Whats your best tactic for horse archers?

[Naagi]

Well i searched around some but didnt see anything on this. I've seen the use swords/axes to take out spear, spear to take out cav, cav to take out archers, and archers to take out the field your fighting in since they cant hit the broad side of a barn at ten paces. Anyway I had a couple fights in Khazar, first with all foot units, man this was a bad fight. They ran in circles around me and ate me alive. The others have just been my regular mixes of units. I use the units a lot as well but besides the AI just catching them between a couple units i dont see them really taking them out very often except with Ghulam bodyguards. Was just curious so when the Golden Horde does appear, I'll have the right units to spank them.

Naagi

[LadyAnn]

Never play against the Golden Horde yet, but I don't think current patch has anything that can catch up with horse archers. The horse archers has the same stat as your fastest horse, so they are hard to catch up with.

But horse archer has a big weakness: they are lightly armoured and being a big target, 40 horses will do down fast if they are facing archers.

Chase them a bit with your cav so they son't get too close to your infantry units, but dont try to chase them too far to get your cav out of position and caught by their spears. Get the horse archers into a missile duel with your archers/arbalesters/crossbows and you will find they won't have much to fight with after a short moment.

Annie

[Mithrandir]

My advice:
Just ignore them, they might kill 10 to 20 men in all before the battle is over, it's not worth to waste 60 or 100 men to chase them. If the enemy has several units of them (as the mongols) just be prepared, I had a few massive battles vs mongols today. Prepared as the smart Elf I am ,I had maxed out on Feudal Seargants to counter the MHC and Hobilars to take out their Horse Archers. If you'd like I can upload one or 2 replays of battles I had vs Mongols...
You have 4 logical choices :

1-if there are just 2 HA units, ignore them if the enemy otherwise outnumbers you and chase them down at the end of the battle.
2-Send a fast cavelry after them, they'll rout in no-time because of the morale penalty they get from constantly retreating, if they DO engange, they'll be cut up by almost any other cavelry.Again, do not do this unles you can spare the cavelry unit&they are truly a threat.
3- Send a normal foot unit after them, even though they'll take some losses and won't be much use for the rest of the battle (plus it's harder to get them to safety if they are ambushed) but there's again a good chance of them routing the HA's due to the morale penalty.
4-Create an archer duel, most archers will win in a duel, be sure that the enemy doesn't send the HA's into a melee towards your archers,though the AI will almost NEVER do this...

hope this helped

-Mithrandir-

[rasoforos]

i had a lot of problems with horse archers as well. what i do is to root everything else in the map and then form really long formations and form traps by using 3 of those to attack the archers at the same time. eventually they trap em.

[desdichado]

If most of your troops are armoured (and upgraded) then you can effectively ignore them as the casualties they cause won't cause you too much trouble.

I really only start shooting at them after enemy has closed hth. I don't like wasting arrows on other archers as prefer to weaken main battle line.

If you leave them to last theyll eventually run out of arrows and run away

[Naagi]

Cool ideas, bout what i was doing now but couple I havent tried. Though LadyAnn the archer duel has one catch ive been able to get around. If its my HA i can put them in a loose formation and as we know archers cant shoot to well so the HA tend to win these. Dont think i mentioned i havent patched yet, damned determined to win one pre-patch before i really have to learn to fight cav charges.

[Postino]

play chicken with them.

take an A.I. jintette, he will close till you get a unit moving toward him. then he will fall back , turn your unit around and he will follow. with 2 cav units, you can lead them into a trap, but it takes a lot of paitence.

[MonkeyMan]

My best advice if you don't have fast cav to deal with them or your guys are tired. Is to ignore them while a greater threat exists. If you have only them to face, put each unit into the widest line you can of 1 man deep. Then put them in loose formation to increase their width by 2. If you send two reasonably full strength units after them they will eventually be cornered and ripped to pieces. When dealing with a lot of them, i follow the first step with my whole army in one huge line (if you can assemble them in a forest to protect from fire) then order your units to form the same line but behind the enemy (don't target the units themselves with an attck, because the ai will know what you are doing even if a humen is controlling them on skirmish). Right click and order a run, and hopefully your line will catch a few. If some at any point get three units surrounding them, order them to charge and you should get them (I love to watch them squirm when they get surrounded ).

And now like me you too can pick all feudal knight armies