My usual army tends to be composed of roughly equal numbers of archers, spears and heavy infantry, deployed on three lines in that order, with 4-6 cav units on the flanks (2-3 each side, BG included).
Depending on the stack's purpose, there might be variations : more heavy inf if assaulting, more cav if field offensive, more spears + missile if defense, but these are exceptions as I don't usually keep dedicated stacks but rather general purpose. Exceptions like the occasional all-heavy-cav army the AI sends to attack - if this happens, I just leave the archers behind and summon more spears from the nearby garrisons.
For example, playing Venice :
5 pav xbows, 5 italian spears, 4 dism. broken lances, 5 militia cav or broken lances,1 BG. That's what I used for the first half of the game, not having any castles. Later on, because of boredom rather than need, I got some castles and replaced the broken lances (foot & horse) with feudal knights and heavy venetian. Castle defense : venetian archers.
Things I don't care much for :
- gunpowder units (they come too late, campaign already ended by victory or boredom)
- artillery (slow; keep them in aux stacks trailing the main and use only on fast sieges)
- specialty units (carrocio ? why ?)
- light cav (too frail; heavies just as good at chasing routed infantry ; enemy cav doesn't outrun bolts)
Horse archer factions : I still keep armies all purpose and balanced, but include more cavalry eg. as Byzantium a normal stack would be 1 BG, 4 vards, 4 byz cav, 2 heavy chargers, 5 spears, 2 byz guard, 3 byz inf and more variations for dedicated stacks as HAs are no good in assaults so replace with arty and heavy inf.
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