Balearic slingers

[Kugutsu]

The celtic slingers are deadly. They should be ranked up there with spartans, gaesatae and other elites... Once they start getting some experience chevrons nothing can stand aganst them. Even if you try to run them down with cavalry, they will slaughter them before they get close, and other ranged units cant touch them. About the only counter is more celtic slingers... Kind of like nukes...

[NeoSpartan]

Yep they are some bad a** mofos. hum... now u guys got me thinking, I wonder how a Celtic army with a good # of clingers would deal with an army of HA and Cataphracts (sp)??? I'll find out in a months or two thats for sure.

[MoROmeTe]

Shouldn't the Balearic's be the "elites" of slingers? I mean lead shot should give them at at least an attack boost, if a somewhat lower range...

[Juvenal]

I play KH and use slingers as my main killers (Hellenic ones - shorter range than Celtic, but still good).

I thought I was unstoppable until I came up against the Getai. They only had one full stack, but it contained several family members and 6 assorted HA's and Scythian riders.

I advanced with a fullish stack, 4 slingers, 3 cretans, lots of hoplites and some peltasts.

The battlefield had several small hills. The first shock was that the Getai army seemed to fill the map - every hill had HA's on top of it. You won't understand how intimidating this is unless you play with hoplite armies with no cavalry (OK I did have one unit of Hippeis - but they got turned into pin-cushions quite early on).

I decided to take on the nearest hill with all my slingers. Unfortunately it had a family member on top. The Getai bodyguard HAs are armoured (barding?). My slingers were devastated before they even got into range (damned hill). The rest of them then died inflicting no more than a dozen casualties on the Getai bodyguard.

After that there was nothing I could do. It was EB v0.81, so I had Epilektoi bodyguards permanently locked in phalanx mode and the army had to manoeuvre at a slow walk. My boys sat on a hill and were slowly wittled down. Eventually my general got killed and the last few units routed. I lost the entire stack.

Since then I have found a way of coping with HA's without using cavalry. I still use slingers, but I have more peltasts. The peltasts go in front in loose order and just run at the enemy. This achieves 3 goals:

• I occupy enough of the map to herd the enemy HAs toward an edge (where they can be caught).
• My slingers are screened
• My peltasts take less casualties due to loose formation.

Once HAs are engaged, heavier troops can run up to administer the coup-de-grace.

[Gask]

Or if you dont mind waiting you can send a phalanx or a heavy shielded unit out front to absorb all the arrows, if you started the battle anyhow.

[Juvenal]

@Gask

When I "sallied" from my home hill, I found I was taking unacceptable hoplite casualties even from the front. A combination of the enemy height advantage and cross-fire from other hills.

Oh... I think I was playing on H/H as well which didn't help matters. I won't be doing that again after having a siege tower arrive completely empty at the enemy walls with a trail of Spartan corpses behind it (slingers + height = )

[antisocialmunky]

Or if you dont mind waiting you can send a phalanx or a heavy shielded unit out front to absorb all the arrows, if you started the battle anyhow.

Wasn't that how Alexander defeated the Scythians he ran into?

[Watchman]

Wasn't that how Alexander defeated the Scythians he ran into?

I seem to recall reading he sent some of his light cavalry ahead to, uh, distract the Scythies' attention and then bum rushed them with heavy cavalry and light infantry. Talk about a redshirt job...

'Course, in those parts of the world you could probably recruit decent light cav just by clinking a few coins together so no big loss.

[xzGAB]

Why cant we train balearic slingers playing romans? afaik romans made use of them

[QuintusSertorius]

Wasn't that how Alexander defeated the Scythians he ran into?

The most convincing descriptions of that battle I've seen are that he had archers and javelinmen shielded behind his phalanx line, and they shot at the horse archers whenever they came into range. The horse archers weren't used to an enemy firing back, and falling men and horses disrupted their circles, making them vulnerable to a counter-charge.

[vollorix]

Then HA missile range must be significantly lower ( it also can be the accuracy, doesn´t matter ) then of the foot archers ( at least those with composite bows ). In RTW HA factions are the way too early occuring Mongolian Hordes, and the availability of their Nobles in such insane numbers + everywher doesn´t make it better... I hope, in EB2 there will be a highly restricted recruitment pool for the nomadic factions: if they were that plenty, they´d overrun any civilized faction, like the Mongols did thousand years later.

One more thing: does anyone else think that those "add population" scripts are destroying any balance in the game? The AI could have infynite of money, but no faction, except Romans ( maybe some else with greater pool for levies ), was able to field stack after stack. In vanilla those "villages" were righfully the consequence of over recruitment in those areas. AI can hire mercs, it can bribe armies ( which doesn´t happen really often, also due to the fact how expensive it is: i had bribed 3 Goidic units, ok, 2 of them were elites, and it costed me 22k mnai - come on, for that money i can almost field a full stack of Batacorii, or half stack of Melnahts.

[Thaatu]

The celtic slingers are deadly. They should be ranked up there with spartans, gaesatae and other elites... Once they start getting some experience chevrons nothing can stand aganst them. Even if you try to run them down with cavalry, they will slaughter them before they get close, and other ranged units cant touch them. About the only counter is more celtic slingers... Kind of like nukes...

I know I have called for limitations on the celtic slinger recruitment (although nobody takes me seriously), but that's pretty extreme.