I suck at using Horse Archers. I want to try a Turkish campaign but I know that Turks use a lot of HA's at the beginning and throughout. Can somebody please teach me how to use HA's
I suck at using Horse Archers. I want to try a Turkish campaign but I know that Turks use a lot of HA's at the beginning and throughout. Can somebody please teach me how to use HA's
There was a very good replay or 2; they may still be around, try a "search". To really use them well takes micromanagement and patience; the results can be awesome.
Ja-mata TosaInu
Just a few things quickly:
1) Keep them away from foot archers obviously
2) Use them to hit infantry, not archers
3) Watch out when they are being attacked, sometimes they won't react to multiple attacks. Sometimes they don't even react to one attack correctly
4) If you are going up against x-bows or arbs, you can sneak up your horse archers and get off 3-4 volleys before they get hit by any missles. Make sure you spread them out, and then run them back out of harm's way. Don't do this too much though or they'll get real tired and be useless.
5) Keep your horse archers on the flanks unless they're up front shooting infantry.
6) Work both sides. If you can have 1-2 horse archers on each flank, and use them simultaneously.
look for seljuk sinan's replays. his ability to use pure HAs is absolutely amazing.
raiding with HAs on enemy territories can yield amazing results of essentially no casualties for you and tons of casualties for the enemy.
1. take them off the skirmish AI as that is really stupid and will likely get them killed.
2. watch them carefully as they tend to be itching for meleethis is especially true for mtd. xbows
3. use multiple ones. use one to draw the enemy and then run them past others which are sitting still. the enemy takes a while to switch to chasing the static ones that are closer in which case your baiting and shooting HAs switch roles. after a bunch of flybys, their units would be run ragged and shot to bits.
4. isolate units by drawing them away and then attempt to get one HA between that unit and their army. eventually, you should get them surrounded by your HAs in which case they charge towards a unit only to have them run away and are shot by the other circling HAs and then repeat try another only to have the smae thing happen. see frogbeastegg's unit guide for an example of varangians shot up in this situation.
5. avoid foot archers like a plague. at least don't missile duel them. if forced to fight them, hold down alt to force melee and charge them.
6. avoid enemy light cav and pincer movements. this is a good reason to not use skirmish as you would end up skirmishing into your own units and get sandwiched or even into their main battle lines
this is all i can think of right now
see the threads on counter HAs to find other things you want to avoid.
Play the Hungarians in early. They get HA early and get lots of peasants and spearmen to shoot up in Moldavia, Wallachia and Serbia. Practically the whole early Hungarian campaign can be fought by HA only.
When I first started out, I'd use one unit of horse archers at a time and keep the rest of the army out of harm's way. It was easier to micro-manage and learn the ropes.
I keep HA in open formation. Then seem to be able to move more freely, for obvious reasons.
"In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns."
I micromanage HA and usually I use 2-4 units at the time like this:
HA1 HA3
Target
HA2 HA4
HA3 and 4 engages target and when target gets to close I move them back behind HA1 and 2 that now engages the target. Repeat the process. Don´t use hold formation or group them together in pairs since they won´t turn and regroup that fast. If stressed use "p" and pause while you issue your orders. Good luck
The keyword is "micromanagement". I need to using the pause key to properly maneuver the horse archers to keep them out of harms way. It's best to use them to pepper the enemy units infantry and slower calvary with arrows.
The Mongol horse archers are extraordinarily tough. Fight some battles against them and watch how they are used. Maybe you should figtht some battles against the Turks too, to get some experience.
The classic tactic is to get the enemy to chase the HA units until they are worn exhausted. Then the HAs can turn around and slaughter them. The HAs cannot deal with an enemy that just sits and shoots back at them, like foot archers. But once the foot archers are tired and out of ammo, the HAs can win a melee against them if there are no other units availabe for the melee.
Micro is always the key to playing cavalry archers, whether you're playing "Age of Kings," "MTW" or any other game that have the rascals in them.
There are a couple of problems with skirmish mode. First, an HA unit "skirmishes" with the unit its attacking. If you've targeted a big group of peasants, the HA will only retreat when the peasants advance.
If the peasants stand still, the HA will stand still too -- even as a high-valor bunch of foot knights walk right up and massacre them all.
If you reject the advice of experts and insist on using the skirmish mode, be sure to select the target closest to you and advancing toward you as the target.
"In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns."
I find that if I have more than 4 HA in a battle they are not used to their fullest -- they get in each other's way. I usually keep 2 together on a flank to lure a unit away. As soon as you can get it alone and away from enemy cav, double team it from front and back. This work on ANY enemy unit, but you need the heavier HA units (szeks, SHC) to take on heavier infantry (VG, Byz inf).
If the enemy has lots of strong, fast cav (an enemy with Alan mercs basically mean that your HA are going to be less than optimal), use your HA to soften up the main enemy line prior to the engagement of the enemy.
Also, I guess I will differ with some of the other posters and advise you to take on archers. If your HA has a chance to charge them, do so. Most enemy archers will lose even to melee-weak turcopoles/turcoman horse. Never duel with missiles with the foot archers. But as weak as HA are in melee, foot archers are usually weaker.
In a perfect battle, 4 HA will have destroyed 2 enemy units prior to the main forces clashing. Then, they will be in relatively good shape on the enemy's flank or rear. Smash their archers or charge into their main line from the rear. Either move will rout the bulk of the enemy army.
mbrasher1 is right about anti archers. melee archers when they are unprotected.
BTW, you don't even have to necessarily charge them into the enemy to inflict damage.
just having them on the enemy flanks or the rear would inflict a morale penalty.
I don't even charge them in if my main line is winning. charging them would just cause them to break faster but is unnecessary frequently
be warned about some archers though. longbows, treb archers, brigands, and many turkish hybrids are also very capable melee troops and can maul your HA.
there are also flukes such as byz cav getting pawned by vanilla archers they often get huge valour jump from killing your high tech HA and can become even harder to kill.
*sniff* my szekelys got owned by a bunch o trebizond archers..*sniff* oh yeah, the archers had an 8star leader too. O_O;
Taking on seven years that the holy ghost had left alone
test my arms, kick like crazy, Ive been trying way too long.
only if he could push his way off and fight you
Im sorry, Im sorry, Im not sure
Getting this off my chest, the story ends.
If u want to see how to use horsearchers ( and how to dont use them) u can download many replays from wolf site.
Mooc Moooooooooooooooc
There's loads of good advice in this thread. Scroll down to Revenant69's second post on the page for a link to Sinan's cavalry tutorials (they're MTWv1.1 replays) - there's a VI replay linked to on the first page.
The key when targeting infantry/Katanks with HA is to get one unit in front of them and one behind them. The one behind will be shooting them in the back and get lots of kills as they won't get a shield bonus, plus having units either side means a big morale penalty. If you manage to get an enemy unit isolated, then you can rely on skirmish as it'll alternate trying to chase your two HA units and get shot to pieces by the pair of them.
Foot archers of the vanilla or desert type are best charged and engaged in melee as they'll always win a shooting duel. Trebizond archers pack a nasty sting in H2H though, especially with those high valour Byz generals, so you should avoid them if you can.
If the enemy has light cavalry, then an army composed solely of HA is a bad idea and it's best to take some cavalry of your own to nullify the threat posed by theirs. If they've only got infantry or heavy cavalry though, your HA will have a field day. The main thing to remember, as others have pointed out, is that the AI skirmishing will only skirmish away from the unit you're shooting and ignore all the others, so manual micromanagement is the best way to keep your HA out of harms way and get the most effective use out of them.
Trebizond archers have a good attack... 3 for a vanilla version to be exact.Originally Posted by [b
If build in Trebizond, they have attack of 4; if built in Trebizond with a master-bow building they have an attack of 5 fresh rolling out of the training camp...
Add some armor upgrade, which Byzantines are likely to give them, and the +4 valor from an 8-star general and they are killing machines :))) Your poor szekely had no chance :)))
On another note, I've noticed that HA's auto-skirmish much better if you keep them in a tight formation 5-6 rows deep (not optimal for shooting accuracy) - a formation close to a square. In this manner, they are able to skirmish even around edges and corners of the map...
Kristaps aka Kurlander
A Livonian Rebel
I forgot. Another good use for HA that have run out of arrow is mowing down routers.
Since an enemy unit which is routed suffers a -8 defense penalty, the attack of your lowly turcoman horse or whatever is now greater than the CHARGE of a spanish lancer. Usually their hit in the rear, too, so you can add ANOTHER 7 to your attack.
This shows the power of the lowly HA.
This is an excellent point, but it's easier said than done. How do you maneuver them into position, especially in a battle with multiple units?
"In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns."
brasher makes a good point about routers as they are fastest cav 24 run 26 charge.
I often keep them on the flanks and don't charge them just to inflict morale penalty. When their line collapses, my HA are in perfect position to pursue.
Doug-Thompson, that would have to be done with some baiting of the target unit to separate it from the rest of the enemy line and then to get another HA in between that unit and the rest of the enemy once there is room for the HA to maneuver in there.
this is definitely easier said than done and that's why mere mortals like us cannot micro more than about 5-6 HAs at a time in a reasonable manner without using pause whereas all HA armies, while powerful, are only properly used in the hands of experts like Sinan.
Hi Doug. It is often difficult to maneuver your guys to where they are best deployed.
The best thing to do is to leave your main army idle while you prepare the enemy army with your HA. If attacking, charge ahead with your HAs and draw some of the bad guys out.
If defending, put the army near the rear of the map, and the HAs to the front. Both these approaches will give the HAs the time they need to do their job.
BTW, I was fighting the pope -- the pointy-capped turd had the gall to invade my Venice. I had 6 szekely and an otherwise balanced army of 600 troops (crossbows and armored spears). The pope had an army of 1200 -- modern feudal sarges and MAA -- after a reemergence.
I placed the army near the rear map edge and sent my szekely out to skirmish.
After seeing their archers draw first blood on my szekely, my szekelys on my left flank retreated, drawing with them a mounted sergeant unequipped to fight 3 szekelys waiting on a hill. My right flank drew off and destroyed a unit of FS, and then the unit of archers behind it. The right flank attack was wide open, I chewed up more archers and shot up some FMAA. Their main army veered towards my left flank szekelys, who were placed on a hill and shot up their army as it advanced.
My right flank szekelys ripped up some vanilla archers.
Despite one of the szekelys on the right getting pincered between two units of FS, I wrecked 6 of their units -- two on the left and 4 on the right.
Bear in mind that my main army had not moved an inch through all of this.
Then the papist army started marching quickly away from my position. I charged their rear archers with the szekely and they routed, causing a chain reaction among their entire army. I killed 400 and captured another 400 enemy, at the loss of 45 szekely.
I used to think that SHC were the best horse archers. The speed of the szeks are definitely worth it, and I find that their low defense never comes into play, as they generally only defend when they want to. Speed is paramount with HAs.
That sounds true.
I normally leave my HA in open formation. This allows them to change direction very rapidly.
If I want to dash around an enemy flank, though or shoot a gap in the enemy lines, I'll use the wedge and convert to open when they're ready to fire.
I only use close formation when I'm stuck behind my own infantry and providing support fire, and there are no enemy archers about.
"In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns."
That's exactly what I do, mbrasher1. HA are so micro-intensive, I turned the time limit off and managed them and them only while the rest of the army waited in a good position on a hillside — though I never achieve results like that
"In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns."
There's generally a lot of unused width on the battle map when you're fighting the AI, so if I've got plenty of HA, I'll group them into two pairs on either flank. One pair sits in front of the enemy, out of range and just off to the side to bait them, while the other pair does a wide arc to get behind them without attracting too much attention. Once they're in place, I'll get one of the pair in front to advance towards their flank and try to lure the end unit or two into attacking by peppering them with arrows.Quote[/b] (Doug-Thompson @ Mar. 09 2004,22:46)]This is an excellent point, but it's easier said than done. How do you maneuver them into position, especially in a battle with multiple units?
If you can co-ordinate this approach on both flanks of the enemy (which needs 6-8 units of HA in total to be most effective), then the AI will be uncertain how to split its forces and you'll get a few units randomly breaking away from the main bunch to fight you. Once that happens, your HA are perfectly placed to encircle them and kill them off quickly and efficiently, before returning to repeat the process.
I find it impossible to co-ordinate more than two HA raids like this without using the pause button, but if you're able to skirmish with the enemy from all four sides, you can break up their formation in no time and end up with isolated units scattered across the entire map.
fruitfly's comments are so true.
this is sooo effective against a slow enemy such as the byz.
I love playing the turks and then raiding asia minor with turc horse only armies and shoot them up like this.
dragging byz inf and varangs all the way across map and then charging them with HA from all sides is the most fun of the game.
scattering them across the map and wearing them out just shows the full tactical potential of the HAs.
now if only I can find a way to kill of those annoying treb archers easily with all HA army......
The "pause" button is your friend when using HA's
I am not one of the masters, so I pause and re-evaluate the situation constantly.
A tactic that helps with management is to concentrate on only needing to run one grp of HA's at a time. If you have 3 gprs of 2; commit one grp until until things get a lil too dangerous then run them away; get next grp (on other flank) and commit it...etc. The ones you run off can be brought back quickly and easily...unless they are being chased.
Ja-mata TosaInu
I'm hopeless at using horse archers. In my current Almohad campaign I use one unit of faris in my standard armies, primarily to experiment with them. I keep them out of reach of archers and light cavalry but sadly the heavy cavalry usually ends up killing them. For example, last night I was fighting 4,000 English troops with my 700 Almohads. My main fear were the 2 units of late era royal knights in the first lineup. My faris targetted the unit of royal knights that were sent ahead to scout the woods. After receiving several volleys the knights charged the faris who skirmished away. When I saw them approaching the map edge I envisioned the usual sandwich with the faris as the filling, so I quickly took them off skirmish and doubleclicked in a different direction. The response of the faris commander was "Allright boys, we've received new orders. We are to proceed over there with all haste, but hold your horses. As the unit leader and the bearer of the flag, I should go first so let me through and into position. Ok, ready to mo...." ....the royal knights then smashed into them slaughtering all but one of them. I hope that one wasn't the leader.
Seems to me that you never really had a chance in this battle anyway, but it's an interesting problem you present. The Faris are valuable units, and in this instance should be handled exactly like ordinary HAs since a melee against the Royal Knights was plainly suicidal. If the knights are heavily armored, then ordinary bows will not be very effective against them.
How were you going to defend against the Royal Knights with or without the Faris? The best way to defend against heavy calvary is with a combination of crossbows or arbalesters and spears, pikes, or halbediers. Without these units, elite late age heavy calvary will just crush you. I would have withdrawn my Faris behind the spear wall. If you didn't have a spear wall, you would have lost anyway.
I have a lot of experience with the Almohad. Their units are great in the Early age, okay in the High age, and suck in the late age. The only chance the Almohads have against a late age English army is in a desert battle or with superiority of numbers. In a desert battle, there is a high probability the knights would get exhausted quickly while the Faris could keep shooting at them until they run out of ammunition. Then they become just medium calvary, ready to run down the routers or overrun exposed archers.
One of the advantages of HAs in any battle is that any enemy unit that is not calvary will get exhausted trying to engage them. So they are not at their best against other calvary, especially if they are heavily armored with shields like most late age heavy calvary.
Well, I did win it. Fairly easily as a matter of fact with less than 50% casualties, but the faris certainly weren't the main contributor to that victory. I was defending Northumbria from an attack from Scotland which gave me an extremely defensible battlefield.
My infantry took up defensive positions on a densely wooded hill, which put the knights at a major disadvantage and shielded my men against fire from the hordes of arbalesters and other missile units.
That makes a lot of sense. However, in this case the infantry was very well protected by arbalesters and crossbowmen, which made me hesitant to approach them. Not seeing any of my units other than the faris, the main English force waited while a unit of royal knights scouted the woods for my main force. My faris were on top of one of the tallest hills I have ever seen in MTW so I figured I might as well try to get a few of them with arrows. The faris actually managed to kill 11 out the 20 man unit which is quite good. But as soon as the knights reached the top of the hill the faris were doomed, as described. I would have thought that the faris, which are fast, should be able to stay out of reach of such a heavy unit as late era royal knights, but this is not the case. They invariably catch them in some corner and rout them. I would also think the knights would tire far quicker, but my faris are often down to "very tired" while the knights are still chasing them at full speed. My main frustration described in the previous post was that my unit reacted fatally slow to my evasive command, while skirmish mode would have got them in trouble at the map edge.
Yes, I understand. Congratulations on winning that battle, it sounds amazing.
As far as handling the HAs, we're back to the issue of micromanagement - using the pause button frequently. I never used to use the pause button until I decided to pay close attention to my use of horse archers.
Against arbalesters supported by spears, horse archers are at a great disadvantage. Arbalsesters have armor themselves, and can outrange most HAs. The HAs have one other trick up their sleeves, their mobility. If you have multiple units of them, you must coordinate their attacks by positioning them to shoot at arbalesters from multiple angles, preferably from behind and in front. This assumes, however that there is room to maneuver on the battlefield. The tactic will not work against a disciplined enemy who refuses to be drawn into chasing the HAs.
Whenever I have defeated huge Mongol armies, I have always been in a defensive position on a hill with arbalesters, crossbows, and good archers protected by spears. The key is to not get drawn into chasing the Mongol calvary, however much they try to tempt you into it.
Whenever I use horse archers, I tend to run into the same problem as Cazbol did. I think it could be ameliorated if I put my HA in deeper formations. That way the unit can turn easier. Of course, the fact that I play with huge unit size does not help.
But what are your experiences with HA formations depth?
Looking for a good read? Visit the Library!
deeper formations of roughly squares help greatly as ludens suggested.
I use wedge for maneuvering though as wedged cav seem to turn on a dime and blast through most small gaps. Also, though you get a penalty for inaccuracy, you get a lot of arrows in the air at a time so if the knights come close, the final arrow can at least deal some good damage.
pause plus using a wedge formaiton should have been enough to get you of that hole unscathed.
I would like to see more stamina on HAs too. it's ridiculous that my mamluk HAs tire sooo much faster than saharan cav. grrr. I would like HAs that have double stamina or something and also shoot on the move but that might make em OP.
I use deep formations but also keep them loose. In close formation, the riders in the same formation seem to get in each other's way when you have a sudden change in direction. Things only get worse if you have more than one unit of HA in close formation. They can't get through each other.
The wedge is handy, but I'm not sure it can turn as fast as HA in loose formation. Also, one wedge can't run through the other.
============
When you want to break contact with the enemy, turn on "hold position" and then double-click on the spot you want to run to. The HA seem to break more cleanly. Works for me most of the time anyway.
========
The first player who figures out how faris are supposed to work should post something and let the rest of us in on the secret.
========
"In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns."
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks