Reinforcement Blues

[tellapan]

I'm in a rather protracted war with the Danes (who reneged on our alliance so its execute prisoners after every battle and hang the consequences) They've moved a very tasty full stack next to my city of Antwerp which has remnants of a field army as its garisson. To play safe I placed a powerful stack of units next to the city incase of an attack.

Sure enough, next turn the Danes besiege Antwerp which I dont see as a problem because of the garrison plus my stack outside. I ordered my garisson to sally relying on the strength of my adjecent stack to provide overwhelming reinforcement muscle.

Now, here comes the rub. My archers eventually loosed off all their arrows and became useless. In a field battle I would hit the withdraw button and let them go to be replaced by fresh units. In a siege scenario you cannot do so and as such I was stuck with archers with virtually no combat use. Similarly as my Billmen turned out to be less than effective against the AI Norse Axemen, these too became rapidly depleted resulting in units of a handfull of men which again could not be replaced until totally wiped out. It seemed that no matter what suicide mission I'd send them on (to get destroyed so i could introduce fresh troops) one or two kept surviving. Eventually I just said ok, have the city to the Danes and laid siege the next turn with what were supposed to be the reinforcements.

[FactionHeir]

Why did you bother sallying rather than just attacking with your reinforcements stack?

Oh, and to reliably get your units killed, walk them behind the enemy formation and then attack from behind so they need to rout through the entire enemy formation - i.e. noone survives.

[tellapan]

Thats a very good question, the sensible option would have been to attack with my reinforcement stack. Thanks for the tip about marching them behind the enemy lines. Up to now (about 70 moves into the game) my Billmen have been my backbone line infantry but it appears they are no longer a match for other units; what units would you suggest I base my armies around?

[Monsieur Alphonse]

Since you are playing England I would suggest Armored Swordsmen. They are very good all round infantry and very cost effective.

A typical English stack should have 6 - 8 longbows (you are playing England ), some AS, some levy spears and some cavalry.

[Prussian to the Iron]

armoured seargants are my favorite staple unit. i dont know if vanilla has them for england, but retrofit does.

also: do you have kingdoms? kingdoms lets you give a reinforcement army very basic orders.

[Sebastian Seth]

I use the archers whitout arrows to bind the enemy units to battle and then charge their backside with heaviest cavarly I can get. Or just fill the street with them and have general standing behind them. (I'm not a fan of the western archers in general.)

As for breaktrought/shock infantry I use the 2 handed sword mercenteries from scotland and ireland. (Cant write their name Gallogulach or something like that.)

For backbone of the infantry I just use the basic spearmen that I can find or mercenery ones. Somewhere around 4-6 in half circle on the inside of the gate is nice looking brawl. While the enemy is lining to get inside you can go outside with your cavarly and say hello to their archers or general.

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But you are fighting Danes at 70 turn is a problem. Norse Archers are melee fighters as well. Huscarles are really good and they come mounted too. Their church produce morale boosting heavy cavarly. And their navy is the best around. They are pretty bad enemy to have around. Their weak point is that they only have one big town: Aarhus. I usually try to hit that as fast as I can collect two armies. One to defend it after you take it and one to kill the huscarles that want inside after. (Remember to bribe the pope continiously.)