How to combat horse archers?

[Gnostiko]

Playing as Romans (Byzantines). Haven't actually come up with a definitive strategy for taking them on, as most of the opponents I've faced tend to use them in a supplementary role. They aren't a problem per se, it's just that I forsee a conflict with the Mongols and if one or two units of horse archers annoy me, I know I'll be headbutting the keyboard if the enemy uses nothing but them!

Any tips?

[Caesar Clivus]

I usually use foot archers and/or my own light cavalry. Horse archers are usually outranged by foot archers and take more casualties (horses make for bigger targets maybe? ) than the infantry will. Light cavalry is usually fast enough to if not catch up with them then, then at least keep them on the move and away from your main forces.

[Hippolord]

My usuall strategy takes a bit longer but leads usually to minmal casualties. Now play as the byzantines you have access to horse archers yourself i do believe that Byzantine cavalry are horse archers so fight fire with fire. When fighting someone like the turks or kwarazhem get lots of byzantine cavalry to fight off there own horse archers. time consuming but worth it!

[lordextra0]

lots of foot archers is usually the best solution for me

[iron88]

I'll pile on with the fight fire with fire approach. At least 1 v 1 them with FAs or at least 2 v 1 them with HAs. Typically with that approach they quickly go from being an annoyance to an afterthought.

[Point Blank]

The mongols are very tough no matter what your force mix. Probably lots of FA backed up by heavy spears, but those mongol heavy HA and their FA will cause lots of casualties to your spearmen, and their Heavy Lancers are a killer.

[Angrychris]

dont use to much infantry and no real heavy anything if fighting a large horse stack, siege weapons also help make them flee faster.

[Staffen]

When the mongols come, I usually have some token cities I'm willing to sacrifice, stacked with at least one unit that can lay stakes, supported by a small garrison of spearmen, archers and some AP units. Let them lay siege, break gates, throw all their cavalry onto the stakes, then do as much damage to their infantry as possible.

Lose the city, make sure you've sold every single building in it the turn before. Rinse and repeat with other crap towns and cities until they're 'small' enough to take on in field battles ... and even then look for bridges, hight advantages, allied stacks, etc.

It's a cheap exploit, but it does have it's drawbacks. Mongols bypassing the bait and sieging a city that is valuable to you, for instance.

[Caesar Clivus]

When the mongols come, I usually have some token cities I'm willing to sacrifice, stacked with at least one unit that can lay stakes, supported by a small garrison of spearmen, archers and some AP units. Let them lay siege, break gates, throw all their cavalry onto the stakes, then do as much damage to their infantry as possible.

Using stakes in sieges is considered an exploit because the AI cannot deal with them at all. That's why they charge blindly onto them.

[Sonny WiFiHr]

My tactic vs Mongols is much simplier. 8 heavy cav 9 spears 2 archers. deploy archers in front and disable skrimish. Put your cav on the wings backed up with 2x2 spears. Remaning spears put in center. Close up on Mongols or they will advance to you. Sacrifise your archers to drow fire from whole Mongol stack ( or they will shoot on your horses). Start running with cav behind and flank of Mongols. Start running with your main inf line towards Mongol centre. Charge with cav in to the HA you will catch them because they can't run away (your cav is behind them). Close up with spears to finish them. Everthing else is to charge foot archers (do not melee them). Your inf will suffer greatly if you do not charge quickly. If Mongols have heavy lances spears will deal with them.

[lordextra0]

Using stakes in sieges is considered an exploit because the AI cannot deal with them at all. That's why they charge blindly onto them.

when I tried it the enemy cav just walked through them and only like 5 men died(was fighting them at gate so that there was lots of cav and inf in hte stakes but none of the cav died on them

[helmersen]

My tactic: You have a lot of good spearmen and maybe some archers, you get into one of your settlements, you let them siege you and attack you, then when you're on the battlemap, you take all of your spearmen and plae them just by the gate. You let them have their battering ram get to you gate, you clash with them! Since they use a lot of horse archers, you will strike them down really fast, and if you're lucky, their general will find himself trapped by your spearmen, and then if he dies, everyone will flee pretty soon!

[Staffen]

@ Caesar:

It's a cheap exploit

Already admitted that. The whole problem IMHO is that cavalry units in TW are not able to dismount. That would make the use of stakes a much more tactical matter ... instead of insta-kill devices, they would force enemies to fight dismounted.

[Hippolord]

Well as we all have probably figured out horse archers arnt woth alot in sieges of citys with stone walls.

They can be used when the enemy is closed in, in the center. but when you do have horse archers vs. horse archers in a minor city+ they pretty much negate eachother.

They end up getting stuck in some form of melee like 80% of the time.

[Sargon_of_Akkad]

Go for long-range infantry archers, protected by spearmen. Either that, or take off and nuke the site from orbit.

It's the only way to be sure.

[Faramir D'Andunie]

You can try to field heavy based foot archer/horse archer armies yourself and try to simply "outgun" em. If you chose that approach then siege weapons and a mangonel or two can really help in that task.

Other than the above something that has been already mentioned

My tactic vs Mongols is much simplier. 8 heavy cav 9 spears 2 archers. deploy archers in front and disable skrimish. Put your cav on the wings backed up with 2x2 spears. Remaning spears put in center. Close up on Mongols or they will advance to you. Sacrifise your archers to drow fire from whole Mongol stack ( or they will shoot on your horses). Start running with cav behind and flank of Mongols. Start running with your main inf line towards Mongol centre. Charge with cav in to the HA you will catch them because they can't run away (your cav is behind them). Close up with spears to finish them. Everthing else is to charge foot archers (do not melee them). Your inf will suffer greatly if you do not charge quickly. If Mongols have heavy lances spears will deal with them.

However surrounding mongols like that isn't always as easy as it sounds, but if you pull it off you simply have won.

In the end you'll be annoyed because no matter what you do, you will suffer a good amount of losses cause of their arrow fire

[delra]

1. Hide behind huge walls.
2. Put heavy swordsmen on the walls and archers right behind them on those walls. Mongols will have to send at least 4-6 units to defeat each such setup. They aren't a wall-taking faction at all.
3. At the gate either lay stakes (exploit) or surround with as good spearmen as you can get. Support with swordsmen (Alomanoi are good) to cut down any spearmen they will send.
4. Send some cavalry through a side gate to pin them down from behind and also to chase routing army if they run.
5. "You cannot outlast us and we will defeat you!". Press x6 and watch Mongols die.

If they bring Trebuchets you can either sacrifice your cavalry charging from the city right at their Trebuchets (AI is too dumb to screen them with spearmen) which is an exploit or pull everyone back and defend on the plaza only which is also an exploit.

You could also put Flamethrowers on the walls around and above the gate, let them ram it, then let them enter and rain fire at them from above. This is the biggest exploit of all.

Make sure you put those Flamethrowers behind some other unit, this other unit will take most arrows while FTs will lose only a few men.

[Point Blank]

If they bring Trebuchets you can either sacrifice your cavalry charging from the city right at their Trebuchets (AI is too dumb to screen them with spearmen)

We could probably alter the formations file so that siege engines are screened by infantry.

EDIT: yes that looks to be possible.

[Gnostiko]

Darn, and I loved those daring sallies out to destroy siege equipment before pegging it back to the castle!

Thanks for the tips guys. I think I'm just generally going to avoid field engagements; I cringe when I lose too many and I suspect fighting the Mongols for long will make my face freeze like that. Playing as them, I know from experience Mongols are a poooooor siege assault faction, so I'll be setting up ambushes in city streets to counteract those nimble, annoying, horse archers.

[Piotrburz]

I usually use a good foot archers. But if i haven't any, i use my good armoured horse archer. I charge them at opponent horse archers. It will only work against weak HA[2-4 dam, and at most 6 of def]
Other methods are pursuing by heavy cav, but it has low efficiency.
Good choice is to deploy mangonels againt those nasty HA. I usually wait until they do a circle, and fire boiling oil toward them. It will fear units, and they should run away from battle[at least they aren't shooting anymore at yr units]