need help, HA's

[movemove]

how do people deal with HA's? if I try to chase them with cavalry, the brave men get shot up to bits, I tried to give chase with cheap infantry once, but two units of eastern mercenaries got obliterated, I dont have ready availability of arhcers yet, and im losing an extra 200 men in every battle against HAs, help? :c

[czePowerslave]

slingers in loose formation, forests, or your own horse archers - thos cilinbarii or smth are just GREAT

[Selifator]

I normally play with HA's so I know a couple of things about them. I think slingers are better than archers, cheaper and slingshots seem to work better than arrows.
Other option is to trap HA's with light cavalry. Surround and swamp them. This will work best with 3-4 units on one of the enemies. Many factions have good enough light cav to do this. Beware of upper tier HA's, Noble Scythians HA's and Armenian Cataphract HA's for example.
These can easily best you light cavalry.

[LeonidasOfSparta]

What you need to do against HA is.......ignore them.

Biggest mistake you can make is to sit there and wait until HA harras you lines....and waste arrows on them.

You need to take you army and wage archer war with other archers not HA.

HA will just be there shooting .... you wont even think of them.. and when they lose ammo...they will think how to run from battle.

So even if you lose archer war you can always win infantry one and wait until they are finsihed then attack.


Other thing you can do is to use......dogs.

When HA come close simply release dogs at them and they ill chase them to ends of map while you have good time killing their main army.

Hope this help,

Regards , Leonidas

[Selifator]

Best thing I can do against HA's is swamp them with my own HA's. If properly executed and using the right troops, you can roll up an entire army of them in no time.

[LeonidasOfSparta]

Well most people play clan war belt ( cwb ) which limits HA to max 2....

[Prince_of_Macedon]

It's hard to say how many people play with CWB. I'd say most people play Mid-denarii to High-denarii with only a No Art, No Elephant rule. On the other hand, I never join any other games (since I'm always the host of my battles).

In any case, I deal with Horse Archer spam all the time since I don't limit my opponent's armies. I think it's refreshing to play HA spam since it's historically accurate for such factions as Parthia and Scythia.

Against such HA armies, I would spam elite archers (such as Cretans, Archer Auxilia, etc), and keep heavy infantry nearby to prevent the enemy from charging. Or sometimes, you can actually chase down the enemy HAs if you have a spam of upgraded light cavalry. Chariot Archer Spam is definitely a fullproof way of shutting down HA spam.

[LeonidasOfSparta]

It's hard to say how many people play with CWB. I'd say most people play Mid-denarii to High-denarii with only a No Art, No Elephant rule. On the other hand, I never join any other games (since I'm always the host of my battles).

i play only against clans so we always play cwb i never really encountered 20 ha lol expect once and i won

[movemove]

thx for the input guys
the main problem is probbly for me that TSE doesnt get recruitable HA's/slingers. the slinger recruiting provinces are like 5-6 turns away from where I need them, and theres always annoying rebel stacks and random enemy full stacks runing around doing who knows what
my own Ha's/Ca's often get owned if I try to make them duel with enemy HA's if I rounded up every single CA/HA in my empire into one army, i'd have about 6 of them. merc beduion archers are pretty common, but I keep getting them killed against egypt's chariot archers/generals they run alot slower then HA's (oh well, egotys down to 3 probinces, will finish them off soon, unless the monster scipii get them first
scythian HA's are really rare in my experience, they usually pop up with sarmations. AFAIK, this is for the area around armenis. can't go up to scythia with a general and have them decalre war on me and completely demolish my with HA's

anyways im finisheding off armiens and they are down to one province, now there are two famous battle markers pretty much right next to each other outside their city I just conquered xD (I have no idea how armenis manages to field so many stacks with 3 prvocvinces )

so, Ill try pitting archers/slingers against them and see if ill have any luck probably best to avoid scythia at this point ook

[Prince_of_Macedon]

so, Ill try pitting archers/slingers against them and see if ill have any luck probably best to avoid scythia at this point ook

If they're just regular archers/slingers, it's going to be really tough.

What kind of cavalry do you have access to?

[movemove]

the problem with the huge army strategy is that, but mility forces are a bit streched out, since im fighting a 3 front war against egypt/scipi, greeks/bruti and the eastern factions (empire streches from nile delta, asia minor and up to the scythian provinces ard have athens which is besieged constantly )

i wont be using regular slingers, since i cant recruit those, will be using rohdians. half my archers are cretans, but those are busy fighting the bruti.
armenia/pontus an parthi are basially crippled now, an I will try to avoid scythia.

cavalry.. I have access to catas in a handful of cities but my two cities near egypt are having their royal palaces built so companians are coming soon..
most cities can build miltia/greek cav though.

[Roman Clone]

Chariots in General should hurt them.

[Domitius]

One good thing is to autoresolve. The HAs have a low value, and will get crushed in a autoresolve (sounds pretty boring, but effective). Use chariots when you autoresolve, they have a too high value and are pretty easy to retrain.

Otherwise I would recommend to use HAs formed in canterberian circle against your opponents. Your units will easily own the others, because arrows are no good against canterberian circle.

Hope this helped.

[LeonidasOfSparta]

yep chars are VERY good at auto resolving...especialy scytheds

[Calyptus]

Unless you have superiour ha, try to avoid having to battle many of them in the open, those will always result in heavy losses, draw them into sieges. The only thing they really suck at are sieges.

This is while not using cheesy tactics, like border explotation.

[movemove]

the current problem is, that I am counter attacking them, and on my way to their cities, thy are intercepting my armies. in sieges, when they sally, there is usally always enough spae outsie to city for HA's to do their thing.
the austores sounds like a sound strategy, but I find it sort of cheating.

[Selifator]

I don't know if you use vanilla or a mod version, but if you use vanilla and have enough money, perhaps you can group multiple armies together.
Each army protects the others. If you are attacked you will always have more troops.
Then move to the cities and destroy them one by one.
Major drawbacks: Takes a long time to build and group armies, huge upkeep, takes time to conquer each city and garrison it.

[Vault Dweller]

if I have one peice of advice it is NOT to use companions. They outright suck. Cataphracts are muchmuchmuchmuch better, so you shouldn't bother building tippy-toppy stables. Concentrate on Cata's and archers to beat eastern factions. Cata's, especially with upgraded armour, can take almost all the enemy's arrows with minimal losses, while your own archers pelt them. Cataphracts can also slaughter any heavy infanry.

[Kratos]

Foot archers and/or slingers. Just make sure they aren´t charged.

[zedestroyer]

Use archers, better, use archers with long range missiles. Even better, play with Armenia or with the Sassanids, they have the best horse archers. In BI a few Clibinarii units (Sassanids) are capable of defeating large enemy armies (heavy armour + ranged attacked + armour piercing attack).

Remember that with the 1.5 and 1.6 (Barbarian Invasion) the shields give a defense bonus against arrows. So use units with a good shield and don't forget that the shields just work in front and in the left side, so maintain your infantry units facing the horse archers.