Roleplaying the English Army - a tactics thread!

[econ21]

Ok so if I was roleplaying historical English, I'd have something like this right:

1 general
1 hobilar
1 retinue longbowmen
1 yeoman archer
6 longbowmen
1 swordsmen
1 heavy billmen
1 heavy bill militia
2 bill militia
4 levy spearmen
1 peasant

Sounds broadly ok. Reading around, it seems my practice of taking 3-5 archers is too few. At their peak, longbows should account for around 60% of the English army.

But I'd say you have too few men-at-arms: knights, swordsmen etc. While they were usually outnumbered by the archers, they were in some ways the core of a medieval English army.

Billmen come in after 1400 or so, largely replacing spearmen. Both types would probably be less common when fighting in France than in the British Isles.

A lot of the mercs in M2TW could find a home in a historical English army. Merc spearmen, knights and crossbowmen especially before the HYW. Welsh spears and Irish kerns as well.

Here are some numbers I found on the web for the English army at Crecy:

3900 knights
11000 archers
5000 light troops - Welsh foot, Irish kerns etc.

For a full stack, that would be:
1 general
3 knights - mounted or on foot
11 longbows - various
5 other - eg. 3 Welsh spears, 2 Irish kerns

Given that the English were supposed to be typically heavily outnumbered, you might half the above. Unfortunately, if you did try to fight with such a half stack, I suspect you would be rolled over by a full AI stack. It's pretty hard to model the historical superiority of the HYW English in M2TW (in the demo battle of Agincourt, the English were pumped up and face piecemeal AI attacks, but still do far worse than they did in history).