Praise to the camel!

**Sir Price** · 12-13-2004, 17:10

I started my first muslim campaign a few days ago (Egypt, hard, GA). I have of course met the Egyptians before, as the danes when they showed up in Novgorod (they were BIG!), and multiple times as Spain, and I have always had a healthy respect for the Bedouin Camels. They are very annoying against my cavalry-heavy spanish armies, especially because they almost always show up in vast numbers, and now I know why: they are dirt cheap! These smelly things cost nothing, and are scary good at what they do. I was really surprised by that, as I always figured they were the muslim equivalent of feudal cavalry, or something like that, and it turns out they are peasants on camels! I faced a Turkish reemergence, following a little back and forth with a french crusade, and they had tons of Armenian Heavy Cavalry. No problem, just micro the camels a bit, and the AHC, as well as the rest of the turks, were sent running.

So who needs spears, here's to my knew anti-cav favorite: the Bedouin Camels!

**derF** · 12-13-2004, 19:44

Many horse units will suffer severely from a frontal camel attack because the horses are afraid of them (maybe the smell?). As a result, when attacking camels with horses you often need to have additional support to deal with them.

On a negative side for the camels, they are one of the most units vulnerable to missile fire! Rock, paper, scissors anyone?

**Mithrandir** · 12-13-2004, 19:52

Behold, the camelmaster.
I'm still not sure wether I'm proud of that title ;).

I've used Camels since the day I started to play online & people learned to respect them. They are great, I used 3 units in my almo army, which was enough to counter up to 5 or 6 enemy cav head on,and defeat them, and left me space for my own cav...and money for pumped up militia sergs :D.

Beware of horse archers though (and spearmen duh), anything else they can counter, they can even hold vs. the more elite inf. for a while.

**_Aetius_** · 12-13-2004, 19:53

The negatives to camels unfortunately outway the positives, everyone knows how weak they are against any kind of arrow or javelin fire, they are slower than cavalry, have poor morale and really advanced heavy cavalry have no problems with dealing with bedouins. They just cant hold there own, especially when flanked.

Id still rather have feudal knights or chivalric knights on my flanks than bedouins, just to weak.

**Mithrandir** · 12-13-2004, 20:00

hehehe....hehehehehehehehe....
Bwhahahaha.... I'll reinstall MTW,VI and the patches just to prove you wrong Aetius...
It's about high time I started playing again.
V2 camels can easily take on any melee cavalry unit and they cost less.

You bring your cavalry on your flanks and I'll bring my camels...but not on the flanks...
That's where my cav is...

**Sensei Warrior** · 12-13-2004, 20:47

Ahh yes camels as the Egypts I love him, nice to crush any mounted tin can in two seconds flat. Tired of those high powered knights crushing your army to bits? Play the Egyptians, and your army will say, "Where did those Knights go?", and you will respond, "I believe my camel is standing on him."

As anybody else grr those smelly

mounted peasants can be a pain. Luckily I come well prepared when I go to fight any faction that employs camels. I tote along contingents of archers and spears and mostly leave my mounted units home. And typically, the eggies and myself as well will produce them in hordes.

**CherryDanish** · 12-13-2004, 21:52

Going hardcore on camels isn't only gross, it gets really ugly on castle assaults.

How close does a cav unit have to be before it takes the morale hit against camels?

**Sir Price** · 12-13-2004, 22:05

Yes, archers are a pain of course, as always, but the Saharan Cavalry take care of those. And I also try to bring a good amount of mounted missile troops, to bring chaos to spear units before i charge whatever I got handy into their backs. The turks brought a lot of archers, but they never really played a role, as they turned an ran when their heavy cavalry came running past them. And as for the speed of camels, well, the AHC actually rallied once or twice on the way out, but by then they were depleted and disorganised, and really no problem at all, and camels are still fast enough to chase down archers while trying to keep up with the horses.

All in all I must say I really enjoy the new tactics I have to employ as the Egyptians, as so far I have only played as catholics, with spears to soak up charges and arrows, and heavy infantry and cavalry to break the enemy. It works. But the skirmishing with a lot of mounted troops is just a lot of fun to me!