Beat Roman Legionaries by HA

[AqD]

Roman legionaries are the best heavy infantry in RTW. They have the best armours, high morale, and very good stamina. If you just throw HAs to meet the legionaries, all of your HAs would just break formation, run out of arrows, and be pursued to the corners on battle map and finally get slaughtered when they have no where to run.

So, here are the tips against legionaries (and other heavy infantry too):

1. Never engage the enemy when you have fewer units - you would risk running of ammo.
2. You need the top-quality horse archers, like Sarmatian/Parthian HAs in RTR (which get 50 arrows instead of 30).
3. Disable cantabrian circle - it's useless in close range (in fact it hurts).
4. Use tight formation. It increases the casuality, but you need to group as many HAs as possible in one area to maximize the fire power, also it'd be useful when you're forced to charge. Change to loose formation only when the enemy has been seriously weakened and there is enough room on the battle map for maneuver.
5. Turn on "fire at will", you have to, because your HAs will be shooting while they're moving. Also turn on skimisher mode.
6. Then it begins: encircle the enemy and keep trying to move them to the center where enemy units stand. The skimisher mode would force them to run away when they get too close, but your command would tell them to do otherwise - so, you'll see your HAs keep running toward the enemy, and then running away, and firing arrows while they're doing so.
7. Now it's half done, the rest is to keep the encirclement (if you fail, you lose), fill in any gap left by the enemy, and drag away HAs if they hit the enemy unfortunately.
8. If you've used half of ammo but there are still many enemies, you'd have to launch charge attack. That sounds silly but it does work: select 2 to 4 full-size HAs in the back/right/left flanks of one enemy unit, put to 2 groups, and let the first group charge from different directions. Usually such charge could break enemy moral and cause it rout - if not, you must retreat the the first group immediately, and at the same time, charge by the 2nd group, and then the first group.
9. If the above method still fails, then you think yourself already lose. Stop fire-at-will, group all HAs, and try to pick up the enemy units one by one if possible, but more often your HAs would rout after an unsucessful charge...

The tactic has been tested in Rome Total Realism (Platinum 1.9). I beat a full stack of post-marian roman legionaries (some are first cohorts) 1:1, and macedonian hypaspists/pikes when outnumbered by 1.5:1, where the HA charge was first used.

Last note: don't try this in forest or places where you cannot see enemy and your units clearly.


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LIVE SEX WEBSHOWS

[68 Powers]

you can beat pretty much anything with HA's...

[J.B.]

*Closes book of Basic Knowledge*

[zedestroyer]

you can beat pretty much anything with HA's...

Cataphract Archers own horse archers.

[Selifator]

I have defeated cataphract archers with horse archers in multiplay.

[68 Powers]

they are still horse archers arent they?

[Selifator]

Correct, most horse archers are horse archers.

[Prince_of_Macedon]

Yes, a horse is a horse, of course of course...

[zedestroyer]

No they aren't horse archers, those have little armor and fight mostly at distance, Cataphract Archers are heavily armored units ready to fight at a distance and in close combat.

[AqD]

you can beat pretty much anything with HA's...

I dunno about HAs vanilla RTW, which I never played (I don't like the weird colors ). But if that's true then I think it's seriously unbalanced.....

In RTR arrows are useless from the front, for anyone who has a shield. Worse, its attack points are lower than the armour points of all heavy infantry/cavalry. And some units such as cataphracts just cannot be killed. Medium/Heavy cavalry could kill HAs very quickly, by pursuing them into the edges of the battle map, with minimal loss. Without careful control your HAs would soon run out of ammo and be pursued, separated, unable to group to make any killing, and be forced to engage in melee.

Well, perhaps it's not a good place to post the tactics here, it seems battle in vanilla is completely different
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MEDICALMARIJUANA DISPENSARIES

[Double A]

dude, if its medium cal. vs persian calvary, the HAs would own

[Selifator]

As aqd said, this differs in mods. Not every mod has the same statistics or unit speeds. Still, with carefull control and management, horse archers can be very dangerous.

[conquestor]

cataract archers are too slow but are good when the enemy gets close.

[Xavier Dragnesi]

Well, a cataphract is still a horse. It just has armour. And as conquestor said, they CAs are slow, but all you need to do tell them to fire but not move them much until the enemy gets closer, then they are pretty awesome.

[Aristarchus]

I just started playing with Scythian horse archers, and find though their melee attack is weak, they do incite the enemy to chase them - and once an enemy unit is isolated, it can be easily surrounded and charged from all sides with a small general or maiden unit (for the beginning chargers) combined with a whole mass of horse archers. Being engulfed by weak HAs is still deadly. Then set the HAs back on fire mode and draw out another unit. That's one thing I learned fighting against Scythia - never chase them and keep your units together.

[pwijnands]

It also helps to disable fire-at-will just before your horse archers charge the enemy. I've seen horse archers charge without any melee weapon.

[Selifator]

Well, horse archers tend to keep shooting for a volley or two when you turn fire at will off. I only charge with them when I have surrounded and decimated the enemy.

[Prince_of_Macedon]

It also helps if you stop firing at Legionaries from the front. That is such a waste of arrows. Maneuver behind or to the side of those Romans, and then unleash the fury of the Steppes.

[Master_Templar]

I remember playing a H\H game in Roma Surrectum. I conquered Selucid, Egyptian, Parthian, Pontic, Bosporian, Pergamum, Rebel, and Sarmatian forces using stacks of 20 Armenian horse archers. My most powerful stack, having about 1 gold chevron, could even take out silver shields, and Pergamum heavy infantry, who btw, are very hard to beat with HA. The biggest nusiance though was the Parthians. They seemed to top my highest casualty list, about 100 per battle compared to the normal 0-20.

[Aristarchus]

It also helps if you stop firing at Legionaries from the front. That is such a waste of arrows. Maneuver behind or to the side of those Romans, and then unleash the fury of the Steppes.

This is the best advice ever. I've been zooming in close to see just where the cohorts are holding their shields and maneuvering around them. When they charge, they hold it to protect their left side. Gladiators, even with their small shields, seem to be indestructible and require a combined charge surrounding them, and it's hard to get them to rout. I fear for when I start seeing urban cohorts coming at me. The Romans - for about 40 years now - are not nearly as frightening as the Egyptians with their masses of chariots and royal archers!