several questions

[Blodrast]

I should probably have done a separate topic on each of these, but I'd rather not spread them all over the place.
Sorry if it bothers you that there will be more than one topic to this post.

1. Muslim factions: what do they have to compensate vs. x-bows and arbs ? I mean, they have lots of nice archers in Early, that's ok, especially considering Early units are not too heavily armoured. But what about High/Late ? What do you stop all those heavily armoured sergeants and knights with ?
Archers won't cut it. Horse Archers won't cut it.
Sure, you can pepper a unit of kats with HAs, and cut down 25%-35% before they reach your troops, but that's because they kats are like 50% slower than regular knights and heavy cav... And the catholics are bound to get more knights/heavy cav later on than the Byzantines have kats in the beginning...

You need some foot missiles that do long range AP damage like x-bows and arbalests...not only do Muslims not have anynthing like that, but they don't even have regular (i.e., short bow) foot missile troops with pavise or large shields...so you'll always be at a serious disadvantage vs Catholics for that.

2. Moreover, HA tactics are nice and ok when you're blitzing another faction and you're practically fighting a hit-and-run kind of war with them, on their territory.
But that won't work when you're the one being attacked, simply because using that tactic will get you to lose territories. Sure, you're inflicting some losses on him, but your HA aren't _that_ damaging...he can probably well afford to lose 1-2 Feudal Knights per territory gained...meanwhile you're losing production and money provinces...
So, since you can't stand up and slug it out toe to toe with Catholic units, what _do_ you do ?

3. The armour improvements. I remember that someone (I think Maeda Toshiie and probably others before him said that they don't count towards units' fatigue in the desert, that they are only better quality armour, not heavier armour. Does anyone know this for a fact ? I.e., a feudal sergeant (armour 1) with armour +2 will get fatigued as a unit with armour 1 or as a unit with armour 3 ?

4. Fatigue of reinforcements.
Several times I've noticed that, while being in a defensive position, having set myself up nice on a hill, and pouring missiles into the oncoming hordes, when getting reinforcements they were alywas 2 lines of fatigue at best...regardless of how early in the battle I would use them (sometimes it would be pretty late, like archers running out of ammo, sometimes early, like a unit of cav that got almost decimated).
Why ? How does that work ?

Well, thanks for the patience to read so far, anyway

[KillerKadugen]

Answer to 1: I think they do get x-bow and arbs. Check again to make sure you are in high era or you have high enough teched archer buildings.

Answer to 2: Use that mobility HA's can throw slower Catholic armies into disarray. Granted, you might need to make a stand somewhere, but you should have all the tools necessary to fight a good defense. If Turks or Eggy, use your saracens to keep the enemy back. If Almo, make good use of your AUM. Both units are good, hardy units, which can take a lickin' and keep on tickin.

Answer to 3: It seems that whenever I fight in the desert, my guys with armor improvements always tire faster. It also seems to be the general consensus of the forum as well, but I am not one to ask for specific stats.

Answer to 4: Dunno about that one. Always baffled me as well. Only thought would be that they had to travel to get on the field of battle, so they could be fatigued from their journey.

Hope these helped

[Blodrast]

i can't check right now, but yes, it seems that they do get _some_ xbow/arbs units. not all of them though, and not all three muslims have access to all of them, but there's more than i thought was.

[katank]

everyone has access to x-bows and only the Turks lack arbs.

[RedKnight]

Re: fatigue of reinforcements, perhaps they just modelled very simply, the fact that all units (on the map) get tired to two bars after sitting around a long time. IOW they simplified by assuming you wouldn't need reinforcements until after a while, and just made all reinforcements be two bars, period. That's the bad news (if you need a reinforcement early). The good news is that somebody pooped past two bars, can always get back to two bars, if they can rest a while.

This doesn't apply to extreme hot or cold, where armored units will tire much faster. But on a non-extreme map, all reinforcements have been two bars, and all on-map units can rest back to two bars, in my experience. But I very rarely call for more guys early.