How can I hold back the Moors?

[Jackie Chan's Brother Wang...]

I'm in real trouble in my English campaign at the moment. The year is around about 1270 and the Moors own all of Spain and Southern France and sadly the regions I was holding in Northern France were taken in a brutal Norwegian incursion.

My only region in mainland Europe now consists of a Fortress in Eastern France, and that's looking like it's about to fall any turn now.

I've launched an invasion force into Spain, not out of the hope of actually conquering it (The Moors are way too strong), but to raid and pillage basically, just to try and put a dent in their unstoppable war machine.

Alright so I've got a few problems...

1. The Moors military seems to consist of millions of men, I destroy two full stacks in a bloody battle for a castle and 4 more pop up from Spain and kill the remaining survivors....sticky situation.

2. I have nothing to stop the Moors! I was basically banking on getting some stronger units to finally stop the Moorish invasion of Europe and drive them back into North Africa, but no luck, I'm stuck with the odd unit of Feudal Knights and Spearmen Sergeants against their waves of heavily armoured spearmen and .... Christian Guard

My hope was that since I've apparently been told that firelocks were in the works, then I would be able to build them and use modern weaponry to counteract the Moors strength which is armour, but no luck, I've upgraded Nottingham with everything possible, bar changing it to a city, and the best unit I can get is dismounted feudal knights, which strangely seem to do worse against the Moors than Spearmen Sergeants do.

Is there a certain point where firearms become available for development? I got the message/video saying they were invented, but I'm guessing you have to wait till a certain date to recruit firelock units ? Does anyone know any tactics for holding back the unstoppable force that is THE MOORS!

[k/t]

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=426143

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=464736

[Jackie Chan's Brother Wang...]

Bombard - 1353
Grand Bombard - 1375
Basilisk - 1493

What about firelocks?

[Gogolometro]

Hm, first a bad, very bad news for ya, at firearms english suck, badly. Even after next hundred years you will not get it good units of them. The good news is you got magdonels. The very good news is, in 1270 is the event of english archers. Yap, the mighty England strike back. The very good news is, you are at 30 years from new era event, this mean great mercenary troops and some english infantry flavor for you. Other great news is, you got magdonels, this mean you dont care, armored or not you kill them in fire pots.
Suggestion, never use against muslims the armored units with great confidence if are not great cavalry. Their speed, range and javelins will make you shaken in tears. You have some tools, billmans to tear bodyguards in pieces, great longbows to deal them at range and some nice infantry when is need it. Play like english standard, 12 units of archers per stack.

[Jackie Chan's Brother Wang...]

Hm, first a bad, very bad news for ya, at firearms english suck, badly. Even after next hundred years you will not get it good units of them. The good news is you got magdonels. The very good news is, in 1270 is the event of english archers. Yap, the mighty England strike back. The very good news is, you are at 30 years from new era event, this mean great mercenary troops and some english infantry flavor for you. Other great news is, you got magdonels, this mean you dont care, armored or not you kill them in fire pots.
Suggestion, never use against muslims the armored units with great confidence if are not great cavalry. Their speed, range and javelins will make you shaken in tears. You have some tools, billmans to tear bodyguards in pieces, great longbows to deal them at range and some nice infantry when is need it. Play like english standard, 12 units of archers per stack.

Thanks for the advice mate! You've really rekindled my eagerness to continue this campaign!

[Alfonzo over Innsmouths]

Hm, first a bad, very bad news for ya, at firearms english suck, badly. Even after next hundred years you will not get it good units of them.

Just to add to this, the Moors will get Handgunners before you do, and when they get big, they throw full stacks of these things at you. Mix that up with the guard mode "fire-while-still-engaged' glitch, and it's damn impossible to properly hack them to bits with infantry. And when you try to use cavalry, the combined weight of fire from Fari's and handgunners, not to mention camels and Christian Knights, and you're boned. What's even worse, the handgunners have insanely high defence, so firing back at them with archers is useless.

So, yeah, hit them ASAP. I had to fight them off in early period as Scotland and Aragorn,. and in both cases I was stopped by these buggers - even as Scotland, and raiding their back settlements, I still got buried by them.

[Alesianduke]

Use more artillery... for example in my Castille y Leon campaign in which I am at about year 1261 or so i i had more victories than loses against moorish full stacks with my prince or king and their armies always had about 1-2 trebuchets, 1-2 catapults and 1 magonel, some range units (for me that was about 2-3 Jinetes and archers or some javelinmen), cavalry and infantry of course but most of the time their infantry was killed of by artillery and archers before they even engaged mine and sometimes their infantry when it reached my lines after being loosing about 20% of each division's men they got scared and run... back into artillery fire.
Most of the Moorish stacks had about 20% militia spearmen units or crossbowmen and the rest heavy infantry and cavalry, some desert archers, mounted archers... and I fought some battles against multiple armies... the Iberian Peninsula in my campaign has 11 heroic victories so far and 9 are mine... 2 are theirs
Anyway... that's what my armies were made of so far... aaa and by infantry and cavalry I mean light men at arms, spear militia, mercs, knights of santiago (mounted and on foot) and some feudal knights (not many because most of the ones i made either stayed in fortress's which were battered by Aragon or Portugal or attacked them in small contingents when their cities were weak defended).

p.s. also it would be good to take some fortress's and regroup there... they are hard to conquer by the AI (at least on hard difficulty in my campaign).

[Zigama]

"fire-while-still-engaged' glitch

That's a glitch?!?! I always noticed missile troops did that when my infantry attack them (especially on walls) and it's always devastating. I thought it was one of SS's features though, because only the ones at the back shoot

[Gogolometro]

Imagine I play Byzantines. Is not to far from your situation. Yes I have a huge empire who is composed from Levant, soon all Egypt, Anatolia, Crimeea, Greece, Macedonia and soon Bulgaria and Wallachia. I took Bari and Palermo, and in my latest war on eastern front, I start conquering north Africa with the city south of Tunis. Tunis is a hard rock citatel who already eat 2 generals and a full stack of scutatoi and murtatoi. Why? Because moors. This will look like a heresy, but in 1300, the main problem for me is not Venice, Hungary, rampanging Pope who is already in Touluse, even mongols after almost 100 years war are not so big treat, in fact I am in offensive there in mongol empire conquering after a lot of bloody battles the provinces. I push west now to Mosul and Bagdad.
Back too moors. They got Iberia and all western north Africa starting from Tunis. In north their enemy is the Pope. In east is me. They got many stacks, they are rich and what is more disturbing, they got great units to make my fight hard. I am pretty sure I can outnumber them if I not have an active war with mongols and hungarians. So my force is not overwhelming. In other perspective, I like is like this.
Back to topic, what make moors so special?
First, their spears stats dont tell you all. Second, their spears are more than a match for my scutatoi, contaroi are out of the question. Fari are great unit, like mameluke are too. Never imagine skytion or cavalary can match them. They dont. Maybe I have great murtadoi, but never enough versus their desert archers mass. Plus other armored guys are coming.
One point in this are the arab cavalry and infantry. Never underestimate them. The arab cavalry is great on sand, I will not say Stradiotai are not great, but i will preffer always arab cavalry.
How you can beat them? Like I said befor, in a combo, archers, some spears, magdonels. Thanks for castophilakioi and murtadoi I feel a bit better. I am happy I not see camel gunners yet. What I am worried is mu lack of gunners. For me this exclude any frontal charge. Sit, wait, use arrows and flaming barrels. Charge when they retreat, regrup, wait next atack/wave/stack, and do it again.
Sounds a bit wierd when I compare with ugly mongols with silver or gold chevrons, but moors are a very nice faction. With many AoR. Next campaign I will play them.
For a fact, almost all time they kill cristian iberians. In less than 100 turns.

[k/t]

What about firelocks?

Did you read the second thread? Just the second post of it will suffice, I think.

[Irishpsycho]

Sure, you could sack every coastal settlement in Spain, Portugal, and north Africa, and that would kill the Moors, but wouldn't it be more fun to beat them without mind warping the AI by just beating them head on?

If you want to do that, than as mentioned by others Mangonels are a must. They eat infantry. PERIOD. Use an army of Mangonels, Longbows, and any spearmen who can use the schiltron ability, then place them on a critical river crossing (preferably one with a bridge in a flat open area) and watch the orange bodies pile up. Let them attack you, and when they do, send a cheap unit of spearmen in schiltron to the middle of the bridge to hold them back, then tell all your missles (especially the mangonels) to fire on the enemy as they all pack themselves onto the bridge. You'll win so fast you might actually miss having you're ass handed to you by the Moors.

[David93]

Sure, you could sack every coastal settlement in Spain, Portugal, and north Africa, and that would kill the Moors, but wouldn't it be more fun to beat them without mind warping the AI by just beating them head on?
Yea sure, dont exploit a.i. stupidity
If you want to do that, than as mentioned by others Mangonels are a must. They eat infantry. PERIOD. Use an army of Mangonels, Longbows, and any spearmen who can use the schiltron ability, then place them on a critical river crossing (preferably one with a bridge in a flat open area) and watch the orange bodies pile up. Let them attack you, and when they do, send a cheap unit of spearmen in schiltron to the middle of the bridge to hold them back, then tell all your missles (especially the mangonels) to fire on the enemy as they all pack themselves onto the bridge. You'll win so fast you might actually miss having you're ass handed to you by the Moors.

Then you say this, are you joking, your just swaping exploits.

[Zigama]

Sounds like a job for Charles Martel

I guess if they're just using hordes of militia you could make tons of archers and try to win that way. I haven't tried England in SS yet, but I wouldn't count on gunpowder as a lifesaver. Mangonels also would be very very useful to counter tons of infantry...

[Liandro]

Make a few small cheap fleets, throw a bunch of cheap troops in them, then take those boats and thoroughly sack Oporto, Lisbon, Silves, Granada, Murcia, Valencia, Barcelona and possibly Pamplona. Bring a catapult, and do not attack the towns unless you can take them by first attacking and retreating in the same turn, when you take the town, destroy everything, sell it all, then set taxes on high and get outta there, go on to the next town, do it to at least two places simultaneously, you'll see their power drop fast as they can no longer replace their super stacks, they can still make stack, but of junk unarmored militia. If they have a small garrison, just auto resolve, but never attack unless you can get back to the boat in the same turn you sacked. Sacking a town instead of occupying can also boost your economy, make you a scourge, but you'll survive and after a few turns, thrive.

[David93]

Could you upload your save for me?

[Liandro]

That might be considered an exploit but plenty of armies left their considered safe domains and went forward leaving a skeleton crew to defend, so it's really not that much of an exploit, just what happens, the army moves forward and the lousy people get stuck "defending the base"

[Ichon]

It would be better if AI were scripted to consider any ocean coast an enemy border. Then it might leave enough garrisons behind.

As for beating Moors- they have lots of stacks but comparatively weak in the period 1300-1500. If you are still in 1200s then your few cavalry and good infantry might be overwhelmed but castle defense or putting your best cavalry and generals into a single army should be able to beat several Moor armies consecutively. Sacking and pillaging military buildings of as many of the Moors castles you can reach will also slow them down greatly but you will still face hordes of militias. I find it preferable to leave their economy intact so that they can afford ransoms for their defeated armies. Then once ransom is paid go and defeat the retreating army again. Can earn you 5-20,000 per turn for awhile.

[Jackie Chan's Brother Wang...]

I kind of feel like using an army of Mangonels is exploiting, if not outright cheating...

[k/t]

It's not a glitch. It doesn't make sense for every soldier in the unit to draw his sword when only four of them are actually fighting.

[Alesianduke]

Vs. the Moors on the battlefield always let them come to you if their army is greater or has the same strength... and by "you" i mean the infantry lines... use artillery and especially catapults and magonels or archers that have a long range attack... i attack them in the flanks and behind their lines only with my cavalry... 4-5 units of heavy cavalry and 2-3 or missile cavalry... smash their artillery and missile cavalry/archers (if you can the archers) and that's it... they will be force to attack you and when they will do that hit them from behind... and it is all over (bad thing the missile cavalry units take good hits and also the heavy cavalry in some cases, because it depends on the enemy).

In my campaign I just destroyed the moors in 1281... and the last fight was between my kings army and theirs and they had superior numbers, arab cavalry, 2 units of granadine lancers, artillery and their infantry was made of christian guards, arab infantry and desert archers... in total almost a full stack army... it was hard and my main army which is experienced because it battled the moors from the start and also the aragonese (3 gold upgrades for each cavalry unit - 3 santiago knights and 1 feudal, king 1 gold, santiago foot knights 2 divisions max'ed out, light men at arms, 2 feudal knights silver, 2 passive crosbowmen and 1 archers division on silver upgrades, magonel 2 gold, 2 catapults gold, 1 trebuchet silver)... i got to say the units were decimated (not all, especially the cavalry and heavy infantry) but I won...
So... my army that fought the most battles against the Moors and won all (and I play all battles) was made of these units:
Artillery: 1 trebuchet, 2 catapults, 1 magonel;
Range units: sometimes 3 passive crossbowmen or 2 passive crossbowmen and 1 archers (depends on the loses in battles and the fastest way to replenish troops);
Missile cavalry: 3 Jinetes
Heavy Cavalry: General + 3 knights of santiago / feudal knights (idem range units - i had 1 merc. frankish knights for some turns after a major battle once )
Infantry: 2 foot knights of santiago, 4 light men at arms / 2 foot knights of santiago + 1 light men at arms + 3 dismounted feudal knights.

One weird thing though with the Moors... when i offered ransom they always refused, until their last 6 turns... they accepted every ransom since than.