How to defeat horse archers

[lambeosaur]

Im playing as jerusalem in the crusades campaign and its extremely frustrating to have fast horse archers picking at my forces. my cavalry arent fast enough to catch up with them. they arent fun to play against because every time i try to kill them they just run away. how the hell do kill them?

[nibbles04]

Yeah I'm playing as Antioch and I have the same problem. What I normally do is have my own Horse Archers (Turkpoles or the equivilent) charge at them. If I get lucky then I'll catch them before they run, but if not then I can still hit them with arrows while thier backs are turned. And alternative is to use Mounted Sergeants because they are generally faster than the Heavy Cavalry.

The problem comes when you run into a stack with 8 or 9 Horse Archers... at which point I just hit auto resolve so I don't have to worry about it. But yeah if any one else has a better strategy (I hate mine actually, but it's the best I've found) I'd be pretty interested.

[FightingSpirit]

what I always do is send a very inexpensive unit (loose formation) to charge the horse archers. usually, by the time my men are too incapacitated to continue, Ive spent the arrows of 2-3 horse archer units

[Goldenboy24]

I just use lots of light cavalry because light cavalry are fast and catch up with the horse archers and kill them all. Simple

[mightyfenrir]

what I always do is send a very inexpensive unit (loose formation) to charge the horse archers. usually, by the time my men are too incapacitated to continue, Ive spent the arrows of 2-3 horse archer units

That certainly works... However, as much as I have been disappointed by the mangonel overall, a well placed shot with a good spray can take out half of a turkopole unit through the initial spray and through the units running through the burning fires afterward if they're circling.

[Valbruch]

I usually use foot archers or crossbowmen to fight them. Most horse archers are quite vulnerable to missile attacks and since infantry has twice as many men as cavalry, you can fire more arrows then they can.

But again as nibbles04 said, higher number of horse archers can be a problem.

[spanish_emperor]

archers rip them to smithereens....HA are weak against archers
other things i do is:
1.make sure your not in open terrain
2.fight them in seiges
3.ambush them
4.put myself in higher terrain so their arrows have worse accuracy

but that is if i dont have archers....they are the bomb against HA

[raphealray]

My strategy is a little different than all in this thread, but it seems to work for me.

I say, don’t go with light cavalry at all and simply ignore the horse archers.

Let me explain,

Playing through both Jerusalem and Antioch, I decided to go with heavy cavalry and forgo the light cavalry ( I mean you are templars/hospitiliars after all).

If my opponent has many horse archers, I ignore them and focus my force of heavy infantry and cavalry on getting until the “big center fight messy thing” right away.

If my opponent has many horse archers, he is lacking on infantry and heavy cavalry and I’ll probably have more of these. This means I mostly always won the “big center fight” and have my opponent unit break.

If you close the ground as quick as you can, his horse archers will fire into the “big center fight” hitting his own units as well.

After I won the big center fight, then I just send my units chasing the remaining horse archers and turn the game speed to max 6X. It takes a little while but eventual the horse archers will fight, probably when they run out of amo. But the thing is, you don’t suffer all that many casualities – not nearly enough as my opponent did in the “big messy center fight”.

So my strategy is simple – ignore horse archers until the end, get into close combat right away and use all your beautiful heavy calvary ( that Antioch/Jerusalem has so greatly) in the center fight.

Cheers.

[pwijnands]

You can fairly safely let horse archers deplete their ammo on your heavily armoured troops, especially if you are just within range and are in loose formation. The majority of their arrows will miss and they will only tire themselves while your troops are still as fresh as.....as.....as something that's really fresh.

[Erwin Rommel]

pretend your dead then once they come near.....BAM! you hit them!



or just let them pest around you, but make sure your shields ALWAYS face them

[Laconian]

In taking on I have a couple of tactics.

Tactic 1: I use archers and horse archers to engage them in ranged combat and pick them off.

Tactic 2: This tactic is my favourite and it is simple. Flanking. I use archers and horse archers do distract the enemy from the front and I also sent a unit or two infantry foward. While the HA are engaging them I send heavy cavalry to their flanks and the rear and when they are in position I have they charge and the HA are trapped and slaughtered.

[whpsh]

Defeating horse archers is very troublesome to me as well.

As they approach I typically send my heaviest infantry forward of my main body and skirmish them (this is assuming the horse archers are forward of their main body). This forces them to stay at a distance from me and really limits their overall damage to a single unit.

If you can spare them, even two mounted sergeants used in conjunction with your heavy cavalry can be extremely effective.

The general premise is to engage and hold with your light cavalry long enough for your heavy to arrive. It takes a bit of patience, but with some good timing your light cavalry can engage, hold, disengage then move to next target just as your knights arrive.

Be sure to push them away from their main body or don't engage. You don't want to be tied up too close and receive a spearman charge for your efforts.

Done right, the enemy cavalry will actually lead you to great flank and rear positions (so long as your infantry holds). Then you charge the main body and rout them. Or if you're really lucky and they've already broken, you've created a gauntlet of heavy cavalry that the enemy has to run through just to leave the field.

Casualty-a-go-go.

[Desperado †]

or just let them pest around you, but make sure your shields ALWAYS face them

.... Now, I knew that was the tactic in real life, but does it effect total war? I mean, I know your enemy suffers more casualties if you shoot from behind, but does shooting their un shielded flanks (i.e Right flank) atcually change anything? If it does, - wow.

As for horse archers, fire at them with archers, crossbowmen. They may be tempted to attack your archers, if so run them down with heavy cavalry. If not, let your archers do the work.

[Lord_Calidor]

Crossbows. The bane of HA & mounted javelineers. Unles you're England, of course, where stakes + longbows produce even better results.

[Swagger]

Heavy Cavalary, in loose formation

[Empress Meg]

You may want to invest some cash into buying some light horsemen from the desert tribes while your heavily clad general is marching about in the Holy Land. Use these light merc horses made for the hot climate to hunt down and kill off the plauge of horse archers.

I also had some luck with being able to box in horse archers after the rest of the enemy army was killed off/routed. It takes time, but if your own horses are spent and you're low on ammo it works.

I spread out my men into thin ranks and slowly push the horse archers into a corner. Making sure that there is no way for the HA to escape I pull close the noose and wait for them to either attack on their own accord or until I', close enough to get in there with infantry and happy melee weapons.

Devoirs The Empress

[King Yngvar]

I'd go with the ignore option, unless you have HA yourself

[spanish_emperor]

i've tried the ignore one but i got too many casualties and i could never catch them...i don't know how you do it. the only time i caught them was when they were dummies and instead of retreating after they ran out of ammo they charged at my spearmen lol

i have a better one...have archers or javelin men to get them to charge, then charge at them while they are in hand to hand combat. If you don't have any of these then face backwards with a unit and they will be too tempted to not charge, then ditto the one above - this doesn't happen all the time though.

[Rapier117]

Foot archers and crossbowmen.

Chasing HAs all over the map is not my idea of fun.

[homefry]

Ignore the horse archers and attack the main force. Since the horse archers take up valuable spots that other units could've taken, you will easily kill or rout the main force. Once that's done, take care of the horse archers.