What's the correct way to fight against horse archer armies?

[Dayve]

I just tried a little game as the Bosporan Greek kingdom, never played it before. I mostly just wanted to read building/unit descriptions but I decided to play a few turns and fight a battle as well. So I recruited some extra units to reinforce my starting army and eventually I had 2 units of citizen hoplites, 3 units of regular hoplites, two units of Peltastai (the good ones that wear armour and cost 300+ upkeep), a unit of spearmen (bonus vs. cavalry), 2 family members (horse archer bodyguard), 2 units of slingers, 2 units of toxotai and 2 units of steppe archers. Oh, and the unit of Xystophoroi. The army I fought was the rebel army that starts close to your capital city. I think it has 8 units in total, 2 steppe archers and the rest are archer cavalry.

I put my hoplites in a line, various other infantry on the flanks and all my missile units in loose formation close behind the infantry. The whole thing turned in to a big shooting match. They just put their army across from mine and we exchanged arrows. Their general charged at my general on the flank, so I surrounded him with my other general, and they spent the whole battle fighting each other like that.

I tried to take out some of their light horse archer units with my Xystophoroi, so I charged in to one. My xystophoroi took no arrows as it charged and they got a good charge on the enemy light archer cavalry, but that light archer cavalry wiped out more than 50% of my xystophoroi before they ran away (the enemy ran that is, not me).

Even if I had several units of my own horse archers in my army (as well as the foot archers I already had) I don't see how these types of battles can't end in a bloodbath for both sides. Is there any way these battles can be fought in a way that is satisfying, less messy, and fun?

[QuintusSertorius]

Firstly, have your own horse archers.

Secondly, proper foot archers (not Toxotai, they're worthless for anything apart from siege defense), who outrange horse archers.

Thirdly, don't bring unarmoured line infantry (eg Hoplitai Haploi - again only good for siege defense), they'll just be pincushioned.

[Genghis Skahn]

I don't see how these types of battles can't end in a bloodbath for both sides.

Welcome to horse archer battles. There is ALWAYS going to be missile casualties in them. A clean victory is rare. The best you can hope for is smaller casualties, not none at all. In my early nomad campaigns, fighting against other nomads, you always take some missile casualties every battle. Horse archers are pesky, and so battles involving them are messy. Don't ever expect to win unstained.

The AI is pretty damn good with them too. Just do the best you can, and learn how to use HAs of your own. Of course, HAs aren't necessary for beating nomads, all you need is SOME kind of missile support and fast cavalry of some type to catch HAs. Always make sure your positioning is superior to the enemy's, immediately occupy highground if possible.

[Rad]

Foot archers/slingers to outshoot them (match the AI's number of horse archer units, then add 1-2 more for extra pew pew), light cavalry to catch them in melee and heavy cavalry/armored spear infantry to remove them from this world. Just keep your shooters safe from enemy melee cavalry.

[Rad]

Oh and, yeah...

CRUSH YOUR ENEMIES, SEE THEM DRIVEN BEFORE YOU AND HEAR THE LAMENTATION OF THEIR WOMEN!

[alpharomeo]

Put all your units on loose formation.

Wait for them to charge your infantry (bait them with cheap skirmishers up front). Then, through your own loose ranks, counter-charge immediately before they disengage.

Be careful when pursuing routed units if they still have heavy cavalry around, or if the routed unit is heavier than the pursuing unit because it might regroup.

On VH/VH, they don't get tired, even when running around in circle formation. So when their numbers dwindle, with your wide loose front, slowly move to corner them on the map.

It's rare in steppe areas but, once in a while, you can get higher ground or forest cover.

It's best if you can attack them in their camps.

It's better to have more archers than HAs because of the bigger unit size (higher arrow density). However, I have noticed some archer units expand their arrows faster than the HAs. I'm not sure if their quiver load is smaller or their fire rate is higher.

There a weird behaviour I found by accident. My lone general was attacked by a full stack of HA. I wanted to retreat from the battle map and not from the campaign map (to get the extra mobility to retreat all the way to my city). So I stayed in one corner and they didn't attack me at all. I won by timeout. Yeah, it's a cheat. But I now know what 3000 HAs look like.

[Genghis Skahn]

Yeah their stamina is incredible. River battles are very very anti-horse archer too, for both attack and defender. Infantry does better on the smaller map, bisected by the river.

[Nightsh4de]

alpharomeo beat me to it - use your loose formation but be ready to tighten it when about to get into a melee

in a missile fight you want 1) superior firepower, i.e. have more/better archer units and 2) be fast and heavily armored to take less missile casualties, but it applies more to melee than to missile units. For example, the elite nomad faction units that are going into a melee fight are usually uber armored heavy cavalry (I think even the heaviest in the game), to better withstand withering missile fire and shorten the time they are exposed to it while on assault, some even carry bows so they can repel advancing skirmishers. Truly nomads have a very unique way of making war.

As a settled faction, use abundant cheap foot missile (archers) troops, even if lightly armored, you just want mass and volley after volley of arrows. Soak up those arrows, who care about some peasants anyway? haha. When you win, many will be recovered from casualty status anyway - its the way for skirmishers. Do not overlook javelin skirmishers, they´re good at drawing fire and even elicit charges from enemy cav. when they take the bait you can just send in fast, light spearmen or even cavalry to give them a bloody nose and whittle down those elite melee units.

I think its worthwhile having a couple of fast light cavalry for the end of the battle. I can remember in previous versions of EB2, Horse Archers running out of ammo but still skirmishing upon approach, and they´re impossible to catch with anything but light cav.

Never walk into range of a static foot archer line with you own archers to initiate an exchange, you´ll take inmense damage while walking in and never be able to match their firepower in subsequent rounds. Rather, you need to make them move by feinting a charge with (loose) cavalry (use terrain to screw enemy firing arcs if possible), then run into range and get that alpha strike in. This doesn´t work on horse archers, they can move and shoot simultaneously.

Plan your operation into the wilderness in calculated bounds, distances are long and you need a strong defensive position to sit in while you wait for reinforcementes / scavenge supplies. for example, take enough men to see you to a ford in a river. Hold it and get your reinforcements before moving up again (leave a garrison if possible). Having a small stack (eg. 3 units) on patrol to smash raiding single enemy units is helpful.

Oh and spies, make sure you can see far and wide, pure cavalry stacks move very very fast, you want to make sure you can see them coming miles away so you can plan in advance.

forgot to mention: be sure to have swift moving spearmen behind all your skirmishers so they dont take arrow fire and can respond to probing attacks by enemy cavalry. Forget swordsmen and phalanxes but make sure you have at least a couple of rock hard heavy cavalry of your own to move around with your general or respond to serious threats quickly

[Sayn1911]

If you're palying as an eastern hellenic faction, which I think the Bosphoran kingdom is(?), the answer is always the same, for any type of army

Recruit more pantodapoi phalangitai

They are pretty good against anything, even on vh/vh if they are in sufficient numbers to avoid them breaking (8 phalanx units against horse archers armies with 2 regular phalanx, or better, a unit of Agema in the mix), and if you keep them in line (control groups can help).
You'll need something to cover the flanks, 2 (or 4 if you're paranoid) hoplites (or mercenary ones, or indo-hellenic ones) do the job perfectly.
Cavalry, is usually useless on vh/vh against horse archers, they break too fast or get torn to shreds, but always keep one or two aside from your general, they will still be useful against the heavily armored generals if you sandwich them when said general inevitably charges like an idiot into your pikes.
I fill the rest with long range archers or if I can, greek slingers (long range, do more damage than archers, have more ammo, cost less, and have a better loose formation).

Keep your phalanx in formation, get the high ground if possible. In order to avoid and reduce casualties, you "attack", i.e, you slowly move your phalanx in formation (creating a control group can help a lot in that regard) with your hoplites on the flank.
If you have the high ground (and so, skirmisher superiority), the enemy will be more eager to attack, if not, keep pushing until you encircle them, and send your phalanx towards them.
I usually send a move order, with the control group on, behind the enemy lines. This avoids awkward pathfinding (well, most of the time).
Most horse archers have poor morale and will break pretty quickly, if you're quick enough with your hoplites and cavalry on the flanks and on their rear, you can get a mass route pretty easily.

With that, no need for expensive horse archers armies of your own.
Horse archers = between 270 and 300 upkeep cost for the cheapest ones, when the pantodapoi phalagitai = 225, long range foot archers = around 120, and greek slingers = 56 !!
Even with one Agema phalangitai and a unit or two of medium cavalry (Xystophoroi or Answar-i-Mad) in the mix, it's still a significantly cheaper army.

[Wolfgang von Zweibrücken]

When leading an infantry-heavy army against eastern/nomad light cav armies (including horse archers) I consider the key to be pinning them into place, since they disintegrate pretty quickly, then having a unit fast enough to run them down when they flee (or better yet, being able to trap them while they're engaged). This is easier said than done, so I try to make sure that I'm constantly shooting at them whenever they come close enough to shoot at me.

Toward this end, I create three "battle-groups" of infantry, kind of like self-contained combined arms divisions, each consisting of 2+ archers (anything better than Toxotai) and a unit or two of spearmen (hoplites/Kardakes/Thureophoroi/Pantodapoi Phalangitai) to give the BG a solid nucleus to see off cavalry charges and protect the missile troops. With hoplites or phalangites, I include a unit of javelin skirmishers to screen the spearmen, kardakes and thureophoroi can do this job themselves.

These divisions are deployed with long gaps between them with slingers linking them together, and lancers (ideally the faster eastern ones) behind the slingers. The FM and one unit of Hellenic cavalry are the heavy reserve deployed behind the central BG, responding to armoured cav/FM charges and hunting down the enemy general if he ever gets too close.

I advance the left-wing and right-wing battle-groups to try and drive the enemy toward my central group, if they manage to get behind the BGs then the cavalry reserves respond and chase them back into the net. The central group advances more slowly to cap the funnel I'm creating for the enemy. Eventually I push them into a corner and then (hopefully without too many casualties) start enveloping them and forcing them toward the central group. Once they have nowhere to go, I can whittle them down with missile fire and send my fast cav at any pockets that get isolated; if my spearmen are fast enough (or if it's a heavier cav unit being engaged by my cav) I run them in for support.

Still very difficult to make sure you wipe them out, rather than allowing the faster units to escape with 50% or fewer casualties.

This method works best when I outnumber them, eastern cavalry armies are tough to wipe out (not let enough survivors flee that you have to chase the stack and fight another battle later) even if you outnumber them 2:1

Simpler tactic, as others have mentioned (and probably more useful for an even numbers match), is just a battleline of spearmen (deployed in loose order, close up if they ever get into melee) or pantodapoi phalangitai (three of the latter is plenty, 4-5 if using hoplites/thureophoroi) with 6+ non-toxotai archers cowering behind the spear wall and screens of slingers out front. 2-3 cav plus FM in reserve to prevent encirclement and run down any heavier enemy cav that break.

If you're outnumbered you pretty much just have to form a square with the FM and cav in the center, spearmen next, then missile troops (all loose-order except Phalangites) and hope you can scare them off with missiles and counter-charges.

Micro-managing reserves is key when facing fast cav armies because they are easiest to fight when you keep them pinned to your front rather than having them race all around the battlefield, and always keep an eye out for them sneaking around and picking off weaker units that get separated from the herd or assassinating an unwary FM