Horse archers

[Jeanne d'arc]

Cheap, brilliant units especially when used on bridge battles.In this battle a 800 men Seleucid army never reached the other side alive.I substained 0 casualties apart from some friendly fire deads in my own ranks.After this battle my general got named Arses the horsemen and gained a +3 command when commanding cavalry units.
The Seleucids wanted to cross the bridge badly cause a few turns later they showed up with war elephants,they send there elephants over the bridge followed by the infantry, this was a good move to cross it but still they got defeated cause the elephants routed quite easely.
I am planning to have a horse only Parthian army with persian horsearchers and some of those heavely armoured cavalry units to support in melee combat if thats ever gonna be the case .

[Tamur]

Ick, what a bridge! Paved with your enemies' fallen, someone should write a song about that.

[Thoros of Myr]

HA's are dominant.

[Mr. Juice]

Random thought... what do you do when the arrows run out? Can they melee at all?

[andrewt]

I have only tried one battle with them so far that I've used melee and they actually won. I think it was the Seleucid's General Cav with around 7 men. They were exhausted and my cavalry were exhausted. I charged with around 40 HA and I don't think I took any casualties. They most likely didn't charge back and 40 charging against 7 really stacked the odds in my favor. I've also beaten militia cavalry when I manage to charge them on the flanks. They're not very good however. I lost a few attacking routing militia hoplites from the back. Ouch.

They move really fast so pincer movements with them work much better. I haven't experienced enough to gauge their melee very well.

[Jeanne d'arc]

Random thought... what do you do when the arrows run out? Can they melee at all?

The arrows run out but by the time that happens they already decimated ceveral units, in a melee battle they hardly stand a chance against heavy infantry or cavalry.
When u build 2nd level stables u get persian horse archers and they are much better in melee.

[The_Emperor]

I fought as the Macedonians against the Gauls on that bridge map, a big formation of Phalanx Pikemen greeted the charging barbarians...

The dead were piled high, VERY high!

[Soulflame]

Heh.. do you see the state of those hoplites: "eager" . Well, if I saw all my buddies piled up on a bridge and a rain of arrows come towards me, I'd be anything BUT "eager" to go over it ...
Question: (since I have not yet played with any mobile archery, like cavalry archers or chariot archers) Can those shoot fire arrows as well?

[Sjakihata]

not horse archers, their special ability is to do the cantabarian circle.

[Soulflame]

Right, and a unit can only have one special ability .
Well, I guess it would be a bit unrealistic to have horse archers carry a lighter somewhere in their backpack...

[Doug-Thompson]

The prospect of using Parthians to wipe out armies with Mongol-like tactics was a large part of the reasons for my buying this game. Looking forward to the chance.

[SpencerH]

I'm surprised only 5 units of archers were able to stop that attack (although militia hoplites are not armoured.

[andrewt]

6, although the merc camel archer seems to have less ammo.

I used 4 horse archers last night to completely destroy a Seleucid army. They had 3 militia hoplites, 2 militia cavalry, 1 skirmisher, 1 44-unit general cavalry and I think 1-2 more units I can't remember. I lost quite a few due to carelessness but I still had almost 3 full units at the end. They don't seem to do the Parthian shot, though, when chased by light cavalry.

[Kraxis]

They don't seem to do the Parthian shot, though, when chased by light cavalry.

But they do shoot when moving up against the enemy?

[andrewt]

They actually do shoot both moving towards and moving away from the enemy. They shoot on the move without stopping like they're supposed to be able to do. That's why it seemed odd to me that they weren't shooting the militia cavalry chasing them. I did that against general's bodyguards and they did shoot them while running away.

[Red Harvest]

Militia cav are "light horse" mounts in the unit file. That makes them as fast as the horse archers. So once they hit the limit of the skirmish range, I don't think the horse archers would be able to fire anymore (and they might not even be able to get off an initial shot before the skirmish range was reached.) Generals will ride medium or heavy horse, and they are slower, so you can continue to shoot at them as you withdraw.