Trying to Use Horse Archers

[Poleaxe]

Been trying to get the hang of using horse archers but am having one major problem - if the force I am attacking has archers, my horseman usually get shot to pieces before they can do any damages. Any ideas?

[ajaxfetish]

Here's a wealth of information on the subject.

How to Use Horse Archers

With regards to your specific question, foot archers are the bane of horse archers. Each foot unit is fifty percent larger, meaning they can put more arrows in the air faster, and they make for smaller targets without the big horse to aim at. Your best option is not to attack foot archers with horse archers, unless you can separate them from the group and charge them (and even then some foot archers have decent melee and vanilla HA are easy to beat).

Take on their foot archers with archers of your own, or with light cavalry. Or you can choose to ignore them and focus your attack on the enemy infantry and cavalry. Once they're gone their archers will be much more vulnerable.

And of course the flipside is, if your enemy comes at you with hordes of horse archers (eg-Turks, Mongols), be sure to have plenty of foot archers in your army so you can out-duel them.

Good luck!

Ajax

[Martok]

Take on their foot archers with archers of your own, or with light cavalry.

I agree with all of Ajax's post except for this part. My advice is to try and avoid "archer duels" as much as possible, as they're a pointless waste of men. Just use fast cavalry to ride down archers, and have your HA's focus on a more opportune target.

[ajaxfetish]

I do generally avoid archer duels, as it doesn't feel much like success to see so many of my archers dying. Light cavalry is certainly the best, though if they keep their army close together it may not be an option. That's usually when I'll try to ignore them until the melee troops are on the run.

Archer duels do become feasible if you have pavises, though, or if you outrange them (sometimes in an offensive bridge battle if I've got high ground on my side, I'll shoot up enemy archers waiting just in range across the river), and they're frequently brought up in discussion here, so I thought it worth including.

My preference is to sneak light cavalry behind the enemy lines, then wait for their archers to fall back when the melee ensues, and charge them from behind, before using the light cav to hit engaged troops in the rear and/or chase routers.

Ajax

[mfberg]

1. Get the archers to follow your horse archers, run up a hill and pepper the enemy until they start shooting, then run again. Height advantage wins in equal range archery duels.
2. Massed horse archers to take out the enemy archers. You need a darn good advantage here, to adjust for the target size disadvantage.
3. Avoidance of the duel. Pepper the enemy from side A, the archers move to side A, then move your second unit of horse archers to side B and pepper the enemy there. Usually the archers will move back towards B, just keep the archers moving, never letting them come close enough to the side that is doing the shooting. This tactic is useful only on attacks, never on the defense.

mfberg

[Scurvy]

horse archers are easily the best unit type in the game, they can be used to shoot, flank, kill light infantry and archers, snipe gens..the list is endless :P

[Poleaxe]

Thanks for all the replies!