Golden Horde!

[Vantek]

Not necessarily

Hang on... then what else could we be holding the line for if it's not necessarily arbalesters?

The Arbalests will work through their quivers regardless

If the line is broken and Arbalesters get charged into, they won't...

[drone]

Hang on... then what else could we be holding the line for if it's not necessarily arbalesters?

Flankers.

[Vantek]

And who are they?

[caravel]

A lot of questions...

Staying power is used to let the Arbalesters empty their quivers, right? I guess this indeed comes down to playstyle then... First of all I hate long drawn-out battles and avoid them in the first place, and secondly, perhaps as a result of that I often find myself incapable of using Arbalesters on less than mountainous terrain.

I'm not sure what you mean by "staying power". Staying power could be defined in many ways. Any unit with decent stats has decent staying power, but units with good morale would also have better staying power than those with lower morale. Several other factors affect this however...

Taking Chivalric Sergeants/Saracen Infantry for example. They have 0 morale but make up for this in their defensive capability and armour (also it's assumed they they would be lead by a decent general). Feudal Sergeants have 2 points morale, 1 point more attack but 2 points less armour and 4 points less defence. This means that despite having better morale and attack, they break sooner once they come under fire from the Mongol Horse Archers and start taking heavy losses. So in a nutshell, despite the lower morale, CS/SI are stronger due to other factors.

Well... Once again, which unit do you have in mind that doesn't?

Any unit that has a decent morale and balanced stats. A unit that doesn't tire or die too easily.

Hang on... then what else could we be holding the line for if it's not necessarily arbalesters?

Holding the line is part of both defensive and offensive strategies, but mostly defensive. Spears protect your missile troops and those troops you've brought along for a specific pupose such as any flanking troops, sword infantry, cavalry or artillery units from enemy cavalry. As the mongol forces tend to be made up of about 85% cavalry, it is obvious as to why spears are important. Spears also protect each others' flanks and if used correctly form a solid wall (or a chessboard layout if you prefer) that the enemy must face. This removes the morale penalty for unprotected flanks. The flanking units, sword infantry and polearms work around this and can be brought in at the right time, to different parts of the battleline to break the enemy.

Also Saracen/Chivalric Sergeants can kill Heavy Cavalry, but they do it slowly. If you have a battle like line this:

--CK-CK-CK-----------------RK*----
CFK---ARB---ARB---ARB---HALB-HALB
CS----CS----CS----CS----CS----CS
________________^MHC
^
NAP----MHC---MHC----MHC----MHA
MHA--MHA--MHA--MHA--MHA--MHA
MHC-----MW---MW--MHC-----MHC*

You would let the CS deal with that one MHC that has charged the centre of your lines. If you were to bring the Halbs in on their flanks they would be sitting ducks. Once the bulk of the MHC meets your battle lines, you can then deploy the flanking units without fear of them being flanked themselves.

If the line is broken and Arbalesters get charged into, they won't...

The whole idea is that the lines don't get broken and that the MHC do not reach the Arbalests. If you deploy swords/axes/polarms head on against cavalry they will duel it out and take heavy losses. Spears in held formation, can absorb charge after charge and don't tire as easily (because they stand still). Also as swords/axes/polarms need to fight freely in "engage at will" mode, they will bunch up and expose your missile troops to enemy cavalry and are themselves vulnerable to enemy cavalry charges. Your missiles will then have to go it alone without the protection of a line of e.g. CS or Saracens keeping them safe.

And who are they?

Flankers are any units with good attack, very good charge, decent morale (though not always) and usually AP though not always. Flankers tend to have poor defence and once they start duelling they will start to lose. Flankers can be cavalry, infantry or hybrid archers. The trick with flankers is to send them in at the right time (i.e. when the enemy are already starting to break or the unit has been worn down by your archers/arbalesters).

[drone]

Well, that depends on your faction. As the Danes, I usually save up on Huscarles just for the Horde, Vikings are OK, but you will lose a lot of them. The English should be using Billmen, full stop. The Germans can build up Swabians in Early, they work well. Other Catholic factions can use CFK, slow and expensive but very hard-hitting, CMAA, or (gulp) MS. Gallowglasses and Swiss Halbies are situational, both will perform well but require some strategic forethought.

Vanilla Halberdiers will work, but not "on the flanks". Sometimes I will put them in the middle, just back off the front line in a gap between spear units, and send them through after the enemy cav hits the spears. This way they are not taking charges, are surrounded by friendly units, and are near the general. But they are too expensive and vulnerable to be used as the front liners, and too slow and vulnerable to be used as true flankers.

[HopAlongBunny]

A cpl additions to what has already been said.

I used to believe that FS were it. +2morale over CS=no choice...right?
Ok. They can tolerate more casualties before becoming useless, but they will almost always accumulate casualties faster than CS. By the time you are even thinking about the horde, all units are being produced from a place with a reliquary anyhow; CS should stand firm.

Flankers cause casualties; striking into the flank or rear. They also attract attention.
The AI likes to play overlap: you charge a flank=>free enemy units charges your flank; flankers with higher morale will stand for this...at least until the cavalry arrives. That said...I usually use MS as flankers when playing as a christian faction :p

Halbs work nicely (for me) as filler. Just behind the spears to plug up the line if needed.

Final note

If you go after the Horde instead of waiting for them to dissipate their numbers; often unavoidable as Turks or BYZ; you will probably get at least one battle that will last "forever!" I usually patiently fight these out wave after endless wave; I have been known to set the spears on "hold", arbs to "fire at will" and go eat, or read, or anything to fill the time. Sometimes it works :)

[Vantek]

This thing is getting very confusing so I'll try to make a summary of what is going on. I have been asking what I assumed to be very sharp questions, but instead they have only misled people to write long explanations... Sorry :P

I think it all started when I suggested that Halberdiers are pretty much the perfect backbone unit against (Golden Horde) cavalry-heavy armies and make spearmen redundant. This incited the following responses.

A) Halberdiers have moral issues. I then proceeded to inquiry as to which unit people have in mind that doesn't. What I meant here is simply that the *only* other *standard* option would be Chivalric Sergeants/Saracen Infantry/Armoured Spearmen, who have the exact same morale. Suggesting CFK, JHI, the Swiss or other of this kind wouldn't make sense as they are infinitely harder to build and cannot typically be massed for a backbone. Nevertheless, in the end some truth was revealed in that Halberdiers get exhausted more quickly and have fewer numbers than Chivalric Sergeants (or equivalents). This is a valid point. I have personally never had moral issues with Halberdiers, but if you say there are situations where Chivalric Sergeants are superior because they do not get exhausted as quickly, and have higher numbers, I have no problem accepting that.

B) Spearmen have better staying power to hold the line. My response was, why waste time on holding the line when you can just crush the enemy directly, suffering more losses but also causing more casualties. In the end you need to kill the enemy and holding the line alone does not achieve that. The only thing that I could imagine that would fit the need for staying power was Arbalesters. This led to another good point being made - playstyle. I will admit I am not very experienced with Arbalesters, and in that case it might be best to rely on crushing the cavalry directly with Halberdiers, whereas someone more proficient with missiles might have better success holding the line with longer-lasting Chivalric Sergeants and doing the killing with Arbalesters instead. However, I remain sceptic as to wether holding the line could here be very synergistic with a flanking maneuver. After all a flanking maneuver ends up being still essentially a melee battle. Halberdiers have surely enough staying power to wait for the maneuver, and the purpose of the maneuver is to kill enemy in melee anyway, so why not start with the killing earlier by using Halberdiers in the first place.

C) There have been a lot of suggestions to use very complicated or specific tactics, for which Halberdiers are not suitable. I would like everyone to understand that this was never what I wanted to talk about. What I had in mind was the very crude basic effective tactics that could always be resorted to in most situations and serve as a foundation to any advanced tactics. Using a 8 Halberdiers/CS 8 Arbalesters hexagon is a crude tactic which I had in mind. Hiding someone in the woods, flanking with a faction-specific monster unit, massing CFK, these are not the crude basic idea that I had in mind.

I'm not sure what you mean by "staying power".

There are two measures to a unit's performance. One - how fast it kills. Two - how long it lasts. At least against cavalry, Halberdiers emphasise one at the cost of two. Chivalric Sergeants, on the other hand, emphasise two at the cost of one. The discussion was about when to prefer killing power and when to prefer staying power. I say holding the line is only useful if there is something behind the line that cannot come in contact with enemy soldiers and needs to stay that way for a long time, namely Arbalesters. I say if you are not heavy on Arbalesters, then holding the line becomes meaningless, as you ultimately need to kill the enemy in melee, so better start with it sooner rather than later.

Well... Once again, which unit do you have in mind that doesn't?

Any unit that has a decent morale and balanced stats. A unit that doesn't tire or die too easily.

My point here was that only comparable alternative to Halberdiers is Chivalric Sergeants/Saracen Infantry/Armoured Spearmen. So instead of saying "Halberdiers have flaw x", people should be saying "Chivalric Sergeants/Saracen Infantry/Armoured Spearmen are better because y".

So to quickly summarise what has been going on in the past few pages in this thread:
1) I claimed that when facing a cavalry-heavy army, Halberdiers are the way to go and Chivalric Sergeants/Saracen Infantry/Armoured Spearmen are redundant compared to Halberdiers
2) I was proven wrong as CS/SI/AS were shown to have more staying power vs cavalry, due to slower exhaustion, better defense vs. cavalry, and higher numbers
3) I still insist that this staying power can only be used meaningfully to protect Arbalesters, and if you are not heavy on Arbalesters, then Halberdiers are better.

[HopAlongBunny]

So to quickly summarise what has been going on in the past few pages in this thread:
1) I claimed that when facing a cavalry-heavy army, Halberdiers are the way to go and Chivalric Sergeants/Saracen Infantry/Armoured Spearmen are redundant compared to Halberdiers
2) I was proven wrong as CS/SI/AS were shown to have more staying power vs cavalry, due to slower exhaustion, better defense vs. cavalry, and higher numbers
3) I still insist that this staying power can only be used meaningfully to protect Arbalesters, and if you are not heavy on Arbalesters, then Halberdiers are better.

Okies.

Provided the Horde engages you (defending) and does not sit back and pepper you with arrows, a Halb set up might work; I have never tried that since it doesn't fit my style. Backed up with cav, it might work as long as you have a means to make the MHA rout/retreat. You could use cav to herd the Skirmishing MHA and infantry into the Halbs.

Much the same on attack; but difficult to do w/o exhausting your forces.

So they kill faster...do they kill fast enough to cause a rout before they break? Will they exit the battlefield fast enough to have fresh ones for the next wave?

ps: wb Glenn!

[bondovic]

3) I still insist that this staying power can only be used meaningfully to protect Arbalesters, and if you are not heavy on Arbalesters, then Halberdiers are better.

Even so, I think one has to define "better". I do believe you may be right in that an open defensive battle, where the horde comes to your campsite, may favor a strictly halb approach. However, this, I believe, is only in terms of speed, not in kill/death -ratio efficiency. An approach with only melee units should still involve spears, IMO, and the standard tactics of pinning/flanking in order to maximize the kill/death ratio in ones favor.

It depends, thus, on wether you look for sheer killing speed on the one hand, or cost effectiveness on the other, what 'better' means. Even so, I'd say a strictly halb affair is very dangerous, due to their morale. They will lose numbers when recieving charges, spears won't. A unit with low numbers that is battling it out for some time (losing stamina) will begin wavering.

I realize that halbs with armor upgrades and morale boosts will do the job, and probably stay. Still, that doesn't make it the cost effective approach.

[bondovic]

And, BTW. Even if you have control of your own setup of troops, I've never seen a meaningful GH battle without droves of mounted archers. Only halbs against that? Forget that they have lots of armor, it's the morale penalty that counts here and that applies even with a single casualty IIRC. Eating charges when under morale penalty from arrow fire is not good. And how about a drawn out battle?

Bottom line:

You need missile units against the horde. And if you sport missile units you're gonna need spears to cover them. Otherwise you have to fight in the woods, but this discussion is not about that, since no horde army can ever win a woody.