Best Army Compistion

[Sharpe]

I am currently playing a grand campaign as HRE on Retrofit with the unit addon, and due to the dire lack of archers im finding the campaign difficult beacuse the english rule most of france and longbowmen are everywhere. How do you counter this? My armies usually consist of:

-General
-4 Zweihandlers
-2 Knetchen
-3 Gothic Knights
-3 Dismounted Imperial Knights
-5 Armoured Seargents
-2 Pavise Crossbowmen

Just wondering how i should change my armies or use the one listed above to defeat hordes of longbowmen

[Hungary Horace]

Err -more cavalry would be a good idea ,light ones are best as they are fast and can flank well.

[Sharpe]

its true but when they get close they get shot to bits

[Akimbo]

its true but when they get close they get shot to bits

Flank them.....make their missile units have to split their fire against multiple units from different angles.

[Xamt]

the vanilla ai tends to shoot at whatevers closest so first send in a unit u dont care much about that has a decent defense from the front (i.e. carries a big shield like spear militia) in loose formation with ur cavalry close behind

when they get in range the archers are going to start shooting at your spearmen (a couple of volleys at least) and when they start shooting just rush your cavalry straight at them (or maybe to their flanks if they have stakes deployed)

one alternative is to include catapults in your armies since they outrange the longbowmen and can do a lot of damage... additionally you can wait for the enemy to come to you since you'll outrange them. that gives you the option of picking a battlefield more to your liking (get higher ground, get them out of the forest etc)

[clandestino]

Well my most effective HRE army consist of
7 heavy cavalry, depends of period: feudal, imperial or gothic knights, sometimes mix of two of them or all three
6 pavise crossbowmen
6 heavy infantry, again depends of period DFKs or dismounted Gothic knights, sometimes mix 3 DFKs 3 Gothic
My humble advice is to remove sergeants and zweihenders and add some more crossbows and cavalry.

[Wheelchair]

The best counter for Archers is not other archers, but cavalry.. Any kind will do, but Light works best.

When their army is moving close to yours, the AI almost ALWAYS Puts their archers up front, so if you move within skirmish range with your Cavalry then the enemy archers will run back, to do Skirmish ability.

If their crossbowman, you can change at them while their loading their arrows, and probably get away with maybe 1 or 0 casualties and maybe 50-80 to their archers (huge settings)

If they use bows, just use the same method, but most likely you won't get to attack them because they'll run back into their army.

Also, when I make my armies I only try to have a max of 4 different kind of units, I call this a "Supply Friendly Army", because at the end of the battle I can merge all my units and send the units that are not full back to the nearest castle and have a full army again in 1-2 turns.

Having 6-7 types of soldiers is putting you at a disadvantage, after 1 or 2 battles your units won't be able to retrain, and you'll most likely need to import more available units in your army.