Help with a viking battle

[gaijinalways]

I recently started a new campaign with the Danes (my last campaign with the English kept crashing). I took over Sweden (the enemy retreated to Norway), and a few turns later I decided this should be mine as well. First time I attacked I brought a bad general (gluttony, etc). Reloaded and hit bad weather. Came the last time, thought, okay, good weather 420 men (240 archers, 100 peasants, 60 vikings, and 20 royal knights) to 360 (all vikings). Battle started off well, shooting up some vikings. One stack finally got closer (whittled down to 37 or so) and attacks. I have 100 peasants, 60 vikings, and my archers who were out of ammo attack. What happens? My vikes get slaughtered and rout, the peasants take heavy losses (down to 23) and rout, and some of the archers start routing beofre even seeing any action. Gah !

Maybe these guys are too tough, though the AI general didn't have so many stars!

Any ideas?

[gaijinalways]

Oh, expert, early campaign.

[Innocentius]

As long as almost a quarter of your men are peasants it's pretty hopeless I'd say. Peasants can pretty much only be used for distracting the enemy for a few seconds or flank (and they are even bad for flanking!). Build up a little, and replace the peasants with random Viking units or FMAA (although even they don't fare ar too well against vikings). Norway is a very poor province anyway, and it's not really worth the fight. It's really only good since it's a pretty isolated province that is hard to reach, this makes it ideal for safely producing ships.

[caravel]

There are a few potential problems there. The first, and most obvious, is that you fielded peasants. These are for garrisons only. You can take them into battle but only as a means to outnumber the enemy. all in all though, they are best avoided.

The next issue is that you had only 60 vikings to their 360. Your 20 Royal Knights would never be a match for them. The peasants and archers are a none entity as once the vikings give chase there's not alot you can do. Archers and Peasants haven't a hope in hell fighting in melee against them. The Viking unit is a very strong one for the early era, that is available quickly. It is in essence a more lightly armoured, non elite, higher morale version of Feudal Men-at-Arms with an armour piercing weapon. Personally I would have bribed them.

The final problem is the difficulty level. The enemy have a morale bonus over you when playing on expert.

Was your general of 2 stars or more?

[Martok]

When invading Norway, I always make sure that I bring with at least as many Vikings as the Norwegians. As the other guys have said, peasants are essentially useless, and I find archers to be of only limited utility in offensive battles - particularly against Vikings.

Given that you're playing on Expert (and the enemy therefore gets a +4 morale bonus), you should really just bring in a lot of Vikings and overwhelm the Norwegians with numbers. Leave your archers and peasants at home!

[Adrian II]

Leave your archers and peasants at home!

Sound advice. You should only bring Archers to Norway if you get fair weather, if you find a good hill to park them on, and if you get a chance to draw the enemy out of formation and into their line of fire long enough to do some real damage.

In other words, only if pigs can fly...

[Geezer57]

Leave your archers <DELETED> at home!

While I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment to bring at least parity in heavy infantry to this scenario, I just don't see any real benefit to leaving your missile troops behind. Since the play level is at Expert (with its morale bonus against you), you'll need something to swing morale in your favor - and that's just what the archers provide, as there's a morale drop for the enemy while under missile fire.

The extra numbers provided by bringing the archers also swings morale further in your favor, as you gain the benefit of outnumbering.

Additionally, if you're short on cavalry, the archers (as they're fast infantry) can substitute on the chase after enemy units are broken by your heavies. This lets your now-disengaged heavies gang up on the enemy hold-outs, dropping in on their flanks or rear.

[Martok]

While I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment to bring at least parity in heavy infantry to this scenario, I just don't see any real benefit to leaving your missile troops behind. Since the play level is at Expert (with its morale bonus against you), you'll need something to swing morale in your favor - and that's just what the archers provide, as there's a morale drop for the enemy while under missile fire.

I realize that too, but as Adrian said a bit earlier:

You should only bring Archers to Norway if you get fair weather, if you find a good hill to park them on, and if you get a chance to draw the enemy out of formation and into their line of fire long enough to do some real damage.

That's a lot of "ifs", and usually at least 2 out of 3 of them never happen (at least for me).

Finding a hill generally isn't hard, of course, since you're fighting in Norway. In regards to the other two variables, however.... The weather rarely cooperates -- I get rained on more often than not --and drawing the Norwegians into the archers' killing zone is extremely difficult, as their Vikings are usually too quick to engage my men in melee, and I try not to shoot my own men if I can help it.

The extra numbers provided by bringing the archers also swings morale further in your favor, as you gain the benefit of outnumbering.

Additionally, if you're short on cavalry, the archers (as they're fast infantry) can substitute on the chase after enemy units are broken by your heavies. This lets your now-disengaged heavies gang up on the enemy hold-outs, dropping in on their flanks or rear.

That's true, but they're still unlikely to get the chance to serve their primary purpose. In the end, they're simply much more likely to be a liability than an asset, and so I rarely bring them along.