Archer focused armies

[homefry]

How would you set up your army if you had to have 10 units of longbowmen in the full 20-unit stack?

So 1 unit for the general and 10 units for the longbows, leaving 9 units for anything else except for missile cavalry.

I would use 2 cavalry units and 7 units of infantry.


I'm looking for ideas to set them up on the battlefield.

[Theseus1234]

i would probably use 2 heavy cavalry, 2 light cavalry, 3 good spearmen, and 2 HI
the spears would provide a backup for the longbows if worse comes to worse, and the HI could protect the flanks
the heavy cavalry would deliver the stinging blow, and the light cavalry would hunt down ene,y archers and routers

[homefry]

So you're hoping the longbowmen destroys the enemy as they approach... or makes them rout?

[Viking Prince]

Homefry has a good question. By having such a large portion of the force on foot and with poor melee values, you will be inferior to a very mobil force. The Spanish can raise such a force using Jinettas for their archers, since the Jinettas can also charge your archers.

[Theseus1234]

well horse archers generally fare poorly against regular archers. They are large targets and usually dont have much armor

if homefry is using retinue longbows and such, then im pretty sure that the longbows could take the beating

[SaintOfTheSword]

If you have 10 units of longbowmen you don't need to set up an army anymore. Play defensive, which is stand next to the enemy and they will attack you (coz they don't like that you're so cocky next to them). Then make a formation in a way that you close them in a fortress of stakes, and then just fire at the enemy until they die from a distance. If you have retinue longbowmen, and 10 units of them, you can kill almost anything before approach.

[Sokar Rostau]

In my last English campaign I had all of my armies set up pretty much the same - 4 Retinue, 4 Yeomen, 4 Mailed/Feudal/Order Knights, General, 4-5 Armoured Swordsman, 2-3 Spearmen, 1-2 Billmen/Dis. English Knights/some other infantry.

Longbows deploy stakes, swords line up behind Longbows with Spears on the either end and other infantry in centre far enough behind to be able to get to any point in the line as fast as possible. Two Cavalry on either far flank and General in mid flank.

Once whatever remained of the enemy got to the stakes and charged they crashed into the Armoured Swordsmen and came to a halt. Whatever infantry was free was able to envelop and combined with the Archers always caused a rout. While the infantry stood there taking a beating the cavalry murdered the artillery and enemy archers and ran down the routers... Except when fighting Light Cavalry escapees were a rarity.

8 Longbows are more than sufficient to destroy any single unit, including charging Generals, before they reach the stakes. When set to free fire against an entire army enough casualties are caused for most infantry to rout soon after meeting the swordsmen... Cavalry doesn't stand a chance unless they run around the stakes, but that is what the spearmen are for. They are also enough to render 4 or more units of Italian-style crossbows little more than a bother if you have the high ground.

I'm positive there were situations when this set-up would have failed for one reason or another but, except in one battle against the Turks that was auto-resolved (I won but took 350 casualties rather than the usual 150), this served me well to complete my first English campaign - 62 regions conquered before taking Jerusalem - with no difficulties.

[homefry]

So when you're infantry engages the enemy, do you still order your archers to continue fighting?

[MrVamp117]

Well sure. Have them target enemy archers. I also use them to fire at the biggest group of infantry that I can find when the infantry start fighting and it seems to work okay

[Sokar Rostau]

By the time melee develops the Longbows have usually scattered their formation and are in a position to attack every unit except the enemy archers and artillery. I didn't have a need to do it every time, but it was sometimes useful to split the single group of 8 archers into 2 groups of four and turn off fire at will for one of them after melee started. This then allowed me to concentrate a group of archers' fire on, for example, the enemy General or some other bothersome unit while the others just fired at whatever they wanted to (usually the infantry).

[Monsieur Alphonse]

This kind of army can beat anything. I used such an army (1 general, 7 retinues, 6 armored swords and 6 English knights) to crush two Mongol stacks. I deployed the stakes but the Mongols refused to attack so I attacked them and defeated them. I they attack and you have deployed your stakes at the bottom of a hill and you have your men lined up on that hill, it can cause mayhem. I did that in an other battle against the Mongols and again defeated two stacks. This time with very few casualties.