I've always been a fan of combined arms, especially if I can do combined arms with hybrid units.

I have a Milanese campaign going now, and I find that my armies consist of the general, 2-3 Italian Calvary Militia, 1-3 Caroccio(sp) Standards, 3 Italian Spear militia, and the rest as many Genoese Crossbow Militia as I can get.

The Standards supplement the spears if the enemy is cavalry heavy, and keep morale high.The Cavalry Militia help with routers and charging the enemy from the rear once they engage my battleline, and simply look cool.

I use the General to support weak points in the infantry line.

The spears are mainly there to hold up cavalry so they can be gunned down readily.

For everything else, its the crossbows. What they don't gun down at range, they can chop up in melee, they do *very well* as swordsmen. I find that with the archers in a checkered two-line formation(so everyone has clear LOS, but still two lines of units), the rear can usually swing around to slightly flank the engaged line, and enfilade fire the enemy to death.

I take some losses to friendly fire, but I find overall I can defeat equal or greater numbers with ~5-12% casualties. And there's nothing like watching a full unit of DFK's take a few hundred crossbow bolts in a single volley and wind up with like 15-20 guys left instantly.

The only time this hasn't worked for me was when the blasted Sicilians sent two almost-all-cavalry stacks against mine. That wasn't pretty...