Benefits of Shooting Circle

[Rhyfelwyr]

Just wondering, what exactly are the benefits of using this formation? Does it increase fire rate, make them less vulnerable to enemy missile fire etc?

[Joshwa]

They're harder to hit, but have a reduced rate of fire, and a reduction in accuracy. Basically the only use for it is to piss people off

[alpaca]

It's useful to distract archer fire so your units aren't hit by it while you march your battle line towards theirs.
Otherwise, the accuracy hit is too large to make it really useful except when area shooting.

[Fußball]

Not too sure about this one but gunpowder units seem to take a lessened effect on accuracy as do arrow units. Have not actually tested but it seems to not drop their accuracy as much as archer units at least. I personally have hardly ever used shooting circle.

Tschüß!
Erich

[Bijo]

I utilized the stance sparingly, thinking it would decrease reception of enemy missiles. The way I used my armies it mattered only little whether it was used or not.

[Rebellious Waffle]

I think it's most useful when the opponent is using archers ensconced behind a heavier troop formation. Arrows fired overhead tend to land in a scattered cloud around the target -- the shooting circle has your missile cavalry spinning near the outside of the cloud, in a formation that has a relatively low Surface Area/Volume ratio, reducing the probability that any one unit is going to be hit by the foe's missiles.

[Didz]

I rarely manage to get it to work with Huge Units, and when I do I usually find that they circle round and straight into the nearest spear unit effectively creating a death queue.

[icek]

yesterday when i assaulted cyprus i fighted againts one bizantine unit on mounted archers. and my 4 units of yeoman archers were almost unable to hit them.

[WhiskeyGhost]

Alternatively, you can also use it to distract towers while attacking cities/castles, just get em close and hit the button, and watch as both enemy archers and wall towers divide their fire among them and the siege equipment you have coming (although it isn't entirely usefull, since the ai seems to be able to make rams spontaneously burst into flames after only 1 or 2 shots sometimes)

[Odin]

I concur with the sentiment that as a tactic, its best used for diversion. I like my HA's I am an old MTW Novgorod player and having never played RTW was immediately attracted to this ability.

Its nice if your HA units are a compliment to your army, might help soften up the enemy a little, but even then its a diversion tactic.

[Grog]

I use shooting circle all the time in my Byz game, despite the relative lack of accuracy and fire rate :)

My main reason? I usually deploy all cavalry armies for field battles, so I am not using Ha to support/protect an infantry line.

So, say I'm facing a typical Hre/venice/milan stack of 6 pavise xbow, 6 knights and balance of general/cav/siege etc. My stack will be 8 or so vards(and a few high xp HA leftovers), general, and 8 or so units of kataphractoi/latinkon heavy cavalry.

I will first send all my HA to encircle the enemy on shooting circle mode. I stagger deployment to give each unit plenty of room to work in, and leave autofire on once targeted.. This means they take little to no damage from enemy missles, while inflicting reasonable damage - a gold vard is fairly accurate even in shooting circle mode, whereas green troops are fairly rubbish.

I always target enemy missles first, and will break troops off from the shooting circles to engage any enemy HA/cavalry that leave the army with a loose skirmish formation. Whilst my HA is doing this, I move all heavy cav to a hilltop and keep away from enemy missle/siege.

As each Vard/Ha unit runs out of arrows, I move them out of missle range, most will be at or near full strength. If my whirl of shooting circles has spread the enemy all over the battlefield, it's an easy job for cavalry to mop up individual units with minimal losses. I then use depleted HA to chase down routers and secondary/flank charge my cavalry targets.
If the enemy remains in a 'bulk' then they will generally take 30-40% loss before my cavalry engage in a massed howling charge supported by all my HA 'medium Cav' and usual dreadlord 'lead from the front' general.

Overall, the circle allows all my troops to fire all of their arrows badly, then act as near full strength cavalry. In non circle mode, you can easily lose half a unit if they sit for a few seconds too long, even if firing more accurately etc. not good when they have plenty of ammo left..

[Doug-Thompson]

Nothing much to add to what's been posted. Just a few finer points.

Notice that the circle follows a clockwise direction. This keeps your HA's shields — assuming they have any — turned toward the enemy. Since enemy missle troops fire at the closet unit, it's always firing at a unit that has its shield up.

This, and the movement, and the thin line, and the fact that enemy overshoots fall into the empty middle of the circle reduces the effect of enemy missiles.

=========

That's a good point about how more experienced troops can circle and still make hits.

With inexperienced units, circling protects you — and your opponents — from missile fire.

[John_Longarrow]

I have noticed that circles make great targets for reletavely flat trajectory weapons (such as crossbows), especially when they are between my troops and my real targets.

[Doug-Thompson]

I have noticed that circles make great targets for reletavely flat trajectory weapons (such as crossbows), especially when they are between my troops and my real targets.

That would make sense. The shots that miss a target on the shielded "outside" of the circle would travel on and hit the opposite side.

[John_Longarrow]

Plus I've got a nice large target that keeps moving in front of my bolts

[alpaca]

I just remembered a tactic I used with the Armenians in RTW. I backed up my HAs with heavy cavalry (cataphracts). The AI would always send their light cav to chase my horse archers. So I placed a cataphract behind every two HA units in circle mode to intercept these.
When I had annihilated all their light cav, and decimated their ranks by the constant fire, I would charge home my cats to victory. It worked every time.
Usually, I won battles with k/d ratios of about 10-15 against the Egyptians, which allowed me to fend them off with my few poor provinces against stack after stack, slowly moving into the offense.