The defending strategy of Spanish early

[Tamur]

hi all,

New here, though I got STW the week it came out and have been a devoted TW fan ever since. I have a question, but first some background.

Most armies in Early will sit back in defence on the hill nearest their entrance point. However, I've had a dozen or so battles while conquering Iberia recently where the Spanish will plop their entire army minus ballistas as close to mine as possible, and basically charge straight for me (using their mounted javelins to flank).

Is this a normal defence strategy for the Spanish --- or is this normal for cavalry-heavy defenders generally?

Cheers,

Tamur

[Malachus]

Well, I dunno if this is a strategy is what would normally be used for any faction, regardless of cav dependent or not. Usually if the comp ends up that close to me, they turn and run to a farther away position to make me have to march more. However, the comp is able to recognize all its units' stats in comparison to yours, and many times if it thinks that it can win, it'll charge and attack you, even if it is on defence. I don't know if that translates to the computer having a closer position when the battle starts. Hope that helps.

[Blodrast]

as you have certainly noticed by now, the AI plays nowhere near the way a human would.
But in general the Spanish do play very aggressively with their Jinettes, and they use them quite well, most of the time. Lots of people have had serious problems with them, and got heavy losses only from the pesky Jinettes. Especially in Early, when heavy cav / knights are difficult to tech up to, Jinettes are a really good melee cav; they won't take on spears or feudal sgts, but they can kill pretty much any other infantry. So it makes sense to use them aggressively.
So the answer to your question is I guess yeah, the AI always builds lots of Jinettes with the Spanish, and tends to use them aggressively most of the time as well.

[eadeater]

Aaargh, Spanish Jinettes! Don't remind me of those, I hate them so much. The computer will regularly have a dozen of them in a province its defending and use most of them. Whats more, the AI knows EXACTLY when you have given your command to charge these pesky cavalry and will withdraw straight away, and will stop retreating as soon as you stop charging, and begin peppering you with their rather deadly javelins. This leads to one of two things, either an unneccessary number of casulties, as your flanking cavalry take the javelins and die, or as they charge after the inevitably faster javelins, get drawn away, surrounded and slaughtered. There is a way to avoid this but it requires heavy usage of the pause key (which i object to using out of principle) and micromanagement every 10 seconds.
As for the offensive strategy you described, I have experienced this a number of times, and not only from the Spanish, and have been caught off guard by it a few times.

[Sardo]

Ahh, this reminds me of a battle I once fought as the English against a whole bunch of those Spanish Jinetes.
Suffice it to say that in the end, there was a nice and tidy semi-circle of yellow-clad bodies around my longbowmen, at a nice distance from my melee troops.
The poor bastards never even got close enough.

[afrit]

There is an easy way to deal with Jinetes and other mounted missile units. Build an army of spears and LOTS of archers. Make sure they stay together. The Jinetes will not charge a spear wall. And the archers will outshoot them from a distance. I have slaughtered AI Jinetes by the dozen with well positioned desert archers protected by Nubian spearmen.

The hardest part is getting into range without losing your battle formation on offense.

afrit

[Blodrast]

You're right, of course, Afrit, the best way to kill any missile cav is with foot missile units.
The only problem with that is that it's a bit odd to have an _offensive_ army made of lots of spears and missiles...you usually tend to have that in a _defensive_ army...

[eadeater]

True, it is possible to kill them, but if you don't have any archers or range units handy, they can be incredibly annoying.

[Malachus]

Well if you're playing as the almo's, you can always fight fire with fire. The Almo's can train Berber Camels, which can pepper the jinettes from a further distance, and have an added bonus of making horses afraid, not to mention the bonus on desert terrain camels have. Personally, I've never played as the almo's, but if those jinettes are giving you trouble, u can use foot archers as well as mounted ones to beat them back.

[CherryDanish]

I recently had to face the Jinites when the AI's Spanish faction collapsed due to a lack of male heirs, I was playing as the English. They and the Arogonesse (they had only 2 provinces still, so I too them out while I was at it before the pope could toss me from the church) had built up as much as a stack and a half worth of Jinites in some provinces. I got lucky on one map and had a bridge fight and mauled them with Genonesse archers and longbowmen (both valour updated) sitting accross the river and nailing them from range. As for the other maps, I had 4 tactics. One send in med cav (feudal knights, teutenic sergants, or even faris mercinaries once they depleted their arrows) and vector them in from different angles (30-60 degrees) on a single unit. Sooner, rather than later, they'd run into one unit or another and I'd peel off the second unit to chase more Jinites or rout their vanilla archers. Second, similar tactics, but use a thin, but wide wall of spears and chase the jinites into the spears (the pursuing cav has to be fast enough to not give the jinites much of a chance to stop). Lastly, I used single units of mounted crossbowmen or faris mercenaries to skirmish with the Jinites. If they pursued, I'd mop up their infantry and archers with my infantry (mostly upgraded Hurscarls, billmen, and order foot soldiers from the MANY crusades I launched through rival terrirtory), if they failed to pursue, my mounted missle troops killed them from range. These were the same tactics I learned from the AI when I had aquired many Jinites and the AI handed them their collective butts.

[Tamur]

Thanks all for the good tips and exciting stories. Busy day or I'd have participated more in the discussion! After reading through everyone's comments I thought I'd try a 8 spear, 4 archer, setup with four units of hobilars along for fun. Hobs aren't much use against, well, anything but the backside of a fleeing enemy but they proved a trick against the javelinas here.

The archers did well, but the Jinettes kept pulling back and then charging forward again -- they would have won by just running the time out. So I ended up withdrawing my archers, putting the spears in a ring in a nicely circular patch of trees, and then "herding" the Jinettes straight into my spears with the Hobs.

I almost felt sorry for them, but with the number of times I've been smacked by them that feeling didn't last too long.

Onward to Madrid!

Tamur

[Oaty]

You're right, of course, Afrit, the best way to kill any missile cav is with foot missile units.
The only problem with that is that it's a bit odd to have an _offensive_ army made of lots of spears and missiles...you usually tend to have that in a _defensive_ army...

Not really true. I remember once as the HRE I had swords on my southern border to fight off the horde of Italian spears and to the west tons of spears to fight off hte horde of French cavalry. So in my case its not so much a defensive or offensive army but a good countering army and if someone knows what they will be facing they will train for the best counter unit and use them to there advantage

[Maeda Toshiie]

As the HRE I found a very useful weapon against the Jinetes: Mounted x-bows. just that you have to prevent them from getting into melee and just fire away.

[Lonewarrior]

I never had that happened to me