Late period Macedonian composition and tactics

[AlphaDelta]

What is the recommended army composition and tactics for a late period Macedonian army?

The easy availability of heavy cavalry makes me want to keep rolling phalanxes. Even levy pikemen can hold a Roman army long enough to bring the hammer down on the rear of their army. The Roman style units (machairaphoroi/machairaphoroi elite and thorakitai) seem to be incapable of fighting 1:1 Roman, Iberian or Celtic units. Most of the descriptions mention these units being used to cover the flanks of phalanxes but they don't seem to kill fast enough to do much covering.

Slingers seem to have disappeared from my barracks though I liked them I was never convinced they did much more than harass.

Thureophoroi seem to be useless everywhere. Though I have noticed they can outrun the enemy (off the map).

Cheers

[ur-Lord Tedric]

What is the recommended army composition and tactics for a late period Macedonian army?

The easy availability of heavy cavalry ....

<ULT makes a note to add this evidence in for his discussion with the Team>

To be fair, the general standard tactics didn't change much. If things were 'perfect' (and we could get the battles realistic) then your army should be a mix of:

Phalanx core around which the rest operate;
Screened with a skirmish element;
Supported on its flanks (where the Phalanx is vulnerable) by Peltast/pseudo-Roman types who are more manoeuvrable;
Some couple of Light Cav each wing for skirmishing and harassing, let alone run down enemy troops;
& finally some of those heavy cavalry for the classic Macedonian/Successor sucker-punch.

[Sertorio]

Super punch wich by the way the macedonians lacked post-Alexander. The macedonian cavalry never again shined like in his era.
Polibius describes the composition that Tedric is refering too. Combination of phalanx, suport troops and cavalry. Thoug i have not played Macedon, while playing with Sparta phalanxs i liked having non-phalanx units, specially for hilly terrains.
Here you hve a good AAR by TheJim where i think he describes his army composition among other aspects.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=462701

PS: Reason of the cavalry low cost is balancing the AI. AI will not have cavalry in its armies otherwise.

[RafoutRoud]

Balearic slingers, nuff said.

[AlphaDelta]

I should mention that I'm running the older version not the latest beta so things might be different 'now'. I'm also not entirely sure that everything is running correctly as I installed RS II into a rather messy RTW directory. Naughty naughty.

Anyhow I've attached a screenshot of the type of armies I've been recruiting for the past 20 or 30 turns. They are much more fun to fight with than the phalanx pike wall, but unfortunately they seem to take more losses in the process. The javs they throw don't seem to be anywhere near as good as the pilum or javs the Iberians chuck.

There's a screenshot of my Macedonian empire in 602 auc. It took some serious sim city-ing to get those ex-Roman possessions to behave. I didn't even want them but Rome just wouldn't stop it's incessant poking.

I think that I'll do a fresh install and play as the Romans rather than pretend to be them.

Cheers

[Sertorio]

With that kind of stack i would definitly go for a manipular or double line. Still those 3 units of macedonian cav seem menacing enough. I would not try a simple line phalanx formation.

[Pe Ell]

I tried a legion system with those Machiraphorois and it works ok. It's flexible and they are decently strong, albeit weaker than their roman counterparts by far. With stacks like that you count on winning by tactic rather than raw strenght. Personally I prefer using pike phalanx as the base of my macedonian armies, seems more right to me.

I love macedon too, been my favourite nation since vanilla. Those light lancers... And here they have some cool cavarly stuff like Thessalians. I just love Thessalians. I've won complete victories with two nations (taken the whole map): Rome and Macedon. Late game in that Macedonian campaign I had two basic army layouts, one for fighting cavarly based armies (Parthia, Sarmatia and to some extent Scythia) and one for fighting infantry based armies (everyone else).

My anti-cavarly stack looked something like this: 6 units of Agema pikes, 2 units of Hypaspists, 3-4 units of Thessalians and Companions, 1 general. Then the rest as Eyrytanes Toxotai. Basic tactic was this: Agemas form a line with Hypaspists on the flanks. Cavarly flanking further behind them, held back but ready to intercept and ward of attacks. Lines of archers in the middle protected by my pikes and cavarly. Then I push towards the enemy, using my archers to pick of their HA's and cavarly. Pikes stop them from charging over me, cavarly and Hypaspists keep me from being flanked. Archers kill everything.

The other type of stack was more varied, looking something like: 6 Agema, 2 Hypaspists, 2 Basilkoi Peltastai, 2 Bastarnae, 2 Agrianians, 2 Companians, 1 Thessalian, 1 Archer, 1 Ballista and a general. Again a phalanx line with hypaspist on the outside, Agrianians to lock down light enemy elements or loose troops. Companians and Thessalians to counter their cavarly and clean the flanks. Archer and Ballista for range support, also good for city assault so I don't have to wait. Royal peltasts as reserves where needed and Bastarnae to run around the back, charge and kill everything when it gets tangled up.

Those were the two basic ideas I used late game Macedon.

[LoGaL]

To me you just spam elite units in most of the cases but it's a matter of style so i won't argue with you
6 agems are a bit unrealistic

[menawati]

Those Agrianians are great at sides of the phalanx - their 2ndary attack is AP I think so they really murder enemy troops caught at the edge of the phalanx.
I think I always had 1 at each side when I played Macedon.

[Pe Ell]

To me you just spam elite units in most of the cases but it's a matter of style so i won't argue with you
6 agems are a bit unrealistic

And I wont argue because you are right, my late game basicly is to spam elites. I do however have to point out that late game to me is when you get to about 50 cities, at which point money ceases to be an issue. Since I prefer 0 turns I'll be walking around with 10-15 stacks no problem. So the tactics becomes logistic issues, how can I get the right number of troops in the right place to overrun this enemy. To that end my late game play becomes to design as strong stacks as possible and get enough of them in the right place. I do enjoy this a lot, streamlining your massive empire to hammer down on the world bit by bit. But I know that not everyone share my view, or take pleaure from the same things.

If I wanted to simplify it further I could say I am using the good old tactic of throwing money at my problems.

I do use a lot more diverse stacks in the early to mid game with plenty of levies, skirmishers and mid range troops. But that wasn't the question here.

Cheers!

[Anthropoid]

This is just about the only thread I can find which discusses "Macedonian Thorakitai," and other things so I figured I'd raise it from the dead and use it to ask my question:

Is there a list somewhere of what building(s) are necessary to build what units in Roma Surrectum 3?

I'm up to about 109 SE (Macedonian calendar) and have completely subdued Greece, and now I'm turning my sights on Rome. So far I've used almost exclusively Levy Pikemen, Thureophoroi, Cretan archers, and the heavy cav (well the first version you get) Locophorophoi-poi-olis??

The best pike formation I can build is the Bottaiana guys, but only in Pella so far.

It looks like the "Macedonian Thorakitai" is just about the best "medium infantry" that might even come close to the Roman style Javelin/melee pattern.

But I cannot see where I can build these guys (the Thorakitai). I have a couple of them, but maybe I just started out with two?

There are also a couple other pike formations I cannot seem to build: Agema elite something and then something like "Katakoi."

ADDIT: Ah, found the answer to my question in the sticked "Everything about RS2 Here" thread:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/8uvwl6...Unit+Guide.pdf

[Ovidius Empiricus]

What is the recommended army composition and tactics for a late period Macedonian army?

The easy availability of heavy cavalry makes me want to keep rolling phalanxes. Even levy pikemen can hold a Roman army long enough to bring the hammer down on the rear of their army. The Roman style units (machairaphoroi/machairaphoroi elite and thorakitai) seem to be incapable of fighting 1:1 Roman, Iberian or Celtic units. Most of the descriptions mention these units being used to cover the flanks of phalanxes but they don't seem to kill fast enough to do much covering.

Slingers seem to have disappeared from my barracks though I liked them I was never convinced they did much more than harass.

Thureophoroi seem to be useless everywhere. Though I have noticed they can outrun the enemy (off the map).

Cheers

I do like slingers, although I'll only ever have one unit in an army, since with 2-3 archers that gives me enough long-range options for most battles. Greek slingers aren't as nice as Rhodians anyway, so their loss isn't a big deal. It can work just fine for Macedon to get Rhodians from a merc barracks in southern Greece or maybe Anatolia. Combine them with Eyrytanes Toxotai archers (also mercs, see below), and you've got some serious guns right there, which is especially helpful for an army that tends to sacrifice some infantry mobility.

If you want some Roman-style units (even just a few), I'd say mercenary Dacian Falxmen or Tectosages would be the way to go. They are a bit expensive, but very nice in any army and definitely worth considering when you can afford it. Also, depending on how you're expanding with Macedon (toward Italy, let's suppose), their areas of recruitment may not be as convenient as you'd like. Still, they're pretty much the best of the lot for those types of mercs (or anybody except some very elite faction units), and they're basically right on your doorstep. Then again, conquering Dacia and/or western Anatolia can be troublesome at times, so this isn't something you could easily take advantage of early in the campaign. I also like Macedonian Thorakitai, some very solid relatively-inexpensive units, which as everybody knows will helpfully throw a few javelins at the backs of anybody you like. But instead of depending so much on those, you can substitute a few of these mercs, who have significantly stronger stats for both attack and defense.

By the way, just forget that machairophoroi are on your roster. (Doesn't really matter which faction it is, although maybe the Ptolemaic empire could make some use of them.) Testudo formation could be nice but is way too situational, and generally they're not tough enough to handle anybody except the weakest infantry.

If you want move away from a traditional phalanx, Naupaktos Hoplites are a great all-purpose heavy infantry unit, which will secure the line like champs. They're cheaper than your medium-to-elite level pikes... still not exactly cheap, but they have the heavy armor you need, plus more mobility and a better match against infantry. You can recruit those only from Thermos, also one place where you can get the Eyrytanes Toxotoi I mentioned above. It's nice to limit how many merc barracks you need, and Thermos offers quite a few nice units (although as Macedon you don't really need some of them).

So, here's how my best armies usually look:
1 General
1 Companions (or Lonchophoroi)
1 Aspidophoroi (or Thraikan Hippeis)
1 Rhodian Slingers
2 Eyrytanes Toxotoi
1 Agema Elite Phalangites (or another phalanx)
2 Bottian Pezoi
1 Mac. Hypaspist (or another hoplite)
2 Naupaktos Hoplites
4 Mac. Thorakitai
4 Dacian Falxmen

Not many pikes at all, since I do prefer more hoplites and thorakitai and so forth, with the pikes almost entirely defending against cavalry and doing not much else. But you can see they're all very heavily-armored infantry. I've had a lot of fun, with very similar setups, when playing other Greek factions like Pergamon, Pontus and the Seleucids. Sometimes it'll be three archers (or that plus a horse archer of some kind), depending on who I'm fighting, in which case I'll leave out one or two infantry units.

[Anthropoid]

That is a interesting army composition Ovidius. What sort of formation do you use? With so few pikes, how do they even have any use against cavalry? Don't the cavalry just run from them and attack other units?

So far my typical Macedonian army looks like this:
1 General
3 Lonchophoroi
3 Cretan Archers
5 Theureophoroi
7 or 8 Levy Pikemen

More recently, I've been phasing in four Bottian Pezoi in place of four of the Levy Pikemen.

It is about 130 SE (Macedonian calendar) and I've taken over all of the Greek archipelago, as well as Byzantion and one additional city in the Dacia region (which is initially controlled by Greek City States), as well as Segesticum. I'm just about to start expanding over towards Patavium.

In place of the Thereophoroi, I've made use of a couple of the heavy javelin throwing mercs you can recruit either in Dyrrhaccium or Segesticum's province.

The two formations I've tended to use:

(1) Wedge Line
Cretan Archers in single line, stretched so they are about 3 rows deep
Jav infantry in single line set immediately in front of them
Pikes in a single line of four in front of the javs, and then with two lines of two more pikes flanking the central group of four and beveled back from the front at about 30-degrees

(2) Wide Line same as above but all 8 pikes are in one wide row.

Variations on that might be with the jav infantry offset to the left and/or the positioning of the cav at start (which doesn't seem to matter much).

[Ovidius Empiricus]

I didn't notice before that this thread had been dredged up from 2012. Sorry. It's still interesting enough as a general topic, so maybe I shouldn't apologize. Sorry for that too.

That is a interesting army composition Ovidius. What sort of formation do you use? With so few pikes, how do they even have any use against cavalry? Don't the cavalry just run from them and attack other units?

They will, but in most battles, there will only be a few cavalry. Assuming full stacks on both sides, the AI usually has just 1-3 cavalry, almost always less than 6. And mostly those will be lighter cavalry, who won't last for long in melee against any infantry. So there's that.

My army has a total of 6 hoplites and phalangites, which are both great against cav. The pikes are somewhat better, but the hoplites are certainly fine too. So, quite a few of those units are at an advantage against cav. Compared to a Roman army, let's say, there are tons of spears. I might only have a few triarii or spear auxilia then, which is not much of a problem most of the time. Really, the bigger difficulty is how these Greeks fare against certain armies which are predominantly shock infantry (e.g., Cimbri) or if there are lots of missiles. You have to be careful then, but it is a lot of infantry (14 in all), so you can pretty safely replace some with extra missiles or cavalry depending on how you want to fight those battles.

Anyway, you want to protect slingers and archers from cav obviously, and the falxmen are better suited to ripping infantry to shreds. Everybody else is fine against them. So, that's no big problem when you only have to watch out for a few cav plowing into your line or trying to flank it somehow.

Really, you have a decent amount of flexibility in how you arrange the infantry, and I've tried out lots of things (depending on the terrain, etc.). Mostly, it'll be a single long line, with a few reserves and missiles and cavalry behind that line as it advances. I'll tend to put javelin-throwing infantry toward the left (so they're not throwing at enemy shields), leaving some behind for a flanking maneuver once most infantry are pinned down. If not pinned, they're getting pummeled by shots/arrows, so they don't have any good choices. The falxmen are the best shock troops here (I'd use others in other armies), so they stay behind on the left until the time is right. They act as part of the hammer, along with my cavalry if need be, and they do a splendid job. (Rhomphaiophoroi are also pretty scary, if you prefer those.)

I keep pikes on each flank, and the elites (or any one of the pikes) are also in reserve behind the center. Enemy cavalry will charge into the front of my line eventually, somewhere among the mass of hoplites and thorakitai. And if there aren't any dangerous flankers lurking about (if my missiles and general are safe), I can direct the pikes toward the pinned cavalry. They're already being wiped out by my main line infantry, but the pikes seal the deal. They're just too slow and cumbersome, so unless you have a whole line of them, pikes pretty much have to wait for the cavalry to come to them (just won't happen) or somebody else relatively close to them (much easier to provoke that).

So it often looks something like this, with a large flanking force concentrated toward the left:

PSJJJJHHHHP
JJJJAPA
CCC

P=pikes
J=javelins
H=hoplites
S=slingers
A=archers
C=cavalry

The slingers are an easy-looking target, as you might guess, so they often have to drop back and wheel around the side again, in order to get a good shot at somebody's backside. They're still nice to have at the front right away, because they can deal a lot of damage as the enemy approaches (of course the archers can do the same from behind with no worries about friendly fire). Anyway, the left pikes and javelineers will catch whoever was trying to disrupt the slingers. Once that's settled, the reserve javelins and cav are probably ready to start flanking (missile cav were already harassing the whole time and may be out of ammo), so they can defend the slingers on their way back out into the fray, meaning they stay fairly safe the whole time.

In place of the Thereophoroi, I've made use of a couple of the heavy javelin throwing mercs you can recruit either in Dyrrhaccium or Segesticum's province.

I think you mean Agrianian infantry. It's handy that you can get them in those provinces. They also have a nice strong melee attack, which is part of the reason I like Tectosages and especially Falxmen. But the latter are a bit better, so I'd go with those once I have access to them.

[Ovidius Empiricus]

Another approach is to alternate, if you have lots of pikes or heavy infantry, plus several skirmishers or thureophoroi or something like that.
Just something like "PSPSPSPSPSP" in a line. The skirmishers can push ahead a little when it's safe, but give them space to pull back when the enemy infantry/cavalry are provoked into counterattacking. The pikes will then hold them down. Then, you can do a somewhat more involved and drawn-out maneuver, to get the skirmishers around one of the flanks one way or another. But that could be a lot of marching for some, if they're all expected to flank one way or the other, so they may not be doing much good at a critical point in the battle. On the other hand, they won't be a lot of good doing anything else, if the units are too weak to hold their own, or if you don't have a huge number to overwhelm the enemy somewhere. I'd prefer not to have a bunch of pikes and bunch of skirmishers (or a bunch of anything, really), since that doesn't leave much room for anything else in the army.

[Anthropoid]

One thing I find frustrating with Total War game mechanics are the "hard caps" on army sizes, as well as the unrealistic scales of armies. Battles of 3500 vs 2000 are "fairly large" in this game, but what I learned from my ancient history courses decades ago were, battles of 50,000 versus 45,000 were fairly common. The games still do a great job of representing the dynamics, but it is a shame that the scales are so constrained.

If there were game mechanics (training doctrine, logistics, command structure, whatever) which could accurately reflect the challenges of coordinating ever larger armies (and of course if the engine and the maps could handle it) the game would be fantastic if battles of the size of say Guagemala really were possible (40K Greeks and allies versus ~250,000 Persians and allies). Something like that, combined with say a "scripting system" that interacted with unit leader traits and actual command actions by the General during battle could be cool.

For me, battles amount to:
1. Get my basic formation setup, and adjust it to the right starting location
2. Start battle and pause immediately and decide on initial action
3. Then use either rapid speed to get through periods where no changes to orders are necessary or pause to totally reassign orders.
4. Once the battle gets going, I find I am pausing about every 5 or 10 seconds in order to reflect what I would "hope" my troops would do.

I.E., totally unrealistic God like control over the army but I figure the way I rationalize it is: there was a plan and a set of contingency tactics and the orders I'm pausing to give reflect those, and/or alternate opportunities that a sub-commander spotted.

The Scourge of War series (American Civil War and Napoleonic era games of somewhat similar format) has a mode of play where you have to send couriers to unit commanders who are in command of units that are beyond ear shot and that is pretty cool.

[Saul Tyre]

One thing I find frustrating with Total War game mechanics are the "hard caps" on army sizes, as well as the unrealistic scales of armies. Battles of 3500 vs 2000 are "fairly large" in this game, but what I learned from my ancient history courses decades ago were, battles of 50,000 versus 45,000 were fairly common. The games still do a great job of representing the dynamics, but it is a shame that the scales are so constrained.

If there were game mechanics (training doctrine, logistics, command structure, whatever) which could accurately reflect the challenges of coordinating ever larger armies (and of course if the engine and the maps could handle it) the game would be fantastic if battles of the size of say Guagemala really were possible (40K Greeks and allies versus ~250,000 Persians and allies). Something like that, combined with say a "scripting system" that interacted with unit leader traits and actual command actions by the General during battle could be cool.

Hey great, I had similar thoughts to this around 18 months past

For me, battles amount to:
1. Get my basic formation setup, and adjust it to the right starting location
2. Start battle and pause immediately and decide on initial action
3. Then use either rapid speed to get through periods where no changes to orders are necessary or pause to totally reassign orders.
4. Once the battle gets going, I find I am pausing about every 5 or 10 seconds in order to reflect what I would "hope" my troops would do.

I.E., totally unrealistic God like control over the army but I figure the way I rationalize it is: there was a plan and a set of contingency tactics and the orders I'm pausing to give reflect those, and/or alternate opportunities that a sub-commander spotted

My approach is different to this, allowing for the fact that I am able to view the whole battlefield, I chose never to pause and change things, imo it's a game and that's exploitation of it's mechanics (God like control lol) I would not be able to do it against a human opponent in multi-player or 1v1 online battles, so why do it against a dumb AI? If I don't spot a situation eg.a unit/units or flank being attacked and overwhelmed that is my mistake. I adopted this way as simulation for the time it takes to respond in real terms to dispatching a runner with new orders, and the consequences that go with that.
The alternative is(and to make battles more difficult) is to view the battlefield from the Generals position, which you can do by changing it in "options", and perhaps using "pause" in that scenario to even the balance. I use Sinuhet's pure 7 AI battle formation when playing RS III, which is imo the best I have come across. Although the AI will still always be pretty dumb, this choice gives a certain amount of unpredictability with double and single flank charges, sometimes simultaneous with charges at my center, counter attacking me when I am marching my army towards their lines, marching some of their units in a wide arc to manoeuvre behind my lines. It's probably as good as it gets.

[Anthropoid]

Re: Saul's points: you make great points brother.

Of course, there is "no such thing as cheating in a singleplayer game." In my experience, doing things which would be "cheating" in a multiplayer context is a terrific way to learn, but will eventually sap one's experience of both edification and enjoyment.

In my current Macedon play, I think I might be approaching that threshold, at which time, might be prudent to up my difficulty settings AND consider a less "indulgent" set of house rules to constrain how I exploit my human powers with the game interface

So what do the difficulty settings actually do (and in particular in Roma Surrectum, the mod we both use and love)?