Catholic Vs Desert

[seireikhaan]

Now, this might sound a bit contradictory, but I actually rather like knights in the desert vs the usual muslim armies. The trick is to make sure you can break your opponent within the first 5-10 minutes of battle and route them off the field. Most muslim troops cannot stand up directly to chivalric knights, with the exception of saracen infantry. And speaking of saracens, don't forget that they have terrible morale, so knights can still be useful if used early. If you dilly dally, your knights will be rather useless very soon. Since you seem to be in the later periods, I'd go with a heavy front line of chiv. knights, supported by vikings as your main infantry. Gallowglasses may have better attack and charge, but the extra morale that vikings have can be invaluable. Plus, make sure to have plenty of reinforcements, preferably clansmen/gallowglasses, both of whom can come in and wipe the floor with against any depleted/tired troops. As for bows, quite frankly, I don't like arbs and xbows vs muslims. Furthermore, I very much dislike vanilla archers. As the Danes, I usually build a lot of inns, and hire any decent bow troops I can afford. My personal favorite merc bowmen is Bulgarian Brigands, due to being not awful in hand to hand, and being easy on the budget despite being mercs. Now, if you bring in the Chiv. knights and you can't cause any mass routing before they get exhausted, you need to get them off the field ASAP, and replace them with a lighter cavalry, probably jinettes in your case. Jinettes are quite wonderful desert cavalry, and will manage to make it to the field in decent stamina position even if coming on as reinforcements.