Will be divided into mostly-infantry divisions and mostly-cavalry divisions.
Starting Army: Legion I
General: Faction Leader
Spear Infantry: 4+ Byzantine Spearmen
Archers: 5+ Trebizonid Archers
Comment: This army is lean, cheap, and pretty much all you need to begin conquering the less defended settlements, especially rebel settlements. The faction leader provides heavy cavalry support, and helps these troops retain their morale in a close battle. (Usually because the faction leader has high command and lots of battle experience. Seeing as the bodyguard is one of the toughest cavalry units in the game, and it automatically replenishes its numbers, there is no reason not to use him extensively in battle, and more experience in battle usually leads to higher command and resistance to damage, possibly higher chivalry or dread as well.)
The spearmen are there to help take out any generals that might be in the settlement, or any other kinds of cavalry. They can also pin enemy troops down, while your archers get free kills on the pinned units, especially any heavily armored foes, because they will be most effective against such units. Killing heavy infantry with archers and losing a few spearmen in the process is an excellent trade. Any time you can trade one damaged spear unit for an expensive heavy infantry unit, you've won the exchange. The more experience with killing your archers have, the better they will fare in battle. Armor them up and replenish their numbers so they survive and gain experience.
If you end up getting outmaneuvered and you must take refuge in a castle or town, having spears, heavy cavalry, and lots of good archers will help you defeat superior forces.
This army is not a world-beating force, but for its cost, it is extremely potent and effective. Because of this, you could spam similar armies and combine them on the battlefield, using pincer maneuvers, attacking the enemy from two sides effectively. This force can also be expanded upon when you get the money, making it a legitimate force to use in more difficult situations.
Starting Cavalry: Equites I
General: Faction Heir
Horse Archers: 6+ Skythikon
Reserves/mercenaries. (Turkomans, for example. Alan Light Cavalry. Armenian cavalry when necessary.)
Comment: This division is very mobile, very cheap, and very deadly against everything except full armies or heavy cavalry divisions. Because it is so maneuverable on the campaign map, you will be able to outrun slower forces and avoid battles you can't win, assuming your spy network informs you of where the enemy is. This force is excellent when combined with the Legion, especially as a reserve force. The horse archers work well under AI control, because they fire and retreat automatically, and usually can react faster automatically than the general can issue retreat orders. Less micro-management needed works to your advantage.
Skythikon are pretty worthless in melee, so it is important that they cause damage and then flee. They are only useful as horse archers or mopping up routing units; they have low morale and fighting ability. Fortunately we aren't expecting to engage in melee with these units; they're for harassment only, then they will seek to withdraw or allow reinforcements to defeat the enemy. But, this is just a starter division, designed to provide the most sting with the least amount of venom. This force won't break a budget, and can provide a very large amount of headache in various tactical situations. It can also move ahead of the main infantry force, and lay seige to less defended settlements, and break sallying forces by damaging and wearing them out.
When you have the funds, adding better horse archers and heavy cavalry will turn this division into a galloping nightmare for your enemies. In a pinch, especially in the beginning of the campaign, there are lots of excellent mercenary cavalry that can be hired for a single difficult battle, then sent on their merry way. Except for the , those are excellent light cavalry which you might consider keeping on in spite of their cost, because you can recruit more, gain experience, and improve their armor.
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Expansion Army: Legion I- This force combines with Legion I when I can afford it.
Heavy Infantry: 4+ Byzantine infantry or above. Dismounted Lancers, Dismounted Latinkon, Varangian guard.
Artillery: 1-2+ Catapult, Trebuchet
Heavy Cavalry: 1 (General's bodyguard, mercenary cavalry, Byz Lancers, or Latinkon)
Reserves/mercenaries. (Militia infantry, militia archers, extra spears, extra archers, or extra cavalry)
Comments: Adding heavy infantry, especially the Latinkon or Varangian guard, makes a big difference in situations where you're facing a large number of enemy infantry or higher quality infantry, or taking well-defended settlements.
Byzantine Infantry has high defense and very low cost, and will chew through archers and militia and spearmen easily. Their attack level is high enough to be formidable. They also perform seemingly just as well as Dismounted Lancers, so why pay extra? Add extra infantry to the battle instead of spending more on fewer, only marginally better troops. However, it seems that Dismounted Lancers can be upgraded with an armorer to much better armor than the usual Byzantine infantry, so if you need truly elite forces, but cheaper than Dismounted Latinkon, you can go with fully upgraded Dismounted Lancers, to give you the defensive power you want.
If you want devastating attack power, you want
Varangian guard. Even without upgrades, this unit is terrifying in battle.
Expansion Cavalry: Equites I- This force combines with Equites I when I can afford it.
Second general: Any poor governor who is better used as cannon fodder
Heavy Cavalry: 6+ (Byz Lancers, Latinkon, or Vardariotai)
Reserves/mercenaries (Byz Cavalry, mercs, replacements for other cavalry)
Comments: Adding heavy cavalry to my first all-cavalry division makes this a true fighting force, one that is extremely difficult to beat. What this force doesn't do is capture enemy settlements that are well-garrisoned, not without starving them out. Unless you automate some of these units, you'll find that micromanagement on the battlefield is often too much for a cavalry group this size to fight as effectively as it could.
The strength of this cavalry division is that if you divide it up, and send smaller, more maneuverable groups into battle from different sides of the field, you can end up harassing the enemy from all sides with horse archer fire, and flanking the enemy easily with your heavy cavalry. The downside is that any AI-controlled units tend to send their general directly into melee, often killing your family member in the process, so I don't recommend automating any of your general's bodyguard units unless it is a last resort.
This force also combines well with the Legion I army, providing horse archer and heavy cavalry support on the flanks and rear of the enemy, rendering almost any battle ridiculously easy to win. This force can move ahead of the main Legion, and lay siege to well-defended settlements and render sallying forces almost completely useless. The Legion I army can fight other armies and take other settlements while the Equites I army builds seige equipment like rams and ladders and siege towers and so forth, waiting for the Legion I army to show up to take the settlement. Often times the artillery in Legion I will slow them down, but when they do show up, they already have ladders and siege equipment waiting, and the garrison has already lost men to desertion/hunger, so you can begin the battle immediately as if you had been laying siege for however long your Equites force has been surrounding it.
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Legion II- This force is created when I become rich enough to afford another expensive stack of troops.
General: Highest command general (non-Faction Leader/heir)
Heavy Infantry: 6+ Varangian Guard
Spearmen: 5+ Byzantine Spearmen
Artillery: 4+ Catapults, Trebuchhets
Archers: 4+ Byzantine Guard Archers
Comments: I designed this Legion to be quite self-sufficient and extremely dangerous in siege battles, forest battles, bridge battles, hill battles, and even dangerous in the open field, as dangerous as an army without much cavalry support can be.
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Equites II- This force is created when I become rich enough to afford yet another expensive stack of troops.
General: Second highest general (non-Faction Leader/heir)
Heavy Cavalry: 6+ Latinkon
Horse Archers: 6+ Byzantine Cavalry
Light Cavalry: 4+ Alan Light Cavalry (mercenaries)
Reserves: 3+ Vardariotai
Comments: I designed this Equites division to be powerful enough to take on just about any force, indeed powerful enough to hire some mercenary infantry to deal with the whole smashing of gates and so forth, with enough horse archer ammo to greatly reduce the size of a garrison force and enough melee power to be threatening even in some siege situations.
This force is also excellent for sallying, and could be quite impressive as a defensive force for any settlement, because they can sally forth and destroy artillery, harass those people with rams, and pepper the infantry to death and charge into the archer formations with near-impunity, because any siege force will likely have far fewer cavalry than you're fielding.
Like Equites I, this force isn't as effective or useful in certain situations, like forest battles, or battles where you're facing two or more large enemy forces coming at you at once, which the AI loves to throw at you. This force is also extremely expensive, and may be more firepower than you realistically need. The lack of artillery support or heavy infantry/spearmen makes it less effective in many situations than a more balanced force.
The idea behind this division is to be deployed where they are needed the most; on the front lines of a war between a huge, powerful enemy, taking them on in battle after battle, in situations specifically beneficial to horse archers and heavy cavalry.
This division can also be used as a deep cutting blade; rather than taking the enemy on by attacking his settlements closest to your borders, this highly mobile and self-sufficient group can outrun and outmaneuver enemy front-line defenses, and move deep into enemy territory, and attack your foe's main cities and recruiting centers, or pick off less-defended outlying settlements with near-impunity. When the enemy has to send a force to retake those lands or engage you, you can probably take them head-on and when you can't, you can easily withdraw, hide, split up, retreat, and otherwise elude the enemy and regroup elsewhere... while your main Legion attacks the enemy from the other side.
Your foe will have to divide his forces to deal with both armies, and the amount of damage this cavalry division can do by itself is pretty devastating, and the army needed to take it down would be very expensive. Meanwhile, an even more devastating force of heavy infantry will be able to march directly from settlement to settlement, with artillery, taking each city and castle with minimal resistance. If the enemy goes after this army, it can wall itself off easily in any castle or city and be very difficult to dislodge, while your cavalry force continues ripping apart his countryside.
These two swords have strengths and weaknesses, but when wielded together, they can become quite balanced. If necessary, you can divide both the Legion and the Equites in half and combine them with one another, giving yourself two huge and well-balanced individual armies, rendering these two forces more versatile than they would be by themselves, while retaining their specialization in siege/bridge/forest dominance or campaign map and open-field superiority.
These forces are quite expensive, and the only reason why I am going with forces such as these, which are often overkill, is because I intend to fully upgrade these forces, and keep them alive for as long as possible so they can gain experience, and then retrain them back to full strength. I want to win battles, but also survive them to a great extent, improving my kills-to-casualties ratio. Eventually, Equites I and Legion I will be relegated to defensive duty or disbanded altogether due to being obsolete, but Legion II and Equites II will become my main offensive force, with the power and intent to by themselves conquer entire factions in swift, efficient, and devastating manner.
The Ashes of Rome- Lands to Conquer
I have decided to plan my strategy for this session of Lands to Conquer in advance, to see how well my ideas hold up in practice. As always, the difficulty will be on Very Hard/Very Hard, and with a bit of a handicap since I'm attempting not to deviate from my planned moves once the campaign is underway. Unexpected wars and surprises of that nature I will take as strikes against me. Should I be forced to deviate completely from my chosen strategy, I will have to consider this campaign a defeat. If Emperor Comnenus or his successors cannot predict the moves of the enemy, then the enemies of Rome will take the Empire by surprise. If this happens, then the war-weary Greeks and subjects of the Emperor will grow tired of his incompetent rule, and support for the war will fall away, starting with the lower classes who always bear the brunt of the war, and ending with the professional soldiery, and possibly even open rebellion from the generals against the Emperor's rule.
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Originally Posted by johnhughthom
Silence is beautiful
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