Those darn horse archers

[Lacker]

So I attacked a Turkish army 1/2 my size. My units were almost all elites and I though for sure I had the day won. I set up in a basic formation, infantry to the front, spear at the rear, longbows in the middle and cavalry on the wings and started across the dense landscape. The darn horse archers would surround my troops and fire on them, (usually pulling my knights/celts from formation to charge). I'd chase them with my hobilars but I only had 2 units and I think I counted as high as 6 horse archers (excluding reserves which were never needed for them).

The long and the short of it is that with all the arrows flying around, my formation breaking, and my units feeling constantly surrounded they all started to rout. I couldn't keep anyone on the field except my Hobilars so I tried to keep them with a unit or two but they either sat and got shot or chased a unit away that immediately got replaced by another.

It was like attacking mosquitoes with a freaking wiffle bat. I tried again the next year and did an auto calc and I trounced 'em.....so what does the cpu know that I dont? Tips?

[Snowhobbit]

I recommend archers, in a duel they always win...

[Lacker]

Yeah, I had noticed that and gave that a try towards the end. I pulled my archer reserves up but they got surrounded and routed because of that. So I tried positioning them in the trees but I was on the offensive so all the CPU had to do then was wait me out.... Are Hobilars the only method of attack with these fellas?

[Imperial Buffoon]

Longbows should help if you're playing as the English (or can get a hold of them) as they have longer range and more accuracy, so getting two units of longbows (you can use arbalesters, given their range) on one of HA will do the trick.
This said, having some kind of fast cavalry and doing some clever manoeuvering can be better: HA usually have low morale and will rout quickly if pursued properly (ie: have two units do a pincer move on them, ideally from the back, so that they escape towards your archers). You will usually need at least one fast unit for that, the other one can be any cavalry.
If you're playing SP, you can exploit the fact that when firing on a unit, HA (and other skirmishers) tend to forget everything else that's going on around them. Use an armoured unit to pin them down and pince them with a fast unit....
The trick in any case is to attack them one by one and wear them thin, they will then rout fairly easily, but you need to juggle your way with the morale of your own troops by keeping them relatively close to each other and covering their rear.

Or, autocalc ... My best guess is that, since the CPU doesn't include *your* tactical knowledge when doing autocalc, it doesn't include it's own either

B

[Ludens]

The key thing with horse archers is initiative. Horse archers aren't that good at ranged combat and usually don't do much in a melee, but they are fast and can strike where you are vulnerable.

Horse archer weaknesses
1) Because they are not very good in ranged combat (lower accuracy, usually little armour, horse = big target, unwieldy) a ranged duel will dispatch them really quick. That you should ensure that your ranged units are well protected is self evident. But a good commander can use the horse archer's speed to make this difficult. The AI will not get into a ranged duel with horse archers, barring special circumstances.

2) They are very bad at melee. Plain light cavalry can beat them. However, you have the same problem: their speed. It is slightly lower than that of most light cavalry, but enough to help them get away. You need to trap them. However, here is a factor that aids you:

3) Their poor morale. It takes little to rout them of the field: a few casualties and a nice flanking should do the trick. They will usually rally and regroup, but by then they are tired and frightened, so it should take even less to rout them again.

They are a nuisance, and it requires proper equipment and some attention to get rid of them. But with that, they won't do much damage as long as you keep some pressure onto them.

If you lack the equipment, you might want to use the woods. It will hinder your archers too, but it renders their arrows almost ineffective.

[DojoRat]

Since horse archers made up only a part of their army I would concentrate on his infantry first and leave the annoying mopping up for later. You don't have to get the HA's just keep their harrassing to a minimum. I would put spears in front, Inf behind, with archers and cav to the wings. Advance obliquely and try not to give their archers any height advantages. As you advance, if they shoot from the flanks sent your archers after them with cav in support. If they mass in front, break up their formation with a quick cav charge. Again you don't have to catch them only disrupt their fire as you close on their main line. They will regroup and follow your retreating cav so you lead them back to your archers. Ouch

If you can break their main line then you should be able to catch or drive off the HA's. The trick is to march your infantry into the space where your cav is driving them and grind up as many as you can.

It will take awhile but eventually they'll say screw it and retreat. Of course you'll have to keep their reinforcements in mind but the AI usaully goes into attack mode with them and you can have them break against your reformed spears.

[Brutal DLX]

In addition, if you are low on ranged troops in a battle, you could use a cheap unit as arrow cushion. Eventually they will have used up all of their arrows and are forced to attack in melee or retreat. Either way, patience usually pays off, unless you are on a small time limit.
If that's the case, you could try to draw out your forces in a single line to occupy most of the map and then slowly advance until they are cornered. (Needless to say, you have to have dealt with their other troops first and it only works in the game, not in real life battles )

[gaijinalways]

Sometimes spreading out your infantry will help, thus minimizing causalities. Using archers if you can get them close enough usually does the trick with some kind of bait to keep the horse archers busy, you can shoot away until the horse archer numbers drop and they rout or run away. That or a long range unit will help as they can keep hitting them even as the horse archers run away (alabasters and longbowmen).

Last but not least is trickery. You can sometimes trap them in the woods a fast unit like peasants, kerns,etc

[Chaffers]

Personally I find that the best antidote to horse archers is your own horse archers. Using counter missile fire is fine, though generally your misileers will be behind some sort of defensive wall, hence allowing the equally ranged mounted unit to fire with impunity on your front ranks and flanks. Sending your missile troops outside the formation is probably exactly what the HAs are trying to do, bait and destroy.

Horse archers are one of the fastest units in the game and I've found them incredibly useful of late. They do tend to be crap at valour 0 but trust me they go up in valour very quickly indeed as long as you molly coddle them for a battle or two. Once you have raised them to 2 or 3 valour they can happily be sent to take out foot archers and rout opposition horse archers easily. Keep a few arrows back and pick your targets to rout late on in the battle, firing from the flanks into a unit that is on the wobble will often break them. A threatened charge from the flanks, along with the -2 for being under misile fire and any casualty morale modifiers will generally do the trick, though the general course of events is that the HA's use up all of their arrows to no great effect early on in the battle when the morale modifiers make little difference.

They will even take Early Royal Knights out once they have routed, the only unit other than Spanish Jinettes which I've found can do this.

Once the enemy army has routed simply sticking them into either wedge, to get the front rank serious valour, or line abreast, to get the entire unit valour, and sending them after the routing troops gets their valour up very quickly. You need two or three valour just for the morale, but once you have that they become seriously useful.

Just make sure they never get inside the range of opposition foot archers unless they're charging or have armour upgrades...

[Doug-Thompson]

Foot archers in open formation. I'm surprised your longbows didn't tear them up. They have enough range to hit the cav archers even from behind other troops.

Don't forget to protect the foot archers with ground troops, though. Cav archers can switch to melee at any time and charge unsupported archers. They're good enough at melee for that.

[HopAlongBunny]

One thing no one mentioned. HA's are always on skirmish; if you can get a unit behind or to their flank you can herd the HA's to destruction. Often a foot unit can charge from the rear; HA's react by moving away; unit in front squeezes them.

Much more effective with at least one cav

[bighairyman]

the best way to deal with HAs is to use fast light cavalries, with the light cavalry pursuing, the HAs won't fire. so no casualties. also u can also charge with Ur own HAs and keep the enemy HA form the action.

[FoundationII]

Greetings,
When you have enough troops you can try spread your troops over an as wide range as possible, 1 row deep, so you can push them backwards until they're in a corner shere you can engage and slaughter them.

[Seven.the.Hun]

yes...Ludens, gaijinalways, and FoundationII are all correct...
combine all these strategies...
horse archers have low moral...know this...use your own foot archers to only attack the HAs, decreasing their #s, thus their moral, use the rest of the army to attack the other enemies...keep a reserve or 2 to keep an eye on both the main army battle and the archers efforts vs. the HAs, and when u destroy or rout the enemy, there will probably be pesky HAs left over, so then they are to be surrounded...when charged from multiple directions they will panic and when they cannot escape without a melee they will rout and die easily...
just make absolutely sure before all this, that you know you are attacking an army of Horse Archers, or you might be attacked by them and the rest of their army, dictating the battle before is begins is the first check mark on the lists to victory, make sure u can win any battle beforehand...good luck to all

[Aelwyn]

Foot archers always work for me. they only have bad morale in SP. In MP you'll be going up against many cav archers with morale comparable to other Knights.

[katank]

All of the above are quite good strategies. I personally find the following to be effective

1) use foot archers, 60 vs. 40 plus horsies being big targets means that the HA becomes pincushions, just don't get em charged by the HA and you'll be fine. Longbows should really chew em up as they have 6000 vs. 5000 range.

2) use light cav to chase. any of the fastest cav will do well. jinets, steppe cav, alan merc, etc. ALso, your HA's in H2H will do well too. they are all 24/26 run charge, smae as HA. This will trigger the -6 penalty for being chased by equal speed enemy and should rout them off the field fairly quickly and they often don't even get a single shot off and are thus easily neutralized.

hobilars are good but not that fast, only 20/22 like knights. same for MS

3) use the skirmishing AI against the HA. send some light cav around until you get behind them, stay far enough to not spook them. Then, charge towards your own lines and they should skirmish away from the lgiht cav and into your main infantry line where they can get surrounded and cut to bits. mangled horse flesh.