archer army

first send spies or with an infantry unit build siege machines.
then thanks to your spies or your pesky infantry managed to build rams in one turn.
you are ready to assault the enemy city.

"here my spy managed to open the gates ":

"Arshak besieges Margiane"



"The enemy army"



"And their old commander"



I got tired of killing Achaios in every Pahlava campaign. but in VH/ M adviced difficulty setting wether you attack or not AS will attack you sooner or waiter so Offence is best defence.

How to deploy your army?
Though I did not do it in this AAR (or guide how you find it) I divided my army into 2 division.
-Divide your army into 4 and separate them into four division. Deploy each division into one part of the map.
Note: The opening deployment screen can enable you to deploy your army into half of the siege map. so you can either divide your army into two later divide these division into two again then send the new 2 divisions into other parts of the siege map.
I was too lazy to do the second section so ı left them as they are because the enemy army had no many heavily armored units

"first division"



"second division"



"enemy army rushes to gates"





"and their general think it will be an easy battle for him"



"but the Pahlavan army does not assault the city Arshak knew his horse archers has no chance against the enemy phalanx and spearmen at the gates instead he put the horse archers into lines close to the gates and starts to bombard them with arrow rain"

"the levy units are destroyed easily under heavy arrow rain"



"AI is dumb everybody know this soon phalanxes loses their cohesion and they are hunted one by one "



"and wiped out"



"enemy sends reinforcement but no way"



"they are easily destroyed"



Now it is time to assault the city send your divisions into city but not to the city center.
put them in lines around the town center.





the enemy soon will try to face your army because even town center under heavy fire now.



as you see the enemy is sandwiched between two divisions.



in that hopeless situation the enemy general charges under heavy fire.



to reduce your casualty minimum you have face him with your own general or any other heavily armored unit . As I like generals duel. I sent my general to face him.



He soon lies dead.



now it is time to send your army to the town center



as they lost many men and their general they are piece of cake for your army.






Now it is time to celebrate the victory.

IMPORTANT NOTES:
-You should not use this tactic against stone walled cities or they boil your men instead yoıu have to send your infantries to capture a gate to storm the city. though it is still very good but it will be a suicide to use this tactic against epic / huge stone walls.
-do not waste any amno, do not order your men "fire at will" instead choose the targets one by one.
-do not dare to enter the city before you are sure that you have destroyed at least 70 - 80% of the enemy.
-if you have no capable unit to face enemy general just try to lure him and pin with one unit then attack from back with another.
-only send your divisions to town center if you think that you have 3/4 times more men than the enemy.

-NEVER USE THIS TACTIC AGAINST HUMAN PLAYER IN ONLINE BATTLES!
There are more creative ways to commit suicide.

HOW TO DEFEND YOURSELF AGAINST THIS TACTIC:
-Build at least stone walls into the cities in the frontier where you face steppe armies.
-For cataphracts just spare some phalanx and Pandadapoi Phalangitai are very good for this mission thanks to their AP axes.

________________________________________________________________________

This guide was inspired from my EB Demotivator :



-Dedicated to newcomers who likes steppe factions but do not know how to expand their faction with their army mostly made of horse archers.

I am sure our experienced friends can add more info on this topic.

I hope you like my guide or AAR/Guide

Atraphoenix

[athanaric]

Hell yeah, this kind of assault is fun (and works with every faction, I might add). Although it is, strictly speaking, an exploit at the expense of the Artificial Idiocy...

I've come to regard this tactic as a kind of (rather disturbing) sport, opting for zero losses...

[Atraphoenix]

as you know you have no chance to lose your army if you play with pahlava AS can send you endless full stacks but you have one army if you lose it you lose everything.

[athanaric]

as you know you have no chance to lose your army if you play with pahlava AS can send you endless full stacks but you have one army if you lose it you lose everything.

Yeah, I know... I messed up the start of my still ongoing (and first) Pahlava campaign by fooling around and attacking the Massagetae instead of the AS... I found it harder than a Saka campaign. After all, the Saka have no one sitting behind their back.
And this AS stack spamming gets very tiresome as the campaign proceeds. The good side of this is though that you become very good with your few HAs, getting ridiculous victories all the time.

[Ezephkiel]

Just been playing as the sauro's and using this tactics interestingly enough. Its good when the enemy force is superior sometimes too and sallies forth after the first turn of siege. Ah the wonderous bottleneck at the gate, the downfall of many. They also send out everything they've got usually and you can follow the routers and take the open gate. Phalangites i've found to be a problem though, them fuckers don't die easily.

[option]

I've used this tactic many times in my ongoing Saka campaign. It's interesting fighting fullstacks in field battles with the Saka, as you can't really destroy the enemy army in one battle because you don't have enough arrows, most of your men suck at close combat, and it's impossible to field a fullstack of your own (both because of the expense and because of how clunky that many HAs become), so you're forced to raid them a few times first to get their numbers down. Annoying how the AI manages to recover 200-300 casualties after every 'victory', though.

[A Very Super Market]

The steppe factions all have some decent infantry (Acceptable, you know) and axemen, so elites aren't a particular problem.

But on the large stone walls..... *shudder.

It's worse against the bloody romans...

[Atraphoenix]

It's worse against the bloody romans...

Thanks god AI is not capable of forming testudo.


Experience increases missile attack as well so after 6 -7 battles nearly 2/3rd of your army doubles their missile attack. That is why I never disband my early army because they are battle hardened veterans
think that most HA has 5 missile attack and after 5 chevron it doubles it.
and I send heavily suffered HAs get back to retrain in a city where there is a blacksmith.
After I saw what a silver chevroned HA did I cannot imagine what can a gold chevroned army do.
As you know they just sit and shoot but any exe gives experience on killing ratio of the unit that HAs are master of it. nearly 1/10 !

[HunGeneral]

Wonderfull quide Atraphoenix!

I never understood why people think horse archers are weak in seiges - if used right they will still decimate everyone on the field like your quide proves.

Here have a baloon: you deserve it.

About attacking Stone walled towns with Nomads - I have limited experience on that, but starving them out until they sally, shoot them to pieces and use an ifantry unit with a siege tower to take the walls and finish of thoose who get back into the town. Have you tried anything similar in the past with succes or do you have any better ideas?
(However this is rather for the Sauromatae since the Saka Rauka and the Pahlava can get good quality infantry later on, while the Sauros have to do with levy troopers)

[Atraphoenix]

Wonderfull quide Atraphoenix!

I never understood why people think horse archers are weak in seiges - if used right they will still decimate everyone on the field like your quide proves.

Here have a baloon: you deserve it.

About attacking Stone walled towns with Nomads - I have limited experience on that, but starving them out until they sally, shoot them to pieces and use an ifantry unit with a siege tower to take the walls and finish of thoose who get back into the town. Have you tried anything similar in the past with succes or do you have any better ideas?
(However this is rather for the Sauromatae since the Saka Rauka and the Pahlava can get good quality infantry later on, while the Sauros have to do with levy troopers)

Thanks mate for balloon

with normal stone walls this tactic works with the addition that you need some infantry to climb the walls and open the gates for you.
-the process would be like this:
-send your HAS to bombard infantries who hold the gates after they had heavy casualty send your infantry to climb and finish the remaining infantry who hold the gate the open the gates.
-though you will hate that micro managing of horse archers in streets use same tactic to encircle them.
-and finally capture town center.

but with large or epic stone walls this tactic is useless unless you have cataphracts.
so even AS has many cities without any wall (3 at the beginning) and lots of small towns with wooden walls that the tactic work best.

for second part I agree for large or epic ones to wait them to sally best way.

[Rahwana]

Reminds me some of my 22 streak defeat...

[Atraphoenix]

must be a record

[Roka]

this is really helpful, my main reason for never playing a steppe faction is the conundrum of how to successfully win a siege battle with a mainly cavalry force

[Atraphoenix]

in fact this is tactic but your main strategy for a steppe faction is early blitzing until you reach your reform units.
but saro has no reforms so the only real nomad steppe faction. saka reforms are easier than pahlava.