Hastati getting smacked in Macedonia

[pezhetairoi]

All of you are INFERIOR MWAHAHAHA... *ahem* just kidding.

But to tell the truth, I stormed through Greece all the way clear to Porrolissum with just hastati and two units of principes. It can be done. I set my hastati to fire at will, and simply advanced them at the enemy stacks. If the cavalry tried to outflank me I ran a couple of cohorts from the centre to the flanks. The trick is to stop your hastati moving, regardless of whether or not they are facing the lancers head on, to take the charge. Always worked. By the time the pikemen arrived to crush my (empty) centre, my flank battles were over and the phalanx was being hit from every direction EXCEPT the front.

Oh, but one thing. Never ever play the Roman style just because you're Roman--the Romans, after all, had cavalry. Four Equites are enough to destroy the enemy cavalry corps. I've tried this out before. Macedonian LL and all other cavalry forces controlled by the AI never charge en masse, but spread out in a fan as they go, to pursue one-unit-one-target fighting styles. When they do that, I see no reason why I should concentrate my equites in one four-unit fist and punch them in the centre unit where it hurts, break through them and round on the next one, and the next, just as they're all busy beating up my hastati. Concentrate your forces. Don't let the 15 charge bonus scare you. If you play it right and let the LL charge your stationary hastati, THEN countercharge them, bingo, you've got it made--the LL will never be able to use their charge where it hurts. Trust me, LLs charging hastati, even in single line, should never hurt as much as it did you.

Always remember, god never made infantry to be the decisive arm, or else it'd be velites you would use to pursue the enemy off the field, not your general and your equites.

[Marquis of Roland]

MWHAHAHAHA, pezhettairoi I one-upped you

I did the same thing but with 5 hastati, 2 equites, and my general.

Lancers have the great charge bonus but there are plenty of ways to negate that.

The battle in my campaign that broke the Macedonian's back was when they laid siege to Thermon right after I captured it. They had 2 militia hoplites, 1 merc hoplite, 8 lancers, 1 macedonian cav, and the macedonian king.

First off you must make your hastati's rank depth as deep as possible (try a box formation). The AI had all their phalanx on their flank closest to my wall. I exited from a side gate and basically used my equites to "stretch" their cav line by running them away from the wall in a fake flanking maneuver. Then I maneuvered my hastati so that their phalanxes were between me and their cav. I still managed to outflank their phalanx with my general and some hastati while the rest of my infantry held their line.

I routed the militia hoplites and started on the mercs. However, dumb AI wanted to get ALL of their cav into the battle as soon as possible, charged straight into the backs of their merc hoplites! This disrupted their formation so much my hastati was able to close in and negate their spears. Since the lancers now lost their chage bonus because their own hoplites stopped the charge they now got chopped to pieces by my lowly hastati while my cav had free reign to charge the point of engagement as many times as they wanted.

Eventually their king died and the sheer number of routing units running into their remaing cav trying to get into the battle made the rest of their army rout. I chased them down with my equites. End result - I win suffering pretty heavy casualties in 3 out of the 5 hastati and 50% losses in my cav, but their whole army was wiped out except for 3 units of lancers.

As I moved my deplete army further to Larissa, I found that that was most of their existing forces, and I was able to breeze through the rest of my war with Macedon.

[Oaty]

Guard mode halts most cavalry charges dead if they are frontally charged. Even when hit in the flank they will have some standing power allowing time for a producive reaction. Hastati have enough power to take a cavalry charge from the front in guard mode and will allow time in most cases to make a counter move if they get hit in the flank

Also form up in a bit of a reverse crescent (cannae). More than likely the A.I. will concentrate on the flanks in your center allowing you to bring your recessed flanks forward.

Also leave guardmode on for those engaged but try to take it off for those that are charging in for the kill.

Cavalry lose bady when pinned down or tied up. So the big trick with an all cavalry army is to hold there charges and then counter.

[Megas Alexandros]

Guard mode halts most cavalry charges dead if they are frontally charged. Even when hit in the flank they will have some standing power allowing time for a producive reaction. Hastati have enough power to take a cavalry charge from the front in guard mode and will allow time in most cases to make a counter move if they get hit in the flank

Cavalry lose bady when pinned down or tied up. So the big trick with an all cavalry army is to hold there charges and then counter.

Hahaha!

Try, mortal! True charges never come from the front. It is like water falling down from a hunder meters' height. It washes away anything. Anything!

[Krauser]

This sort of thing happened to me when I first started with the Scipii. I went after Numidia after Carthage. A few sieges as my troops were getting through th e bottleneck they were charged and shot at on all sides by cavalry. 12 stacks of Hastati decimated in less than a minute.

[Oaty]

Hahaha!

Try, mortal! True charges never come from the front. It is like water falling down from a hunder meters' height. It washes away anything. Anything!

If your talking about online play yes charges won't likeky come at your front but you can always change the direction a unit is facing. If you take a lot of charges from the A.I. in the flanks, you need to pay more attention or set your line up differently.

[pezhetairoi]

Ah, I've been upstaged by the Marquis of Roland. I am ashamed -_-

Well, in my Brutii game I took my time to get to the Macedonians because I had pressing Senate engagements in Sicily and Africa, so the Macedonians had time to build up, so when I finally got back to them they had two fullstacks that I couldn't just face with 5 hastati 2 equites and 1 general (ofor obvious reasons) so I...must admit that I couldn't pull off what you did. Not with 12 LL 2 Generals 3 Levies and 3 Militia staring me in the face, no.

[Norxis]

The Marquis is right, I also had lots of trouble with the light lancers until I started changing unit formation - then things decidedly changed - just limit the amount of area they can hit and its better (same thing goes for chariots), you just need to have them pinned and they're in big trouble.