"How to Use Horse Archers" in Rome: Total War

[Doug-Thompson]

Ludens' How to use horse archers for Medieval: Total War is still required reading for anybody interested in this type of unit. However, there are some very significant improvements in R:TW and especially in "Barbarian Invasions."

First, the "Barbarian Invasion" expansion fixes the issues that were caused — unintentionally, apparently — by the 1.2 patch, which messed up HA so that they did not fire while moving in skirmish mode. Those who don't have the expansion kit are strongly advised to use Qwerty's most excellent fix.

1. Skirmish mode works now.

2. Horse archers now fire on the move. Foot archers don't.

The effects of that are enormous. Foot archers are still one of the best counters to horse archers, but they're not nearly as good as they were in MTW, especially if the AI is handling the foot archers and a human is controlling the horse archers.

Obviously, a moving target is much harder to hit than one standing still. Therefore, the effect of firing on the move is even greater when the HA uses Cantabrian circle.

Missile battles, though, are not the HA's best use, not by a long shot.

Rain arrows upon an advancing melee infantry unit. The unit will probably keep moving and its supporting foot archers will keep moving to stay close. HA can shoot an entire phalanx to pieces before the foot archers ever get a chance to stop and fire.

Horse archers can also follow or chase units and keep firing. This shooting in the back is incredibly deadly.

3. On the strategy map, an all cavalry army with a mix of melee and HA cav can wrought havoc. They can attack several armies in one turn and are very difficult to catch. If an opposing army has any slow infantry at all, the cavalry unit can choose when and where it wants to fight.

4. The Barbarian Invasion expansion vastly increased the effectiveness of shields and armor for protecting units (in R:TW and in BI) from archer fire, but only for units that are FACING the archer fire. Units are still very vulnerable from the side or from behind. This is greatly to the advantage of HA, since they can easily and safely get to the side or behind compared to foot archers.

5. The horde HA of Barbarian Invasions now come in the same "horde" formation as peasants. This is actually a very nice feature. The horde formation has no "corners" to get caught by melee units.


[edited p.s] This is a summary of the thread's most important points to date:

1. Put HA into big square formations if they don't come in "horde" formations. This makes the unit easier to move about. HA fire in all directions and don't suffer as much from friendly fire because there is less unit overlap.

2. Beware the map's edge.

3. Try to envelop your enemy. The HA units don't have to be in contact with each other. There's no need for a "continuous front" here. Gaps between "squares" are covered by fire.

4. Move and shoot for the enemy's "weapon" side. The hand that carries the weapon has no shield.

5. Use Cantabrian circle carefully. Circling HA tire out quickly and can suffer if caught in melee. However, the tactic does reduce casualties in a pure missile fight.

[Tamur]

Nice summary of the differences. The new skirmish is really amazing to watch, 'tis true.

One thing I would add is that there are now other units that can be considered Horse Archers -- British Light Chariots being my favourite. They have buckets full of arrows in those chariots, and can keep firing for probably triple the time that standard HAs can.

[Colovion]

I find that the HA skirmish mode is still a little bit hectic with the Cantabrian Circle - as it probably should be. Basically the rule of thumb is to not use the Cantabrian Circle when the infantry/cav gets close enough to charge your HA. This is because the Circle will continue running around and will eventually find themselves running headlong into the front of the enemy and the circle doesn't back up as a unit fast enough because the whole spiral is both moving towards and away from the enemy formation. Once the enemy overtakes the crux where your HAs usually turn around and start going the other way you'll find yourself with a lot of dead horses. I switch off the Cantabrian circle once the enemy closes in - this keeps them at a distance well enough to reduce the causalties.

[Orvis Tertia]

Just wondering: What are the advantages of the Cantabrian Circle. I've used it a few times, but I've always wondered if my HAs would do better damage in regular formation.

[Doug-Thompson]

Thanks, Tamur, and you're right. Some discussion on chariot tactics is needed. Do you use them the same way as HA? Does skirmish work with them? Are they as fast?

I haven't had experience with chariots except in fighting Egyptian ones. Those chariots seem to be rather easily spooked by camels and go out of control. Of course, that's not a problem in Britain and north Europe. They also seem a bit slower than cavalry, but perhaps they're just tired when my melee cav catches them.

=====

Colovion, your post shows yet another disadvantage of the circle. I'm not a cantabrian circle fan, to be honest. Movement of any kind seems to be just as effective in dodging arrows as the circle, but that's just my impression. Parthian HA and (I assume) others can fire backwards, forwards and sideways.


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edited p.s.

I'm not sure there is any, Orvis Tertia.

Multiplayers tend to learn lessons quicker, and the hard way. I've read where some of the swear on, or at, the circle as a very effective anti-missile tactic. I'd still like to see some sort of test on that. I tried to do one in a custom game, but for some reason the HA's wouldn't circle. I need to try it again.

[Doug-Thompson]

I don't think many early infantry types are armored nearly so well in Rome: Total War as they were in Medieval:Total War, especially when taking fire from the sides or back.

Ancient shields work well, but it sure does seem that even a good infantry formation melts when they start taking fire from the side or behind, even faster than they did in M:TW.

Of course, HA can get to the side or behind much easier than foot archers.

[LordKhaine]

When using multiple units of HA I don't use cantabrian circle. It just gets messy and people end up too close to the enemy. Plus you can get a lot of FF happening. On the other hand, if you're using a single unit and they're under missle fire, the cantabrian circle can be very very useful.

Friendly fire is often the largest problem with HA's. I often lost more men to FF than the enemy! Since HA's seem to love firing whenever they can, it's kind of unavoidable to a degree. But always make SURE you disable fire at will before you send any infantry/cavalry into a melee within range. Horse archers will gladly fire at an enemy unit, even if it consists of 2 people running away while in the middle of your own troops. And to make matters worse they'll keep shooting at the area for a few seconds after all the enemy are slain! The other day I had two eastern infantry units pretty much destroyed like this in a matter of seconds. So be sure to take them off fire at will mode at these times!

One thing to remember with HA's is also that (unlike in MTW), you can pretty much leave them alone and they'll keep themselves out of trouble. You don't have to baby walk them all the time like in previous games.

[andrewt]

My problem with the Cantabrian cirlce is that it takes too much space. Considering the friendly fire problems in RTW, the circle makes your HAs more likely to overlap each other and start annihilating each other.

[frogbeastegg]

Multiplayers tend to learn lessons quicker, and the hard way. I've read where some of the swear on, or at, the circle as a very effective anti-missile tactic. I'd still like to see some sort of test on that. I tried to do one in a custom game, but for some reason the HA's wouldn't circle. I need to try it again.

[FF]Louis-Ste-Simurgh and I tried cav archers against normal infantry archers a few days before we started our phalanx tests. Circle does make a huge difference; it tires the horses out faster but makes them very hard to hit indeed. I don't recall the exact numbers, but the difference was both significant and unmistakeable.

Circle is one of the reasons cav archers now beat foot archers, rather than losing to them a la MTW and STW. The infantry can't hit them and the cav can rip them apart at leisure.

It also appears that infantry archers may not get a bonus when shooting at cav; in all our tests with the two types of Roman infantry archer against vanilla and specialised Scythian horse archers the infantry lost. The more advanced infantry archers (archer auxilia?) did have a slightly longer range than the cavalry; it gave them one extra volley before the cav started shooting back. The vanilla Roman archers had the same range as all the assorted cavalry archers, IIRC … certainly the same range as most of them.

So, based on our tests, and my in-game experience which prompted them, cavalry archers are no longer countered by infantry archers. In fact there does not seem to be a natural counter to them. Even light cavalry tend to get shot up quite badly while closing to melee due to the cavalry archer's ability to move and shoot, and the Parthian shot ability.

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

Frogbeastegg got it mainly right. We try with 10 regular archer, 10 auxiliaries, 10 HA, and 10 noble HA.

Even very light armour Horse Archer can defeat Chosen foot Archer, with the circle additional protection (actually... even without it...). Horse Archer won missile duel in ALL configurations.

I think part of the problem is the foot archer targeting. It looked like the foot archers were targeting left of my horse archer. A bit like if they were targeting ahead of the horse, but did not get that the horse is NOT going to move in a straight line.

Range of Chosen Archer; 170, of normal Foot Archer; 120, of all Horse Archer; 120.

Personally, I don't think there is any good solution against horse archer... Beside engaging ennemy infantry line (if there is any to engage...) as fast as possible, or getting an awful lot of armour, as in REALLY a lot. And pray that the HA will target cheap unit.

Light cavalry pursuit is difficult, as Horse Archers faction also often have good cavalry (making pursuit hasardous)... Not to mention getting shot at while pursuing. So pursuing is much like giving a nice good convenient target.

Louis,

[Knight Templar]

Thx

But isn't it stated in this post that foot archers can no longer beat horse archers in RTW?

In my Parthian campaign, where 75% of my armies are HA, I mostly dislike fighting against 5 or more archer units armies (of course, not too much; my HA are stronger in mellee) although this guide improved my HA tactics a lot

The effects of that are enormous. Foot archers are still one of the best counters to horse archers, but they're not nearly as good as they were in MTW, especially if the AI is handling the foot archers and a human is controlling the horse archers.

[Helgi]

In my Parthian campaign, where 75% of my armies are HA, I mostly dislike fighting against 5 or more archer units armies (of course, not too much; my HA are stronger in mellee) although this guide improved my HA tactics a lot

For me, I prefer putting my horse archers, when I can get my hands on them, all on one flank, my right. backed up with either 1-2 hvy inf. or 1-2 Hvy or Lt. Cav. Then I focus my attack on 1 or 2 enemy units to help smash the enemy's left with what else I have one my right.

[Pontifex Rex]

Hmmm,...I think my tactics with a Horse Archer army are somewhat different from most of the posts I've read. I use a "ride-by" strafing attack or defence which looks something like this (15-16 units).


_______{Enemy here}________




_________A A
_________A A
_________A A
_________A A
_________A A
_________A A
_________A A
_________A A


The army will ride from right to left (enemies left to right) at an oblique angle across the enemy's front until the entire formation rides past the enemy flank (skirmish mode off). The attacks will hit the the centre-righ to right hand wing of the enemy army with a torent of arrows. As the enemy army wheeels to face your new position you dash a ways out of range of any missile troops and redress the ranks as best you can. Once the lads have a had a good 30 second rest, they will charge again,...repeating the oblique attack.

The enemy army will eventually become disorganized and you can start spliting your formation into two wings (or perhaps three if needs be) and start picking the enemy apart. Likewise, once the enemy formation is disorganized, you can form the army into two lines as the enemy formations advances piecemeal, slowly falling back but wrecking havoc as you do.

If the enemy has cavalry your first "ride-by" will probably draw them out, so be ready with the skirmish button. Take out the enemy cavalry first and then the infantry. You may lose a dozen, maybe two dozen horses but, some will "heal" their wounds. As units weaken you can reorg and send remnants back for rebuilding or bring up replacements to distribute among the veteran units. Works quite well.

I just defeated a full 20 unit Macedon army plus 12 units reinforcing with 13 Horse Archers, 1 General, 3 Sarmatian Mercs and 3 Phalanx Mercs.

Cheers

[Ralblecyasync]

HELP..
Rtw Dont install they say:an earlier version of rome total war is detected - please uninstall before installing Rome total war - goldedition.
hell? plz help me.