Against Horse Archer tactics

[rithfung]

Hi everyone~
I am playing as england, and I get a nice start in middle east by joining the crusades.
Here is the problem: everytime I fight against Turks or Egypt, there are ALWAYS Horse Archer in their armies, and when my knight go charge the main force, they always cause much damage to my knight.
So is there any effect way to repel, or better, kill of these nasty Horse Archer?

[Monsieur Alphonse]

1. Mercenary HA's, 2. Hobilars or 3. Longbows.

1. Fight fire with fire. Protect your flanks with two or three units of mercenary horse archers.
2. Hobilars are very fast and can chase and catch them. Once cornered heavy cavalry can finish the job.
3. Tactics one and two can cause you some heavy losses. Using longbows is a more defensive tactic but works very good. A typical English army should have up to eight longbows (longbows, Yeomen, Retinue). since you have now probably more missile units then the AI, so the AI will come to you on the battle field. You now outgun and out range them especially if you deploy your army on some high ground.

[Viking Prince]

I would opt for door number 3 and take out the good longbows. The cavalry are geat for driving out the boken units. Your longbows have greater range and more ammo than the mounted archers so you should be able to drive them off even if outnumbered a bit. Remember to not hide behind the infantry and to focus two of your units on each targeted HA or you will lose a bit of your advantage.

[squigian]

All good tactical advice. Let me add to that by saying try to engage Eastern armies in siege battles wherever possible as it nullifies most of their mobility advantage and lets you play to the strengths of your heavy infantry.

[Muagan_ra]

Since they will always be in skirmish mode, you can force them to retreat into the main bulk of their own army, where they can be caught up in the main fighting. Cut off three directions of retreat, and they will go in the only other direction - which direction is up to you.

That said, best to just shoot them down, in my experience.

[Viking Prince Olaf]

You will take heavy losses this way but is the main option you have since it will be A while since you can bring out the good ole' longbows until you find A decent fortress or castle wich will be hard. So heres what you do: send 3 units of heavy night on each side and simotaniously charge and you will slaughter. Work this into your stradegy until you get A main home to find your longbows.


Also don't fight both at the same time so attack Egypt since its waaaaay weaker then Turkey.

[rithfung]

thx guys~~
after taken control of gaza's fortress, and try all three tactics
here is the result:
1. Using mercenary horse archers:
really good in keeping enemy in bay, but those enemy horse archers still like an annoying fly, plus mercenary horse archers is not cheap...
2. Three Hobilars plus a hospitaller:
finally kill one horse archer unit......with great lost... all three Hobilars only have 20 soldier left, and my hospitaller reduce to 30 soldier...plus this tactic drive away too many manpowers
3. Longbow man:
In my opinion the best counter tactic. easily done, two longbow man unit can finish off one horse archers with ease, plus my infantry can do their work without worry those fly~~~

Again thx guys for providing these tactics
Egypt~~~ here i come!!!

[Viking Prince]

thx guys~~
after taken control of gaza's fortress, and try all three tactics
here is the result:
1. Using mercenary horse archers:
really good in keeping enemy in bay, but those enemy horse archers still like an annoying fly, plus mercenary horse archers is not cheap...
2. Three Hobilars plus a hospitaller:
finally kill one horse archer unit......with great lost... all three Hobilars only have 20 soldier left, and my hospitaller reduce to 30 soldier...plus this tactic drive away too many manpowers
3. Longbow man:
In my opinion the best counter tactic. easily done, two longbow man unit can finish off one horse archers with ease, plus my infantry can do their work without worry those fly~~~

Again thx guys for providing these tactics
Egypt~~~ here i come!!!

Keep us informed --- we like stories of both glory and defeat.

Good luck.

[Carpathian Wolf]

Has anyone considered using foot archers and heavy cavalry grouped? It's like a really slow heavy horse archer with many more arrows. Archers in general are faster at moving than other infantry and you keep the heavy cav around so they do not charge them.

[jahjeremy]

In general, you let the HA attack you first.

Place your vulnerable units, e.g. likely targets of the HA, behind your lines. Place archers in front with stakes so enemy cavalry cannot charge your lines. Spread the archers out so the all get a good line of fire. You need 4+ units of archers for this tactic to be effective.

Once the HA route after being decimated by your hail of arrows, follow up with light cavalry or heavy cavalry, the latter only if they are mostly boxed in.

HA are also vulnerable to heavy cavalry charges if there is no room to maneuver. The computer falls for this all the time. I let him get close with the HA and then WHAM.

[jahjeremy]

And as the Turks, who have a lot of them, I found HA are pretty weak actually, against anything but infantry and heavy cavalry (which they can outrun/skirmish).

Any army, even an AI one, with lots of xbows/bows just massacres them. It seems like the defense is pretty bad!

[kosmosje1]

It is always good to use (ungrouped) Longbows to target 1 unit. The AI will not turn into a mode that is defensive against arrow-fire until you actually hit them with it. A group of longbowmen shooting all at the same time will decimate a unit and take it out as a danger for your entire force. Continue with all the other units and you keep up a high casualty/arrow rate, doing considerable more damage than 1-on-1 slugs between individual longbow/horse-archer units.

[robbo]

As England as people have said make use of the longbows. Horse archers are weak against missile fire. I never have fewer than 5 units in an army. I also like an odd number for some reason. Once I gain access to retinue longbowmen I use up to 11 in one stack. With this many units you'll always be able to fire more arrows upon the enemy than they can fire upon you. The extra range of the longbows is also important.

If you ever find yourself without longbows or horse archers, light cavalry is the key. I've been able to defeat 2 and a bit stacks of mongols on the open field as Scotland by making use of the fast moving light cavalry.

[Conquistatore]

I personally use my own cavalry against them, specifically Knights and Light Cavalry. Just charge your cavalry in loose formation towards the HA's and eventually they will run them down and decimate them.

[uubbaguubba]

As said previously; Longbows are the best way forward - deploy archers in a line some way in front of your army and set stakes, once the game starts move your archers back (keep them with their range still ahead of the stake line) - HA will come at you at speed and thus get mauled badly by the stakes and get a further hammering from the arrows (if there are any left of course!)

Works for me against the Mongols so don't see why it wont work here

[Nazgûl Killer]

Uubb, I know you're new here, but please notice that the OP(Original Post) and the last post, are both from January 2009. This means that this subject has already been answered or abandoned - Please, refrain from reviving threads that have laid dead for 4 months or more, if you have nothing to add - And you just repeated what another said, so you didn't add anything. Sorry.

But don't worry about it - It's something we all did before, and learned not to do it.

[SturmChurro]

I suggest attack them with strong light cavalry that can catch up to them but try to attack from all sides.

[RollingWave]

basically, play defensive and just let them come at you. the key here is to not commit your cavalries until they're already firing on your infantries and you can fire back with your archers.

The AI doesn't do a particularly good job of using HAs, all it really does is approach and shoot, then run if your units approach it. so the key is to just go into a shoot out with them. HA's aren't that good in shoot outs even with their circles on.

With England's roster, you should pretty much just do the same tactic against all enemies anyway. just keep most of your troops as long bows + artilleries with some foot knight / swords man to back up. and a few unit of heavy cav. you should only commit your cavs once the lines are fully engaged. otherwise just use a shoot out tactic. luckily the AI will usually just meet your shoot out and charge head on anyway. so England's roster weakness (which is a complete lack of mobility and paltry anti cav capacity.) is rarely exposed

[Nazgûl Killer]

Let
It
Die.
This thread has been LONG answered, and from the last two replies - NOTHING has been added. No offense, of course.

This is a thread from January - Just let it die, let it go to the graveyard where it belongs.

[MooseUpNorth]

No offense, of course.

With respect, some offense taken.

I've seen complaints about people failing to use the search function to find old threads, then complaints about people using the old threads. These complaints very much come off as "get off my lawn."

It's not like this is a high-activity forum where we're anticipating fresh content anyway. Everything that can possibly be said about M2TW has been said at least once. If necromancy on a low-activity, dated forum is that big of a problem for the site owners, they should consider making the forum read-only.

If you're going to insist that people discuss only fresh content, then it might be helpful to provide some. Otherwise, you're only being off-topic.

So here's something new and relevant to this thread.

The Hungarians took a swipe at Vienna this morning. When I'd bought it from the Hungarians, they left behind five units of ballistae. I had time to build two italian spear militia before the siege.

The Hungarians had a set of catapults, two units of nobles, and a unit of their worthless spear militia to push the ram. (Huge units.)

When they attacked, I immediately sallied my ballistae out the gate, with the spear infantry protecting the engineers. The ballistae destroyed the catapults before they breached the walls, drove the militia off the ram, and then proceeded to exterminate the HA in detail in a protracted artillery duel. When the last HA was a charred stain on the landscape, the ballistae set the ram on fire (along with most of the catapult engineers who had formed up on it), ending the battle. My ballistae all suffered 25-50% losses, but otherwise all survived the battle. My spear infantry each took fewer than 10 casualties.

There's no way that ballistae would be effective in an engagement against a human player, but it works well enough against AI HAs.