Tactics against the turks

[Asta666]

hello, im playing a crusades campaing vh/vh as pricipalty of antinoch and i cant seem to efficently beat the turkish armies. when sieging a city they just retreat to the central plaza and form a mass of archers sorrounded by crap infantry wich my cavalry or infantry (knights of antinoch mostly) cant seem to penetrate fast enough... if i try to circle the city and catch them from the back my stupid units would just run by the centre and pile with the other bunch. also calvarly archers seem to ber surprisingly good in melee. in the open field i do better but i lose gigant amounts of men making it very hard to mantain armies... anyway, any suggestions would be appreciated.

[Giorgos]

-Use archers to soften them up.

-Use siege weponry for terrorizing. These wepons are horrendously innacurate from a distance but they make up by scaring the **** out of enemy infantry.

-Buy mercenary horse cavalry units whenever able. They will save your skin.

-If all else fails, buy masses of fodder infantry and flood the enemy town square from all sides while keeping your archers on the walls to pepper their archers and keep your main units out of range. When the fodder goes down, make sure the elites follow suit, the enemy units will have lost sufficient amounts of both troops and morale, while their tiredness levels will have skyrocketed. It's an easy job after that.

[MaDmAn_1988]

i second the archer sugestion, if they pille up in there plaza archer fire will be super effective with maximum kills, therefore if u know they are going to do this 'strat' of theirs add extra archers into your beseigeing forces so when you get into the city pepper them from the walls like Georgos mentioned,

another thing you could do is beseige them, and just maintain the seige until the settlement runs out of food/water and the are forced to sally out, this way they will come out and will basically be a field battle, obviously this takes longer, (alot longer for larger cities) but hey ul save yourself the meatgrinder style slog in the plaza, then again this gives them time to attack u with reinforcement armies aswell......... but hey just adding my suggestions

[pwijnands]

It might also be a good opportunity to see if flaming arrows deal more casualties per volley than normal ones. The morale damaging effect is useless if they retreat to the town square.

Bringing in artillery is also a good idea, especially if you can fire down a street straigth down into the plaza.

[MaDmAn_1988]

fire arrows decrease acuracy so if they are in town cen ter they are not a good option

[Myrkabah]

fire arrows decrease acuracy so if they are in town cen ter they are not a good option

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't fire arrows better against armor/shields? It seems like accuracy is the least of your concerns when you're crossfiring into a town square packed with people.

[TWoxy]

hello, im playing a crusades campaing vh/vh as pricipalty of antinoch and i cant seem to efficently beat the turkish armies. when sieging a city they just retreat to the central plaza and form a mass of archers sorrounded by crap infantry wich my cavalry or infantry (knights of antinoch mostly) cant seem to penetrate fast enough... if i try to circle the city and catch them from the back my stupid units would just run by the centre and pile with the other bunch. also calvarly archers seem to ber surprisingly good in melee. in the open field i do better but i lose gigant amounts of men making it very hard to mantain armies... anyway, any suggestions would be appreciated.

To stop them running to their destination via the city square, hold down shift and set way points. They will move to each of the points in your pre-arranged path, and you can even order them to attack whilst holding down shift, after you have set your movement waypoints.

[pwijnands]

I got some great results with a Mangonel while attacking a city. The Mangonel unit was able to kill over 300 enemies. They are very inaccurate, but aiming for a unit in the middle of the town centre helps a lot.