Stopping cavalry charges

**Guru** · 06-20-2007, 09:24

Originally Posted by Furious Mental

Stakes if you have a unit that can lay them,

...Which basically means any English longbowmen, Lithuanian archers and Janissary archers. So, the English, Polish and the Turks get this advantage. If none of these are available I would use a solid spear unit like saracen militia, spearmen or armored sarges. If none of these are available I'd use my own heavy cavalry to intercept them. Well, spear militias are cheap and easy to train too. Or sacrifice a unit of peasants in front of your lines... Bwuahahahah!

- Guru

**Zarky** · 06-20-2007, 09:31

Take up peasant units just to sacrifice them and lose slots for DFKs and such...
Just use the expensive and solid spears with some general close :D

**Kobal2fr** · 06-20-2007, 15:11

Shoot them. The impact of a crossbow volley right into the front of the cav unit as they are about to hit your spearwall stops them almost dead in their tracks.

**FactionHeir** · 06-20-2007, 15:24

FC longbows also have stakes and so do welsh longbows.

Any unit running away from the cav stops the charge rather well.

**Joshwa** · 06-20-2007, 18:18

Stakes are great. I gave the ability to Byzantine Guard Archers and added some cost to them, because they Byzantines have no anti cavalry measures whatsoever, and i heard somewhere on these forums that the Byzantines were rather fond of digging pits, and throwing caltrops down etc..

Anyway, little did i know that they skewer your own cavalry as well if you order them to march fast through them! I had some elite vardariotai running laterally through them and all but five died!

**Guru** · 06-20-2007, 18:38

Originally Posted by Joshwa

Anyway, little did i know that they skewer your own cavalry as well if you order them to march fast through them! I had some elite vardariotai running laterally through them and all but five died!

Ahahah! I remember when I played as the Polish... I sent my general to drive away the enemy archers and then ordered him to retreat back behind my lines. I was ordering my missile cavalry troops when I saw a message sliding down the left side of the screen. The message with the sword. "Good", I thought, "the enemy general is dead?"... Well, actually it was a "faction leader dies" message. My king had ran into the stakes my Lithuanian archers had deployed... I was kinda shocked. Then I saw the rest of the bodyguards routing! Oh god.

- Guru

**Abokasee** · 06-20-2007, 18:51

Charging cavalry with your own charging cavalry from behind is my personal faviourte, also, 2 units of spear men are good, one for flanking, the other for getting charged