Melee Combat: Heroic Victories, How?

[ieyeasu]

So, after winning a campaign as the Venetians, and abandoning a destined win as the English, I've become addicted to missle troops.

It's almost a gauranteed HV if you manage massed missle troops well.

I'm having a great deal more difficulty managing so with the French. I'm going heavy on cavalry, lots of knights and light cav, as that's where French strenght lies.

Typical army is 4-5 groups of knights, 2-4 light cav, and about 4 units of spears. Engage with spears and maybe a group of knights, and flank with whatever remains.

Is there something I'm missing? I'm thinking about boning up on the infantry and using them to engage the entire line, and then ONLY flanking with my HC, but I think the losses will still be fairly prohibitive.

[Bob the Insane]

The key to a Heroic Victory is the odds before the battle and killing all the enemy... If the odds are not against you then you can never have a heroic victory. This obviously makes things a little tricky for a melee battle...

Personally the key to this is morale, by breaking the morale of your enemy quickly you avoid casualties on your side and maximise destruction of the enemy. You break the enemies morale then you need combined attacks on the flanks and rear of enemy units, with local numeric superiority this should lead to routing, which you need to untilize to break the morale of surrounding units.

Ideally if the IA maintains decent formations and does not suicide it's general then it should be very difficult to achieve. This is not always the case...

[HoreTore]

The hammer and anvil usually does the trick if you are facing a superior enemy.

[zstajerski]

Agree with sad before..

But the real key to heroic victorys ( I have my map flastered with x-es = places of heroics victories ) is not odds, but the number of engaging troops!!!
You may have, lets say 100 (number, not units) elephants and the enemy 2000 spears and cav...

The odds may be close, the victory willl be heroic!!! Trust me!!!

So:
have a (numerous) SMALL, but ELITE army!!! and search for terrain appropriate for def.... or off... battles ;)

And you will also have your map filled with x-es

The odds do matter, but empiraclly not as much as numbers ;)

[Budwise]

I had a Heroic Victory once with nothing but infantry but I was going up against a heavily outnumbered foe of Sicilian Crossbowmen. Of course I had almost all Heavy Infantry and I sent one against each crossbowmen and when one of them routed I send the Heavy Infantry against the next in line, so on so on.

[Caliburn]

Try a "weak" (in numbers) horse archer army against an AI stack. 'Nuff said.

[sapi]

5 units of knights is in my experience enough to charge a 20 unit enemy army across the entire front.

Withdraw, rinse and repeat and you've got a victory.

[wzup]

Agree with sad before..

But the real key to heroic victorys ( I have my map flastered with x-es = places of heroics victories ) is not odds, but the number of engaging troops!!!
You may have, lets say 100 (number, not units) elephants and the enemy 2000 spears and cav...

The odds may be close, the victory willl be heroic!!! Trust me!!!

So:
have a (numerous) SMALL, but ELITE army!!! and search for terrain appropriate for def.... or off... battles ;)

And you will also have your map filled with x-es

The odds do matter, but empiraclly not as much as numbers ;)

It's actually 2 swords like other have said, heroic victories are all about destroying the enemy units morale which imo is done easiest by outflanking the enemy. Just like the topic creator i fancy having lots of missile units peppering my enemy from many different angles and a handful of melee units..