CKs and Pav. Arbs...

[rvg]

Mkay, CK/CFK takes care of the Cav/Anti-Cav/General Melee part while Arbs are raking up the kills from afar. Normally, that's all I use in a field army (with an occasional sprinkle of a couple of Archers and Light Cavalry).

I gotta say that so far, this has been the ideal Army composition for me, sort of like the Catholic version of Mongol Horde.

My question is, what kind of troop roster can handily beat the CK/CFK/Pav Arb combo?

Yeah, I can see it falling to a flood of Ghazis (and I mean LOTS of Ghazis), but short of that, can anything beat them? Say, in a slightly hilly, lightly fiorested mediterranean map.

[elbasto]

but you can only have that that army in the late era, right?

[cutepuppy]

but you can only have that that army in the late era, right?

you can build the CK/Pav. arb army in high (from 1205) on. It can certainly be beaten by a jhi army, or by a good combo of heavy spearmen, maa and light cavalry.
No army is unbeatable.

[Evil Eddie]

Personally I ignore all missile units and concentrate all my missile fire on melee/cav units. The reason is when a melee starts, I re-aim my missile units to attack their missile units, and the only ones that give any stress to inflict casualties on is pavise units. These I will attempt to attack via flanking with light cav or an expendable unit like urban milita.

Found the AI tends to fire into melees quite often, inflicting casualties on both side.

As for CK's, high morale spearmen or or better pikemen with high armour upgrades on hold position do quite nicely while you flank with a bonus vs armour unit like gallowglasses.

And cannons! Must have cannons! Great for blasting through rows and rows of knights. Want to kill their general right from the start? Blast him with a cannon.

[rvg]

Personally I ignore all missile units and concentrate all my missile fire on melee/cav units. The reason is when a melee starts, I re-aim my missile units to attack their missile units, and the only ones that give any stress to inflict casualties on is pavise units. These I will attempt to attack via flanking with light cav or an expendable unit like urban milita.

Found the AI tends to fire into melees quite often, inflicting casualties on both side.

As for CK's, high morale spearmen or or better pikemen with high armour upgrades on hold position do quite nicely while you flank with a bonus vs armour unit like gallowglasses.

And cannons! Must have cannons! Great for blasting through rows and rows of knights. Want to kill their general right from the start? Blast him with a cannon.

Well, the whole idea behind CKs being so great is the fact that they can be turned into CFKs at will. CFKs will mercilessly slaughter pikes/spears/maa.

I mean yeah, as a raw power of numbers JHI beats both CKs and CFKs, but GETTING JHI in large numbers is problematic at best, while CKs can be spammed from multiple provinces without a problem.

[Brutal DLX]

Well, I suppose anyone would admit that you can win the campaign game by spamming a few certain units in large quantities, but those don't need to be Chivalric Knights.
While they are strong, even more so as CFK, they are still a 40 man unit and they can get shot up with crossbows or arbalesters all the same; so a sizeable missile contingent, a few cav, and infantry with some Militia Sergeants will do in most cases, in other words, a standard MP army can win, especially in wooded and/or hilly terrain and skill levels being even.

[Ludens]

My question is, what kind of troop roster can handily beat the CK/CFK/Pav Arb combo.

I'd say a combination of Pavise Arbalesters, halbadiers and good quality spear- or pikemen could beat it with some care. The Halbadiers do need some valour or morale bonuses, though.