How to prepare against Barbarian hordes?

[sumaznguy]

Playing as WRE on VH/VH.


Been quite a bit of turns now, but basically I conquered Almenni real quick for a nice boost of cash. And I haven't tried to consolidate my religion, but I have mostly pagan cities for the exp bonus. rome, carthage and the other settlement on africa are still christian though. I used my christian generals(ones with like 3 negative income traits, so they were pure turd) to conquer two rebel settlements for cash and a few others but they died. Only those two rebel settlements revolted. Lots of riots though. =(.

Perhaps I should have built up walls/barracks in the the eastern front because right now that is where I am getting hit the hardest. When the ERE attacks me I can defend against them fine. But the hordes are ridiculous since its several stacks of mass cavalry.

[Vault Dweller]

Build walls. Lots of walls. Then build spearmen. Lots of spearmen. If you have archers, try to stop the enemy ram from reaching your walls and you're set.

[sumaznguy]

are the feoderati any good. I have mostly limietarie(sp?). Only a few cities have the comasetes(sp?).

[zedestroyer]

are the feoderati any good. I have mostly limietarie(sp?). Only a few cities have the comasetes(sp?).

They are useless. The best troops are the Plumbitarii, their stats are equal to the stats of the Comitatenses, except that they have a better missile attack (in damage and range).
Sarmatian cavalry is your melee cavalry.

You can leave your territories east of Italy. In the the first campaign with the Western Empire the Eastern Empire attacked that city in the Balkans and the barbarians managed to destroy my armies and attacked Italy, I was been attacked by three factions (Vandals, Huns and Eastern Empire) in the same region and they allied each other against me.

The next campaigns I left those territories to the rebels. The Eastern Empire conquered the majority of the provinces but then the barbarians arrived and start defeat them. I was able to ally to both Vandals and Huns, so the Eastern Empire was attacked by my forces and by the barbarian hordes. When the Eastern Empire was expelled from Europe I destroyed the weakened Barbarians and started conquering all those rebel provinces and VICTORY.

[Subrosa Florens]

The way to fight hordes is to outlast them. The big weakness of the horde is that it cannot retrain depleted units or recruit new ones. Where as a settled faction you can of course do both.

So you want to fight them near a city of yours where you can retrain all the troops in your army. Look for a pass or river crossing within one day's march and make your stand there. At the end of every turn rotate troops back to the city for training and bring up fresh ones to replace them.

If you do not have anything like that either sacrifice settlements on the rim of your empire until the hordes are funneled into an area where you do have the terrain advantage. Or make your stand within a city that can retrain your troops. If you make your stand in the city sally every turn and follow Severous' advice.

Also hire all the mercenaries in the area, because otherwise the horde probably will. Use the mercs for arrow-fodder so you do not have to pay their upkeep for long, unless you actually want to keep them.

[xingjianma]

Foedoerati are quite useless, very weak while having a ridicilously high Upkeep. I always disband all Foedoerati units as soon as I can without causing riots.

[Pansen]

Foedoerati are quite useless, very weak while having a ridicilously high Upkeep. I always disband all Foedoerati units as soon as I can without causing riots.

...Especially the Foederati-cavallary is very expansive and useless. You have quite many of them in the beginning and you should disband them as fast as you can.

[sumaznguy]

well money isn't a problem for me. for some reason in RTW I can get 10k+ within a few turns and never go bankrupt, and that is with constantly making more troops and building stuff. I wish I could say the same for MT2W

[General_Zavier]

If you can, block off bridges. Hordes are much easier to stop at bridge battles.

[Medicus]

Hide in the corner of the map. That's what I do.

[Severous]

Recruit as many cavalry archers as you can. Mercenaries.

Sally against besieging horde stacks. Lure the enemy cavalry to your wall towers. If your archers gain local superiority on the battlefield then out shoot them. Wear the hordes down.

Alternatively use night attacks to isolate single horde stacks.

[sumaznguy]

After getting devestated by the hordes, I gave up on WRE. I was wondering do all the factions have to face barbarian hordes? Or do they mostly target the roman empires.

[General_Zavier]

I'm currently doing a campaign as the Romano Brits, and the only horde I've seen so far is the Burgundii. The Lombardii went east, the Huns settled next to the Goths, they've both weakened each other to the point that neither can do anything, The vandals are in northern Italy, but are down to just a couple generals, the Roxolani never moved, the Samaratians took Constantinople and stopped there, and the Franks stayed put.

I think the reason that they only go for the Romans is because that's all that makes sense. Like 3/4 of the map is covered with Roman territory, and the places all the hordes need is in the Roman territory.

[Erwin Rommel]

just post your armies at those bridges! trust me those few comits can do wponders agaisnt a thousand men......

[J@mes]

Archers are best aim for the seige equitment and destroy it this will hold there advance on to your lands and maybe kill afew 100 men in the process.

[StickShift]

during my Alemanni campaign, i had every horde except the Goths come through my territory and most came through at nearly full strength. my favorite tactic was the ambush.

my favorite tactic was the ambush. with the massive forests of Germany and Gaul, parking half a stack of cavalry in the woods was easy. with cavalry attacking them from all sides, the hordes collapsed quickly. i managed to ravage the entire sarmatian and gothic hordes with a stack and a half of cavalry and merc horse archers.

if you don't have that much cavalry kicking around, any competent full stack in ambush should be able to knock out a horde stack without too much trouble. by deploying your men to surround the horde, the horse archers lose their mobility and you can crush and rout them. the trick is to catch the bums before they run out of battle.

just be sure to keep retraining your units between attacks. often times the AI will retreat after you ambush one of their stacks, giving you time to retrain.

[Drag529]

if they ever do siege your cities don’t worry just destroy their ram, and hold them on the walls....they have lots of peasants and few professional foot soldiers...

[Prince Rodrigo]

as some people have said, take them down on the bridges but you need to have a good enough force to stop them and always play siege battles and try to kill as many barbarians as possible BUT NEVER DO FIELD BATTLES!

[zedestroyer]

as some people have said, take them down on the bridges but you need to have a good enough force to stop them and always play siege battles and try to kill as many barbarians as possible BUT NEVER DO FIELD BATTLES!

I have done field battles with the Western Empire against the hordes with hard battle settings.
I just used a general with night fighter capabilities and attacked. The trick is use the terrain (high ground) and to use ranged troops: archers, onagers, Plumbitarii and a few spearmen to protect against cavalry charges. You can use your general as bait it worked for me. I lost 200-500 men for each full stack, but I had cities to train more units, the barbarians didn't.

[Medicus]

I have done field battles with the Western Empire against the hordes with hard battle settings.
I just used a general with night fighter capabilities and attacked. The trick is use the terrain (high ground) and to use ranged troops: archers, onagers, Plumbitarii and a few spearmen to protect against cavalry charges. You can use your general as bait it worked for me. I lost 200-500 men for each full stack, but I had cities to train more units, the barbarians didn't.

The trick is to let them come to you, and retreat into the corner of the battlefield. They can't get around your infantry, and the AI is too stupid to think of any other strategy other than charging straight at you. I have won many a battle using that tactic.