Best Solution for Turk Archer Armies?

[Del Arroyo]

Lots of Light Cav? Or what? I just personally find fighting the turks REALLLY aggravating, not because I lose, but because they run, and run, and run, and rout, then rally, and come back, and run some more.

Defending against them is most aggravating, because they always charge you which means you have to countercharge off your hill, and while their troops suck and there is no real danger of defeat, things can get really tedious. Especially on Expert, when because of the AI's morale boost no unit, no matter how torn up it gets, EVER goes into a terminal rout, which means they keep coming back, and back, and back again.

It's one thing just to chase their routing mass off the edge of the map, but if they have reinforcements, and they almost always do, this is a no-no.

I've learned that the solution for Cav Archers is to just let them duke it out with your arbalesters. But the rest of these infantry-archer types just never seem to die fast enough. Any suggestions??

DA

[Pericles]

If you are defending on a hill, have lots of archers (6-8) behind spearmen, with some heavy cavalry on your flanks.

The AI usually will advance its horse archers close to your line. When they come close shower their units with arrows. I usually group three archer units to attack each horse archer unit. Once the HA unit falls below 20 men, they will soon rout.

Keep this up until the HA units have all been decimated. If you have reinforcements rotate the used archers with fresh ones. And start bringing in more heavy horse.

When AI has been decimated then hit them with all your troops, with your heavy horse taking out what's left of the HAs.

Attack and keep them falling back... never let them rally...

[Del Arroyo]

Do archers really fire over other units' heads successfully? I've never really tried since Shogun taught me that the only really safe place to have your archers was out in front IN A THIN LINE (they would even shoot the backs of eachothers heads off-- !within the same unit!-- if you weren't careful). Plus I mostly use X-bows Arbalesters (more kills, ammo lasts longer)-- can they fire over people's heads?

I find that my current style works really well in an archer duel as it protects my melee units and provides a clear field of fire which can often be very deadly. When the enemy starts trying to charge me, weaknesses in this style emerge, and if the charges get serious my only real solution is to counter charge and get things over with.

I've also noticed that my archer/xbow units seem to suck pretty hard at skirmishing and almost always get caught unless I personally order them back. I don't remember this being as much of a problem in Shogun.

DA

[Pericles]

Yes, archers will fire over the heads of your front line troops.

Place your foot archers in separate lines on a hill, with the front ranks being somewhat lower than each successive back rank, so that the last row of archers will be higher then the row in front of it, and so on...

Archers on a hill get several bonuses and are extremely deadly.

Then place your spearmen in front of your archers.

Place heavy cavalry on your flanks. But DO NOT attack with your HC. Hold them back.

Now, take your archers off skirmish mode and place them in the HOLD position. You want to have total control of your archers. And, you don't want them to move.

You want the enemy to come to you...

Use your archers to decimate attacking enemy units. The AI will usually send in HAs first. Group 3 archer units to attack each HA unit. Your foot archers should be able to decimate each HA unit fairly quickly.

Rotate in fresh archers to replace archers without arrows. Keep this up until the enemy has been decimated.

When the enemy's units have been reduced up to 50% they will be ready to rout.

Then attack with all your troops. Your HC should have a field day killing enemy units.

When you are defending, never, never attack until you have almost destroyed the enemy with your archers.

Remember the lesson of the Battle of Crecy:

http://www.wargamesjournal.com/middle/Crecy.asp

http://www.archeryweb.com/archery/crecy.htm

http://members.tripod.com/~midgley/crecy.html

[antisocialmunky]

Hide in the woods.

[ichi]

Best Solution for Turk Archer Armies?

Yes, lots of cav. The alt is lots of missiles, but a strong cav rush is the best, quickest way to scatter hybrids.

Do archers really fire over other units' heads successfully?

Archers and LBs do a good job of arcing their arrows, Xbows, Arbs, and guns shoot a straighter trajectory and friendly fire is prob. Swinging missiles out to the flanks seems to help reduce this.

ichi

[Budwise]

Actually, I tend to be infantry heavy so what I do is just have one of 16 of my units just chase them, they will scurmish and run and you will get them to rout EVENTUALLY with their moral loss with constantly being chased.

I fought someone before with horse archers and all I mostly had was Billmen. In real life as well as a competent AI - player, I should have lost but because all he had was horse archers, I sent one unit up against one HA until I had EVERY H.A. being chased. Just in idea.

[Budwise]

as a continuation of what I wrote above.

If your are doing the technique that I described, you can actualy get a horse archer to be between two units. Just call off a chase on one horse archer and box in another. They go down easy and you need to feed your army right, what better than Inbred Arabian Horses.

[Budwise]

That wasn't a racial remark but the building Horse Farmer, tell me that their is no inbreding. Thats like being on a farm in Arkansas.

[Budwise]

Okay, I hate Rednecks, Shut up

[Kommodus]

I've learned that the solution for Cav Archers is to just let them duke it out with your arbalesters. But the rest of these infantry-archer types just never seem to die fast enough. Any suggestions??

Foot archers are usually best destroyed with cavalry, of course. The Turks have some good hybrid archers, which can fight in a melee as well as at a distance, so you might want to use heavy cavalry instead of light. You already know that foot archers are the counter to horse archers, so you shouldn't have any more problems with them. If you're on the defensive, you should hold the high ground, so once you've put the enemy cavalry and melee infantry to flight, use your cavalry to descend on their archers and pummel them.

Also, if you're on the high ground, arbalesters should beat anything the Turks have in a missile duel. Pavise arbalesters, even more so.

[dgfred]

Yes, lots of cav. The alt is lots of missiles, but a strong cav rush is the best, quickest way to scatter hybrids.



Archers and LBs do a good job of arcing their arrows, Xbows, Arbs, and guns shoot a straighter trajectory and friendly fire is prob. Swinging missiles out to the flanks seems to help reduce this.

ichi

Also if not able to be on a hill, the flank archers/missiles are devastating to enemy units that are not facing them .

[DensterNY]

Here is one method I came across to deal with enemies who have fast, missle cavalry. First, as mentioned earlier set up a nice wall of spearmen and long thin lines of archers. Second, use light cavalry to draw them close to your spear/archer kill zone... walk to within their firing range then run back and stop short of your spears which will put them in range of your stationary archers.

I used this method against the Turks and each and every time they chased after my Hobilars and got peppered with arrows from five units of 60 archers. At the end I finished off nearly five units of Turk archers and all it cost me was 27 Hobilars.

One thing really funny was that as my Hobilars started getting battered they started to rout when they came under fire from the Turks. This encouraged their horsemen to chase me recklessly and all that would happen is that my Hobilars run back to my spearmen and there they'd catch their nerve.

[yesdachi]

If I know the battle is going to be tedious but the outcome is not in question I autocalc.

Not much help as far as strategy goes but I just saved you 30 minutes.

[Del Arroyo]

Yeah I autocalc a lot of the time but eventually you do have to personally command a few, especially when you want to achieve a specific result, such as the death of their sultan, or a particularly high level of destruction which will keep them undermanned for a few years. Also if you want to preserve a maximum number of your own men for future battles.

DA

[BAD]

If I know the battle is going to be tedious but the outcome is not in question I autocalc.

Not much help as far as strategy goes but I just saved you 30 minutes.

In some cases it may have even been 90 minutes! -_-