High Tech Armies

[Vladimir]

Anyone here have any luck with high tech armies? This is my second time playing the Byzantines in late and I've decided to save them with technology. I use four to five units of arquebusiers and five of armored spearmen for my main line, and a mix of cav depending on local climate to act as the hammer. I've found that if you engage the enemy at range with your guns you can take them down fairly easily. If they decide to charge then you just retreat behind your spears and let your cav roll up on the flank. The morale effects of being flanked, guns, and being isolated usually forces them to flee before they do much damage to my spears. This works better on the attack where you can more easily control the weather and speed of the battle.

The only problem is the armor in the desert. The armor is great when protecting line units against arrows but you have to make sure your troops don't have any armor upgrades in the dessert. For the desert I plan on using Byzantine cav as flankers and skirmishers. When fighting in other areas of the Mediterranean I use uparmored spears, the two kinds of Kats to maybe include the porno cav. I'll probably only have time to take control of the Med before the game ends but this army seems perfect for that area. I'm playing XL.

[Ciaran]

I don´t know about the Byzantines, but in my current campaing I´ve restrained myself from playing Superior Conquerer, and have teched up my home provinces to the max, being able to build whatever Spain can build. I´m now only recruiting the Frog-style (see the Beginner´s Guide) Late era Pike armies (six pikes, four cavalry, two of them Lancers and the other two Gendarmes, three Chivalric Men at Arms and two arbalests). Yesterday, one such army has been able to defeat a 5000+ strong Crusader states and a thousand-and-something rebel army. Not quite, I had the Crusaders do most of the work on the rebels before I wiped them off the field, although I also lost most of my army - in fact, I was already retreating what little was left of my troops (about ten percent of my initial forces) when the message came that the enemy was retreating
I wish I had saved a replay.

I´ve also put gunpowder units to pretty good use, they require more attention and a different handling than the old-fashioned archers or crossbows, but that can be a good investment.

[Vladimir]

I've only tried her tactics once in regards to the halberdier army. I pretty much have my missile and cav heavy template and tweak it as tech changes. The AI has a major vulnerability against missile weapons, one of the reasons gunpowder tends to work so well (just watch out for the rain!).

[Sensei Warrior]

I kind of took Froggies word that the gun units weren't that great. I might have to attempt a redo and give them a fair shot at whether they are worth it or not.

As for high tech units, I started a game on High with the Russians. The Mongols came and I was defending a bridge when they attacked. I had 2 arbs, 3 halbs, 2 Steppe Cav, 2 HAs, and a Boyar General. I know this isn't too high-tech but remember I was playing the Russians. Anyways, I used primarily my arbs and halbs to hold the bridge. The HAs and Boyar gave support fire. The Harbs were used to push them back across the river hen they got too close. The Steppe Cavs were used in the end to run down routers.

My 500 man army held off 2 full stacks of Mongol Horde-ness with ease. In the end, my guys killed 400 and captured hundreds more. I lost 95 men. I lost 3 arbs and 20 Halbs. The rest of my losses were solely due to a tactical error on my part. The Steppe Cav and HAs were running down routers and I wasn't paying attention. A number of Mongol units regrouped and flanked a couple of my units. The Mongols chewed them pretty good before I could get help to them.

So if you count the Cav out of it, only lost 23 men, which make the ratio somewhere around 17 to 1. Even counting the cav it was 4 to 1, so I would definately call it sucessfull.

[Stormcrow]

I liked the musketeers, but never enough to make them the mainstay of my amy...a bit of rain can really ruin your day...

[Vladimir]

True. That's why they're great in the Med as their armor might cause problems in the desert and it rains too much up north. It's best to use them in the attack also. I've found that it's much easier to replace losses as you may only need 3 or 4 different types of units. Normally I can use up to 6 which makes resupply a pain.

[gaijinalways]

I prefer arbalests, billlmen or sometimes halbs (a bit slow for my taste, but difficult to kill, great for protection from Byz kat attacks) and pikemen myself. The gunners tend to be slow and not that affective. Their armor makes them last, but their morale tends to be poor, and even the handgunners are not great fighters.

[Vladimir]

I'll never argue against arbs. I tend to use the pavaise arbs to screen my standard ones in my army. I think the regular troops get an accuracy bonus while the pavaise of my leading missile troops draw the fire. The main advantage I've found using gun/pike/cav armies are that they're simple to maintain and rebuild, but they aren't always very efficient.

[Empirate]

I've never used gunpowder units much, but I have noticed handgunners seem to last indefinitely in melee (especially when they're deployed against me!). While I tend to lose half regiments of even armored up Chivalric MAA if I have to commit them to melee it out, handgunners are incredibly hard to take down. It's not in the stats, but I still get the feeling that CMAAs can kill well but also die too fast, while handgunners and some other troops are better at absorbing damage. Even when I'm chasing enemy handgunners off the field with knights, it takes forever to get all of them.
The effectiveness of gunpowder units' ranged attack remains much in doubt for me, though. If you need three volleys from handgunners to kill even one man in the enemy regiment they're targeting, you're better off using any other kind of missile: They make up for the higher morale penalty inflicted by gunpowder units in that they kill more enemies! Also, there's the already-mentioned weather factor.

I find that most of my armies are composed of high-era (chivalric) units once I'm able to build them, and staying this way till the end. Waiting for late units to come along, and teching up like crazy just to get a unit that's slightly better but twice as costly to train - that's just a bore. I once sat tight playing the Turks until I could recruit JHI. I built 16 of them, all silver to gold armored and bronze to silver armed. Then I took this army to fight, and found nobody would stay and play with me! The enemy always withdrew from the province. In two cases in which they entered battlefield-mode they withdrew before I was able to make contact. That wasn't my idea of fun, so after that I stuck with medium-advanced armies. Oh, I tried out a Syrian, Master Swordsmith Nizari-only army with Egypt once, that was definitely fun. Those guys could produce an absolute hailstorm of arrows, and when some French Royal Knights charged, I just stood firm and slaughtered them in melee, flanking from all sides. Still, I didn't encounter much actual resistance with this army, either.
So if you want some fun and memorable battles, bring slightly less than the enemy has, and keep it below a certain threshold tech-wise!

[gaijinalways]

The ratio in numbers will always make a battle more likley to happen or not. I had a battle where I killed the balista members and lost 1 cav. The remaining AI troops ran off, and that was the end of the battle , quite quickly over.

Getting the AI to fight is not always possible, though I enjoy taking provinces sometimes without a battle, less clean up!

[Ciaran]

The effectiveness of gunpowder units' ranged attack remains much in doubt for me, though. If you need three volleys from handgunners to kill even one man in the enemy regiment they're targeting, you're better off using any other kind of missile: They make up for the higher morale penalty inflicted by gunpowder units in that they kill more enemies! Also, there's the already-mentioned weather factor.

I´ve had two battles recently which I most certainly would have lost were it not for gunpowder units and their morale penalty. I´ve saved the replays but I wouldn´t know where to upload them, in my opinion they show very well in what situation gunpowder can be a decisive factor in battle.

[Vladimir]

I've been messing around with the Burgundians (as they start out next to the rebel Swiss! ) and have been enjoying a good success with gunpowder. I haven't been able to use my "gamey" tactics with arbs like I used to but I did up Arquebusiers accuracy 5% to .25, handgunners are .20. I recently defended against the Pope (who I accidentally killed ). My 5 units of valor 6 guns were able to keep his entire army at bay before and after I killed him leading his troops. So far I've killed at least two Popes with gun volleys of two or three. It's really satisfying when the second volley causes him to run and the third finishes off his entire unit.

The battle started out weird. First of all, they advanced straight toward my line then moved back and forth in front as if they were afraid to engage the guns. Once the Pope was dead, the army routed and withdrew from the field. Defending with guns usually leads to heavier losses but I think the enemy was afraid of the high valor guns. You need to be really careful with guns on defense. It’s really embarrassing when you’re fighting in France and it starts to rain as soon as the enemy is within range. God forbid you fight in the Balkans, it’s always raining when I play defense there.

Especially on offense I can get a really decent kill ratio with guns, sometimes a high as 10-1. I can get that without them in earlier eras when armor isn't so good, but white armored guns are really helpful if you start in Late.

Overall I recommend bumping up their accuracy by 5% (because they should be better than handgunners right?) and use them when playing Late Byzantium. They don't get pikes but armored spears work well in their place. Byzantine cavalry diversity as well as the local weather are perfect for a high tech force. Oh and cannons are nice too; it just takes so damn long to get the good ones.

XL