Fighting hordes

[Vlad Tzepes]

Generally I just put some peasant in a fort on the enemy side of river crossings. They rarely attack and if they do they abandon it and stay on their side of the river. I just throw some more peasants into the fort and start over. This works so well that I don't even have anyone defending Constantinople except a 1 general.

Wow, didn't know that! Unfortunately, sounds like not-so-clever AI again...

My experience with hordes, both as ERE and WRE, was that if I can occupy a bridge somwhere on their invasion way, they will wear down simply attacking again and again.

At some point, playing as ERE, it got really boring, because the Huns, Vandals, Goths and Sarmatians at the same time were repeatedly attacking during the same computer turn my one and only stack positioned on that bridge. I set archers on flanks to flame arrows, had a couple of comitanenses to hold the centre, limitanei in rest, all hand units on fire at will, and 4 units of cavalry, to destroy routers. Oh, and a priest unit - I'm not sure if it had any effect, but my troops had some music to enjoy during the slaughter, anyway. Minimal losses everytime on my side, massive butchering on theirs...

With WRE it was even easier when using 2 units of repeating ballistae - the casualties those 2 artillery pieces inflicted were huge and somehow unrealistic (like 150-180 kills in one battle each), and that made their experience skyrocket (reached gold after 5-6 battles).

Anyway, strange thing with cavalry ordered to cross the river to chase routers: it seems they desperately need a bath, because 8 times out of 10, even though the bridge is clear, ordering them to just cross makes them go aquatic.

Oh, and I had at least one unit of archers drown when they got exhausted in water...