Battle accounts and discussion

**Innocentius** · 02-03-2008, 18:05

I just thought this seemed like a good idea...

There are guides for almost everything related to MTW by now, and there's already the Pics & history of your empire thread, so the point of this thread is to put more emphasis on what is after all the most entertaining part of the TW games: battles.

The intention of this thread is to serve as some form of FAQ and guide regarding battles, so that we won't need a new thread for every battle-related question in MTW. Retell your more memorable battles, discuss battles and tactics and ask whatever battle-related questions you might have. This would also be good place to have a collection of useful links. I'll start with the perhaps most important one, frogbeastegg's The Complete Total War Unit Guide.

Feel free to post away.

PS. I recall this very detailed guide on the combination of Halberdiers and Arbalesters posted about a year ago, unfortunatel I can't recall who wrote it and where it was posted. Does anyone else also remember this?

**ArtistofWarfare** · 02-03-2008, 21:20

Originally Posted by Innocentius

I just thought this seemed like a good idea...

There are guides for almost everything related to MTW by now, and there's already the Pics & history of your empire thread, so the point of this thread is to put more emphasis on what is after all the most entertaining part of the TW games: battles.

The intention of this thread is to serve as some form of FAQ and guide regarding battles, so that we won't need a new thread for every battle-related question in MTW. Retell your more memorable battles, discuss battles and tactics and ask whatever battle-related questions you might have. This would also be good place to have a collection of useful links. I'll start with the perhaps most important one, frogbeastegg's The Complete Total War Unit Guide.

Feel free to post away.

PS. I recall this very detailed guide on the combination of Halberdiers and Arbalesters posted about a year ago, unfortunatel I can't recall who wrote it and where it was posted. Does anyone else also remember this?

First off, great thread...I'll be reading it quite a bit and contributing soon enough .

As for the Halberdiers and Arbalesters- I don't recall the thread you're referring to but I mentioned using spearman/pikeman/halberdiers as a "fence" in front of several units of Arbalesters. It can be an absolutely devastating defensive strategy...

**Innocentius** · 02-03-2008, 23:48

More useful links:

Banquo's Ghost's Cuman campaign contains quite a few interesting battle lineups for the steppe factions.

And the one I was asking about earlier, MeglaGnome's guide on Halberdiers and Arbalesters Part 1, and Part 2.

I'm planning on writing some kind of essay on the same combo of troops, since my opinon differs slightly from the approach presented in MeglaGnome's guide.

**bamff** · 02-04-2008, 00:52

Originally Posted by Innocentius

I just thought this seemed like a good idea...

I think it's a very good idea!

Originally Posted by Innocentius

PS. I recall this very detailed guide on the combination of Halberdiers and Arbalesters posted about a year ago, unfortunatel I can't recall who wrote it and where it was posted. Does anyone else also remember this?

I recall this as well....but sadly I do not recall the author either....from memory there was a small series of articles covering terrain issues, use of screening troops, etc, etc....

**Aldgilles** · 02-04-2008, 01:47

Thanks Innocentius, that's a great link for some extra information! And thanks to MeglaGnome, of course) I myself have had some great results with a lineup of alerbasters with chivalric sergeants against the Horde, but normally I prefer feudal sergeants for their higher morale and slightly better attack. But in a purely defensive battle the chivalric sergeants are clearly better.

**bamff** · 02-04-2008, 02:03

Originally Posted by bamff

I recall this as well....but sadly I do not recall the author either....from memory there was a small series of articles covering terrain issues, use of screening troops, etc, etc....

That will teach me to prevaricate with my posts!

Of course, it was MeglaGnome.....maybe I should demote myself once more to "Village Idiot"!

**Innocentius** · 02-04-2008, 15:47

Alright, I have a question: How the heck do I use my horse archers properly?

In an ongoing Byzantine campaign of mine, it has become embarrasingly obvious how horrible I am at dealing with horse archers, whether they are mine or the enemy's. I don't use vanilla Horse Archers myself, but the Seljuk's did so to a large extent (basically all they can recruit right from start are HA's, Spearmen and Turcoman Horse). In my first large battle against the Seljuk's I was besieging Rum and the Sultan sallied out with reinforcements from Armenia and Edessa. I had my army lined up in a very traditional manner with Treb. Archers behind a wall of vanilla Spearmen (my Armoured Spearmen were on their way to the front) and with my Kataphraktoi (including the Emperor) on one flank and the Varangian Guard on the other.

The Seljuk's began by charging two units of Armenian Heavy Cavalry right into my line. Needless to say, they were routed. But then the Sultan sat back and let his HA's do his dirty work. Lacking light cavalry as I did, I could to little to drive them off, and it ended with a long firefight between my archers and the HA's. Normally, this wouldn't have been too much of a problem, but unfortunately I had no great height advantage and the map wasn't really ideal for defending. On my left flank, where my Varangians were, the enemy even controlled a slight hill (or knoll, rather) giving them the advantage in height. Also, it seems as if HA's have more ammo than Treb. Archers, or they just fire slower, 'cause they continued to pepper my men long after I had run out of arrows. This of course caused my rather heavy casualties, and when the Seljuk's finally took their infantry and remaining heavy cavalry to attack me head-on, I regarded it as a relief. My enemies were easily beaten and I managed to capture the Sultan.

However, although I sustained hardly any casualties in the melee, I realised that I needed a better way to deal with enemy horse archers. My Varangian Guard, which was at full strength at the onset of battle, was down to 43 men after it, most of if not all of them were killed by enemy HA's. My Spearmen also took heavy casualties since they lacked any real armour. Later on in the campaign, I tried Byz. Lancers as HA-chasers, with mixed results. I managed to drive them off, but never caught them and eventually only exhausted my own men. This bought my own archers time, but I still couldn't kill of those pesky Turcomans. With traditional Catholic armies, I rarely have this problem, at least not in High and Late, since Arbalesters can rout enemy missile cavalry before they can do any real harm, but how do you deal with this in Early? Ideas/suggestions?

And then, on to the second problem of mine: How do I use my own missile cavalry?

Once I got Byzantine Cavalry, I tried to keep two units of them in each army of mine - both for offence and defence. To put it simply, I usually deploy my army like this:

Black being my general's BG (the position of which varies according to the situation).
Green being my spearmen.
Blue being my archers (I sometimes put the archers up front in offensive battles).
Red being some form of flanking units (usually Byz. Infantry or Kataphraktoi).
And Yellow being my missile cavalry (Byz. Cavalry)

This setup varies of course, and I usually bring a lot more cavalry to battles than the picture suggests. Anyway, my BC's usually manage to inflict some casualties and will, if they are extremely lucky, lure one or two units of infantry away from the main army. Mostly though, they are attacked by enemy cavalry and retreat until they reach the edge of the map where they are engaged and killed/routed, nullifying whatever casualties they've previously inflicted. Even if they are chased by infantry, the same scenario occurs. By the time they are cornered, I have enough to do watching over the main battle and whenever I have actually diverted time to try and save the BC's by running them back to the middle of the map, they fail miserably in their maneuvering and get caught by the enemy anyway. This means I sometimes have battles where 90% or more of my casualties consists of my HA's. To put it simple: They kill 30 enemies and then loose 30 men themselves, after which they rout.

The only instance when I found them useful was in Naples when the Pope invaded with an army of Spearmen and UM only. Since their stats are good enough to take on UM's head on, they proved quite useful, but as soon as an enemy of mine fields cavalry of their own, they're useless. How are you supposed to use these guys? I have ceased recruiting new BC's now, and the ones I have left I keep behind my spearwall until the enemy routs and they can serve as chasers (which Byz. Lancers do better anyway).

**BAD** · 02-04-2008, 17:21

Originally Posted by Innocentius

This setup varies of course, and I usually bring a lot more cavalry to battles than the picture suggests. Anyway, my BC's usually manage to inflict some casualties and will, if they are extremely lucky, lure one or two units of infantry away from the main army. Mostly though, they are attacked by enemy cavalry and retreat until they reach the edge of the map where they are engaged and killed/routed, nullifying whatever casualties they've previously inflicted. Even if they are chased by infantry, the same scenario occurs. By the time they are cornered, I have enough to do watching over the main battle and whenever I have actually diverted time to try and save the BC's by running them back to the middle of the map, they fail miserably in their maneuvering and get caught by the enemy anyway. This means I sometimes have battles where 90% or more of my casualties consists of my HA's. To put it simple: They kill 30 enemies and then loose 30 men themselves, after which they rout.

The only instance when I found them useful was in Naples when the Pope invaded with an army of Spearmen and UM only. Since their stats are good enough to take on UM's head on, they proved quite useful, but as soon as an enemy of mine fields cavalry of their own, they're useless. How are you supposed to use these guys? I have ceased recruiting new BC's now, and the ones I have left I keep behind my spearwall until the enemy routs and they can serve as chasers (which Byz. Lancers do better anyway).

I normally only use horse archers ALOT at the beggining of a battle to take some casualties on targets who are going to be a meal in H2H. As soon as the approaching army gets to close I retreat them (running) to maximum firing distance and repeat. I keep doing this until they are back at my lines of defence. Then I'll use them at the flanks to either get a nice flank charge (rear if I am lucky) or just continue peppering approaching troops with arrows over the conflict in the centre. I use them for chasing down routers too they normally have a good recovery rate due to low armour and are fast too. When they run out of ammo I'll normally retreat them and bring on re-inforcements.

They effectively combine archers, flankers and router chasers into one troop type. Meaning I can have more of the speicalised guys. If I have two Horse archer units and use them like above it means I have no need for light cavalry, they can replace an archer unit, good enough horse archers can even replace heavy cavalry (Boyars, Byzantine Cavalry, Faris).

I just like their diversity. They fill hole's in an army till I can train some more specialised troops.

Specifically don't Byzantine cavalry units come with command stars a lot of the time too? I know it's not really a problem for the Byzantine's with their Jedi prince's but it's still a nice gain. Think I noticed the same for Faris too.

**Peasant Phill** · 02-04-2008, 17:36

A few ways to get rid of ennemy HA's:

- Arrow barrage: HA's will normally lose a missile duel. Just make sure you have enough archer units in your army when facing an ennemy that uses HA's and concentrate your fire to make a HA unit rout/retreat faster

- Chasing them off: You can catch up to HA's with light to medium cavalry. It's not that hard to ambush a HA unit with 2 cav units oo your own. If you're Byzantium, you should have access to steppe cavalry, these are ideal to take down or at least chase of HA units. They'll probably be tired afterwards but they don't need much fighting power in there role as light cavalry.

- The SHC-tric: I discovered this tactic during a Volga-Bulgarian campaign. I was relying heavily on steppe heavy cavalry and came in contact with both western as eastern armies. I've noticed that most units of HA going up against SHC will lose one way or the other. SHC are armoured and will outlast all most other HA units in a pure missile duel and if they do catch up the ennemies HA are really done for. I don't think this is the case in vanilla MTW (VI) but in the XL-mod they even have AP missiles making them a sure win even when facing more armoured HA's. Just let them duel with another HA unit and wait for the chance to charge and decimate anything they're facing.

**macsen rufus** · 02-04-2008, 18:08

When I'm using HAs (of whatever flavour) in defence I usually do pretty much as BAD described, what I call a "retreating forward defence". Also, as the attacker tends to home in on the main part of your army, it's quite easy to get your HAs to the flanks when they have no cavalry to chase you down, so you get enfillade benefits. I also like to get at least one HA unit behind the enemy, which has two general outcomes - either you get to shoot the enemy general in the back a few times, or his entire army's advance becomes disorganised as he tries to deal with you. Either is a gain

Offensively, I often use a HA screen, 4-6 HA units spread across the field, well in advance of the main body. Use these to disrupt enemy formations, weaken any particularly troublesome melee units (eg Varangians

), and pull any impetuous types out into exposed locations, at which point you can do the HA sandwich.

Basically, HAs aren't battle winners, but they do shorten the odds. And once they're out of arrows they make good, fast router-chasers, or should be retired in larger battles in favour of something tougher. I think Turcoman Horse are about my favourites, as they have a bit of punch to them in melee (though benefit from some buffing and a province valour bonus), but are faster than SHCs, very good all-rounders IMHO. For the HRE in early the mounted crossbows are invaluable.