Horse Archer Armies...(long text)

[rvg]

In my latest Turkish campaign (Early, Expert) I have come to realize the power of the speedy mounted archer... specifically, the power of MASSED speedy mounted archers.

A full army of Turcoman horse is capable of destroying pretty much any opposition in Early with minimal losses. I took a zero star Turcoman Horse General, and after 8 victories he is a 4 star Specialist Attacker, with a full corps of battle hardened Turcomans under his command. Below, I will list my observations on using an all-horse-archer army. Ironically, the only units that I would not recommend using are the Szekely, as they are impetuous and tend to get themselves into too much trouble.

1) The morale, valor, and melee capabilities of your HA army will not have much of an impact. All you need is speed and bows, which means that even though I was using Turcomans, there is nothing to prevent this strategy from working with vanilla HAs.

2) The strategy is based largely on the fact that the AI is an absolute moron in combat (even on expert) and is incapable of fighting a highly mobile opponent.

3) The presence of Archers will *not* counter this strategy. The presence of Heavy Cavalry will *not* counter this strategy. In Early, the only units that will reliably counter Massed HAs are the massed top speed light cav (i.e. Saharans, Steppes, Alans) or the Massed *Heavy* Horse Archers (like Steppe Heavies). Once Pavise units make an appearance in High, the viability of HAs takes a nosedive, but nonetheless, in Early they are VERY hard to beat.

4) Most important tip on the battlefield: BREAK UP YOUR ARMY. Yeah, you heard me, split 'em. 16 HAs lumped together are a recipe for disaster. Normally, at the start of the battle (offensive, or defensive, it doesn't really matter) I would split them into subgroups of 4 and spread those groups around. By doing that I have given myself ALOT of room to maneuver (which is absolutely crucial for my survival) *and* made it impossible for the enemy to conduct a decisive attack/counterattack: if they split their army to attack all your subgroups, you win. If they send their entire army against one subgroup, you also win.

5) Skirmish AI absolutely ROCKS. It is true that you *gotta* watch your HAs, but Skirmish AI is absolutely indispensible. It auto-pulls your HAs at the LAST possible moment allowing you to hoodwink the enemy units into chasing you, and once they do it, they are doomed. If an HA pulls more units than it can handle, assign a few other HAs as 'caretakers' for those extra units (all on skirmish AI of course). Generally, one caretaker per pulled unit is enough, unless you've managed to pull a general, in which case concentrate a few HAs on him at once.

6) Escaping from a corner. Nobody's perfect, and occasionally, you'll get a unit of yours cornered. No worries, chances are, you'd still be able to take it out of the harm's way: switch to engage at will, change formation to wedge, and run, run, run in the least cluttered direction. Why wedge? Because it is the most compact formation possible. In the process you might lose a couple of men, but that would be the extent of it. If you have a solid posse of, say, heavy cavalry chasing you, head towards one of your unengaged subgroups, where you will assign caretakers to the heavies and get pressure off the original unit. Once out of harms way, get back into regular formation, turn on Skirmish AI, and go back into the fray. If the situation is hopeless, go ahead and hit the ROUT button. Sure, your men will leave the battlefield, but they'll get to fight another day and rob their chasers of whatever fatigue they might have left.

7) Dealing with archers. Attacking a defensive position that has plenty of archers can be a daunting task, but by no means impossible. Ther is no perfect defense, so make those archers move. Approach from both flanks at once, and watch the AI pull the archers to the side in order to hit you. They got the flanks covered? Move your flank HAs a bit away and position a couple of HA units head on and start shooting. They got archers on flanks, remember? While those archers are scrambling back to the center, you are letting your arrows loose, and those archers aren't. They are back at the center? Approach from the flanks.... Basically, make your enemy try to cover himself completely with a blanket that isn't quite long enough. In the meantime, if you've managed to hit a few melee units, they might charge you, which is exactly what you're hoping for. Also, read the terrain. You are commanding the most mobile army possible, thus you are capable of utilizing the best features of the map. Don't be afraid to engage the archers in a duel, if you got the high terrain advantage. Also, if there's a forest within the archers' shot range, park your HAs there and let the archers pelt your men. Sure, you'll lose a few, but most of those arrows will be wasted, and an archerless army is a sitting duck vs HAs. Finally, if the situation is favorable (i.e. an archer unit has ventured a bit away from the main body), charge 'em. Unless you're facing some really badass archers (like mongol warriors or futtuwwas) they'll break, run, and be slaughtered to the man before help can arrive.

8. Dealing with Slow and Normal Cavalry. Basically, the heavier the cavalry, the easier they are to deal with. If you get charged, send them on a wild goose chase, skirmish them until they are exhausted, then shoot them to tatters at your leisure. In the meantime, you can concentrate on decimating their footmen. Katanks and Camels can be treated as regular infantry since their speed is so lacking. Any armored unit is guaranteed to run out of wind before you do. Mounted Sergeants are much more dangerous in this respect, since they can run around for a looong time. I try to assign an extra caretaker to the MS unit and watch the skirmishing HA VERY carefully. If you do things right, the Sarges won't touch you, but they leave little room for error.

9. Dealing with FAST Cavalry. Your only choice here is to supplement your core troops with heavy HAs such as Steppe Heavies. If you see a bunch of Steppe Cav or Saharans on the pre-battle screen, put a few Steppe Heavies in your initial battlegroup.

10. Attacking an army full of Knights and Pavise Arbalests perched atop of a mountain led by a multistar general....I will leave this one as an exercise for the reader.

The End.

Edited for Spelling

[Deus ret.]

Nice guide, rvg. I still have two questions, though:

1) In my experience, AI skirmish pretty sucks in MTW. It's somewhat better in RTW but still not really good. The reason for this is mainly that once you assign them to attack a unit (or they choose one themselves on fire-at-will), they'll skirmish only in relation to that unit, so if either it changes direction resp. is overtaken by a faster unit (both of which happens quite often) or the enemy sends a unit from another direction, the HA is pretty much doomed. At least that's what I have seen. So....even with that obstacle it's still possible to direct an all-HA army but how do you avoid getting crazy because of all the necessary micromanagement?

2) Shorter: If the terrain is woody and the enemy chooses to deploy most of his troops in the cover....what does one do? Often they're smart enough not to be easily provoked to come out. I remember defeating 3 Mongol HA and 2 Mongol heavies with just one crappy unit of Byz infantry hidden in a nice piece of wood (okay, my guys were at valour 2 already, but still...). In PMTW two light Cossack infantry troops under cover managed to hold off an entire Tatar army which spent all their arrows, then tried to charge with two or three units and finally retreated after their spearhead had been annihilated.

[rvg]

Nice guide, rvg. I still have two questions, though:

1) In my experience, AI skirmish pretty sucks in MTW. It's somewhat better in RTW but still not really good. The reason for this is mainly that once you assign them to attack a unit (or they choose one themselves on fire-at-will), they'll skirmish only in relation to that unit, so if either it changes direction resp. is overtaken by a faster unit (both of which happens quite often) or the enemy sends a unit from another direction, the HA is pretty much doomed. At least that's what I have seen. So....even with that obstacle it's still possible to direct an all-HA army but how do you avoid getting crazy because of all the necessary micromanagement?

2) Shorter: If the terrain is woody and the enemy chooses to deploy most of his troops in the cover....what does one do? Often they're smart enough not to be easily provoked to come out. I remember defeating 3 Mongol HA and 2 Mongol heavies with just one crappy unit of Byz infantry hidden in a nice piece of wood (okay, my guys were at valour 2 already, but still...). In PMTW two light Cossack infantry troops under cover managed to hold off an entire Tatar army which spent all their arrows, then tried to charge with two or three units and finally retreated after their spearhead had been annihilated.

1. Easy... You *don't* order the HA to attack any particular unit. Leave it on autofire and it'll skirmish away from whoever gets close. Once an enemy unit is isolated, THEN order your HAs to attack it and you're golden.

2. A.I. is a moron. If it gets hit by arrow fire, it'll have to react. All you need to do is kill one guy in one unit, which is doable even in the thickest terrain. Second, you can move your HAs into the forst as bait.....A.I. rarely resists it.

[Biggus Diccus]

1. Easy... You *don't* order the HA to attack any particular unit. Leave it on autofire and it'll skirmish away from whoever gets close.

This is what I do as well. Works wonders. IMHO using too much HA against the AI feels like cheating to me. I try to restrain myself to use only a couple to disturb AI formations.

[Martok]

This is what I do as well. Works wonders. IMHO using too much HA against the AI feels like cheating to me. I try to restrain myself to use only a couple to disturb AI formations.

With the exception of Jinnettes, I usually use only 1-2 HA units in an army as well. In my last couple Bohemian campaigns, I used a total of just 2 mounted x-bows the entire time, simply because I don't have the patience to give them the amount of micromanagement they need.

Still, a pretty thorough guide, rvg. Let's hope the Turks in my Eggie/Byz campaigns never read it.

[gaijinalways]

I usually like decimating the AI HA units, but certainly the AI doesn't do a great job keeping them out of harm's way. I use missile cav morefor the irritation factor and as normal cav after the AI usually starts routing.


I'm surprised you haven'thad routing problems yourself as I find HAs to be chickns; i.e. too many feints and retreats and they usually run off the battlefield on their own power, sometimes even with no losses in their unit !

[Grey_Fox]

The Egypt blitz is more profitable in short term than the Byz blitz in my opinion. Done right, you can get some hefty kings ransoms. Good money base first!

True, but the Byzantines are more of a threat in the long run, and since horse archers have cheap upkeep better to got West than South at the start in my opinion. Work before play and all that.

[Empirate]

With the Turks in early, you're sitting between a gold bar and a hard place. There's absolutely no question the Egyptians have to go first. What those six turns or however long it takes you provide you with is much too good not to have against the Byzzies: A one province border in the south (Egypt), tons of money from plunder and sultan ransoms (around 20.000 fl usually, sometimes more), and a lot of provinces that help you in the war effort. Meanwhile, what do the Byzzies get? Some steppe provinces and relocation of some good fighting troops to a far land, from where it'll take them some turns to get back to the action in Asia Minor.
Besides, I'd not wanna take on Katanks and Byz Inf and Trebs with vanilla HA. Give me Turcomans, preferably with Mosque and Ribat to counter their low morale, and I'm set!

[bamff]

3) The presence of Archers will *not* counter this strategy. The presence of Heavy Cavalry will *not* counter this strategy. In Early, the only units that will reliably counter Massed HAs are the massed top speed light cav (i.e. Saharans, Steppes, Alans) or the Massed *Heavy* Horse Archers (like Steppe Heavies). Once Pavise units make an appearance in High, the viability of HAs takes a nosedive, but nonetheless, in Early they are VERY hard to beat.

Sorry to go all the way back to the first post, but one point worth noting here - if your HA's can manage to get close enough to charge the pavise units (and assuming that tougher help is not close enough to hand) you should be able to cut them to ribbons. I have had some success with both Turcopoles and Mounted Xbows. True you can't get involved in a shootout unless you want to see your guys get shot up, but the charge works wonders. Worth remembering that when you have a "softer" target in sight, your HA's can be used as light cavalry (giving them a second string to their bows if you like....sorry that was bad....).

[rvg]

Sorry to go all the way back to the first post, but one point worth noting here - if your HA's can manage to get close enough to charge the pavise units (and assuming that tougher help is not close enough to hand) you should be able to cut them to ribbons. I have had some success with both Turcopoles and Mounted Xbows. True you can't get involved in a shootout unless you want to see your guys get shot up, but the charge works wonders. Worth remembering that when you have a "softer" target in sight, your HA's can be used as light cavalry (giving them a second string to their bows if you like....sorry that was bad....).

Of course, if charging is an option, that is a great way of getting rid of the Pavise units, but the A.I. is usually smart enough to keep its pavise units well protected.

[gaijinalways]

The pavise units have a problem as the shields that keep them from being killed by missile fire; the same slow them down when they attempt to retreat. I have beeen surprised by regular ab unts that ripped cav units to shreds and routed them (while my own ab troops barely hang on until reinforcements come, maybe secret AI training camps?).

[bamff]

Of course, if charging is an option, that is a great way of getting rid of the Pavise units, but the A.I. is usually smart enough to keep its pavise units well protected.

Once on the field, yes....BUT the AI hits a problem when these units come on as reinforcements. If you can get a unit or two of HA's positioned in cover near the AI's supply route, you will have no end of targets presented on a platter. Even if several AI reinforcements enter the field together, the pavise units move quite slowly, and so will soon be left a ways behind any companion units. Time to charge boys! By the time the AI reacts, your HA's should be scooting either back to cover or away to safety.

Charges are also great against AI artillery units, once you have lured all of the other units well away.

[Deus ret.]

Charges are also great against AI artillery units, once you have lured all of the other units well away.

yes, but especially in defense battles I prefer to let them live as long as possible - their range won't threaten my position most of the times and since the AI tends to deploy quite a number of them in their starting line-up, they facilitate many battles considerably simply because the enemy won't have as much to throw at you as if he left the artillery out. the same counts for incoming reinforcements where again their number is restricted by remaining artillery units. the only downside to this is that battles last somewhat longer, but hey, if it helps to overcome that 1:5 disadvantage ....

[gaijinalways]

I agree if I am on the defensive, I leave the siege engines sucking up air, but on the offensive, it depends on where the AI siege engines are. If they are set up for a killing filed, I have to bring my cav up and risk them gettting attacked if they can take the siege engines down