Battlefield Tactics To Counter Horse Archers And Mounted Skirmishers

[Caesar Augustus]

Hi All,

So at the moment I'm playing through a pretty good Pontic campaign. I'm really enjoying it and finding it much more fun to play than the campaigns of the other Diadochi and other successor states.

However, I've run into a bit of a roadblock at the moment and am taking what I consider to be unacceptably high casualties against horse archers. Mounted skirmishers are just a pain but I thought I'd ask anyway because it's the whole speed + missile attack thing which is what's causing the issue in my opinion. I'm playing version 3.5.3c (same as 3.5.3b but with the Sarmatian horse archer hotfix).

Do you guys have any tips for taking out mounted skirmishers and horse archers on the battle map? I'm sharing a border with Armenia and Sarmatia at the moment, so they're an increasingly common sight. Curretly I try to get them to attack on unfavourable terrain where possibly so that it hinders their movement (depending on the location of the battle this isn't always possible), and I try to chase them down with the unarmoured mounted skirmishers that Pontus has access to as faction units (the logic here is that they probably are about the same speed ergo if they can keep them in range I can hurt the horse archers). Armenian horse archers seem to have masses of arrows at their disposal though, which leads to huge casualties amongst the troops I usually despatch to deal with them.

Thanks guys!

[pannonian]

Slingers with lots of ammo and high range, supported by nearby infantry. Rhodians and Balearics are commonly available with a good bag of ammo. Macedonians and Cyrtians have too little ammo to be ideal, but can do a job. Don't bother putting the infantry in front of the slingers to protect them from cavalry - they'll be taking losses in the missile duel anyway. Stick them alongside, or just behind the slingers, to countercharge any cavalry attack.

[Carados]

Combined arms!!!

Expect to suffer a stupid amount of casualties against horse archers. There is no other way around it. Stock up on missile troops, archers, skirmishers and horse archers of your own. You'll need them to actually hit the HA. Keep a couple of units of light/heavy cavalry nearby your light infantry so that the HA can't charge them. Have a few units to soak up missile fire, these can be cannon fodder or proper high defence units. Either route you take, make sure they are on LOOSE formation (I can't stress that enough).

What you do on the battlemap is dictated by how many units of horse archers there are. If the enemy only have a few then you only need distract them with skirmish cavalry of your own until you've decimated the enemy infantry. Once that happens you use your superior numbers to isolate, surround and destroy the cavalry.

Should you be against a lot of missile cavalry you need to do a lot of micromanagement. Try to isolate a few units by distracting a couple with missile cavalry of your own. Be careful about charging with light cavalry, you won't catch them and they can fire at you without fear of reprisal. Make sure that all your units have support. Try to keep a unit of cavalry and infantry with your missile infantry. Always make sure your infantry with shields are facing units that are shooting at them. To beat them you need to take away their mobility. You can either force the enemy cavalry towards the edge of the map where it bcomes easy to trap and rout them. If you can't do that then your best bet is to form an extended infantry line and try to envelope the horse archers, but not get so close that they run away. You need to have them surrounded as much as you can before you charge. Cavalry, especially light cavalry, are important here in sealing off any escape route the enemy cavalry might take. Always keep an eye on your cavalry. Missile cavalry can easily charge them en masse when you aren't looking and route them through sheer weight of numbers.

The other alternative is to just load up on infantry. A shield wall backed up with row upon row of missile infantry will overcome the much smaller missile cavalry. This does leave you susceptible to a few armies which have strong infantry and heavy cavalry so keep that in mind.

Pontus have a nice selection of units to deal with them. Don't bother with phalangites when against Sarmatia. Archers are your friends here, so too are the slingers. If you've got access to some Rhodian slingers then use those as well. Cretan archers will be a stretch but they are the best due to their shields and armour that they have at the moment. Your armoured javcav are nice because they have some means of striking at cavalry if they aren't in close combat. They also have much higher defence than your skirmish cavalry and mercenary horse archers.

[Caesar Augustus]

Guys, thanks so much for your responses.

I'll have to adjust my army composition accordingly, I usually don't bother with that many missile troops in my armies (I'll have maybe 4 or so in a full stack). Versus Sarmatia, I guess that thureophorio (spelling?) would probably be a good choice as they have missiles and fare pretty well in melee? I only share a border with them as I wanted to encircle the Black Sea so I'd get a fair bit of trade income to pay for further expansion.

Pontus doesn't really have that much of a choice in terms of light cavalry, but I might experiment with some Thracian cavalry from Nicomedia and see if they fare any better, and use more armoured horse skirmishers. Just a pain as they are expensive, but nevermind.

[Carados]

The archers are simply to reduce the number of arrows shot back at you. You won't be able to kill all the horse archers with them, at least not without suffering stupid casualties in the missile exchange. Theurophoroi should be good to use. In fact, they can act as the infantry guarding your archers too - hadn't thought of that. Very useful infantry they are.

Have you considered getting a fleet and shipping some heavier units straight over to the Greek Cities?? I do that relatively early with my Pontus campaigns.

The armoured javcav are expensive, I know. They act as heavy cavalry in melee though. A rather potent jack-of-all trades unit they are thus giving you lots of options on the battlefield. You could also give those Thracian heavy cavalry a try too.

[Caesar Augustus]

As in up to the peninsula at the top of the Black Sea? I've considered it a few times, but I didn't want to over-extend myself. I'm really not strong enough right now to take mainland Greece.

I think I've probably left it slightly late to really build myself up militarily. Territory wise I occupy everything east of Nicomedia up to Van (with the exception of Heraclea - didn't want to break the alliance with Greece) and as far south as the settlement south of Eupatoria (I think anyway; the settlement that you start with which isn't Pharnacia). My northernmost settlement is Kotais, I think. Militarily I've got 3 slightly over half stacks allocated to defend my north, south and eastern borders.

I do really like the Pontic campaign though, it seems to be my favourite of all those that I've tried

[Sardaukar One]

In my EXRM 3.4 Epirote campaign, I had all of Italy, North Africa, Illyria and the rest of the Adriatic provinces(Salona etc). All of Greece, Macedon, Thrace and the Hellespont south of the Danube; Asia Minor all the way to Tarsus and Halys. Throw in Sicily, Rhodes, Cyprus, Corsica and Sardinia and it was a nice compact Empire.

Anyway, I decided to attack the Boshorus. I loaded up on pikemen, cretan archers and rhodian slingers.
I had a pretty easy time taking out the cities. But I got sieged two or three game years later by HA heavy armies. In this campaign, the Sarmarians had taken out the Germans and had the whole northern part of the map. They didn't have that much military nearby because they had no fronts here.
Anyway, when I took these cities, I built stone walls first. And this paid off when I came to break the sieges.
When I sallied forth, I was able to put my missile troops on the walls. Often the Sarmartians would relocate their whole army and this would sometimes bring them into range of my missile troops. In a number of battles I was able to do some pretty good damage from elevated positions to the HAs before they moved out of range in their relocation process.
In a couple of sieges I left my missile troops on the walls and deployed my pike units right by the walls. Enemy Ha's came after my deployed pike troops and I was able to inflict a lot of damage while taking acceptable casualties to a few of my units.

In one battle, I got sieged by two armies. I mowed one army down using the above tactics. I ultimately had to pull some missile troops off the walls because the enemy would not come closer anymore and had infantry units that would obviously stay put. This battle actually became a close affair because of the time limit.
Of course I won, but even had I failed to defeat the enemy, I'd inflicted huge casualties on their HA units.
There would be no way they could survive me sallying a second time.

In the field, I try to fight on any kind of a hill if I can. This is especially important versus HA armies.
I actually deploy my pikemen in front of my missile troops.
Unless you are on a steep hill or incline, deploying them the other way round is inefficient in my opinion.
In the beginning of any exchange of missile fire, you want to be able to maintain your ability to inflict as much damage on enemy HAs as you can. You can't do that if your own missile troops are getting shot to hell too. A weaker missile unit does less damage. And the more casualties it takes, the less damage it can inflict. Your pikemen can take the damage better and its not as if they can't fight off an HA charge at half strength head on. Putting them in front risks them taking casualties.

In fighting HA armies in my Epirote campaign, I used ten/eleven pike units, a general unit, possibly one other cavalry unit(if used, then ten pike units) and four units of cretans and four units of rhodian slingers.
As much as I like to totally destroy units, I didn't find it that effective deploying cavalry against routing HA units. One time a routing HA unit recovered before my light cav unit could get to it and along with another HA unit, it ended up routing my light cav unit. I had to deploy light cav because otherwise I can't catch the HA units. I just found it a bit of a waste of time and not very effective.
When I use additional cavalry, its now usually a heavy cavalry unit whose job is to plug gaps and pursue and charge any Sarmartian infantry. A much more efficient use in my opinion.

Another tip is that invariably, you will run out of ammo before your HA enemy does. So, I turn auto fire off.
And I manually target HA units with my missile units. That way, they don't waste ammo on units that my infantry can easily deal with. I'm able to target HA units only.
I'm also prone to using fire with some of my cretans. An opening combination of slings, arrows and fire arrows can be quite effective and conducive to getting HAs to rout.
Of course, they will often come back, but by that time, you are concentrating your fire on other units and taking less fire yourself. This is a even more effective tactic if you can kill the enemy general.
I typically will try to kill the enemy general with my Rhodians especially. Killing the general is a big help versus HA armies.
Using fire arrows allows helps conserve your ammo. Admittedly, its a slower rate of fire, but you can keep up return fire much longer.

One exception to my HA fire only rule is this. In the early battle, sometimes the enemy infantry will march forward, then return to their own lines. I will sometimes get my cretans to switch to fire arrows if they aren't using them, and fire on the infantry when their backs are to me. But only with fire arrows. And only if the situation allows. If there are five or six HA units in range, then no way. If theres two or three and I am peppering them already, then I will do this.

Hope this helps.

[Sardaukar One]

I'd add that Cretans and Rhodians are not easily replaceable. Even if you do have Rhodes and Crete, you have to ship your units all that way to replenish depleted units. And it most likely will be a long way to the front for your new Cretans and Rhodians. So letting your heavy infantry units take the damage seems the way to go.

[Carados]

As in up to the peninsula at the top of the Black Sea? I've considered it a few times, but I didn't want to over-extend myself. I'm really not strong enough right now to take mainland Greece.

Yeah, up there. It's fairly out of the way and you can easily support them with troops so long as you keep a decent governor up there and you maintain naval control over the Black sea.

I think I've probably left it slightly late to really build myself up militarily. Territory wise I occupy everything east of Nicomedia up to Van (with the exception of Heraclea - didn't want to break the alliance with Greece) and as far south as the settlement south of Eupatoria (I think anyway; the settlement that you start with which isn't Pharnacia). My northernmost settlement is Kotais, I think. Militarily I've got 3 slightly over half stacks allocated to defend my north, south and eastern borders.

Ah right. The greeks attacked me in my campaign so I took out Sinope and shipped an army up to Theodosia/Phanagoria so I would get some decent Black sea trade. I try to avoid Kotais because that puts me dangerously close to Armenia and I try to remain friendly with them for as long as possible, especially if I'm at war with the Greeks and/or Galatians. The Seleucids don't really matter - you'll end up at war with them eventually regardless of what you do.

I do really like the Pontic campaign though, it seems to be my favourite of all those that I've tried

It's a good one. You've got everything except armoured swordsmen and elephants to play around with. The former of which becomes available after a time.

[Caesar Augustus]

Cheers for the tip bud! At the moment I'm using a more rounded combined arms approach to defeat them, and pezoi have become a rare sight in the north. Of course I had to plunder a few more Seluecid cities to pay for this reform, so I'm still playing with my version of the SAPSWOD (see Carados !) as well.

Also, do any factions get a "imitation legionary" type unit in EXRM? I was thinking of ways to increase the flexibility of the infantry contingent of my armies and it struck me that where various sources mention Roman style troops they could be meaning thureophorio? I think Numidia would be an exception to this as Jugurtha was present at the siege of Numantia?

[Sardaukar One]

The following factions get an imitation legionary.

1) Seleucids
2) Ptolemies
3) Galatia
4) Pontus
5) Armenia
6) Numidia

I believe thats pretty much it. I don't think I've left anyone out.

I presume this is still the same in EXRM 3.5.

[Quinn Inuit]

Yep, those are the ones.

I definitely recommend slingers against HA. And the thureophoroi recommendation is interesting, because that troop type does appear to have caught on in Bactria. I think they're a solid option...stronger than any infantry the locals are going to be able to raise, spears to deal with cavalry, and javelins to make light cavalry pay if they get too close.

[Caesar Augustus]

You'll have to forgive the rather poor format of this post, I'm using my phone to check TWC as my home internet's playing up.

I'm tempted to start another Pontic campaign now to see how that affects my early game. Should be a nice income booster, and access to more Greek AOR troops too?

I ended up taking Kotais off Armenia in the end. They always seem to object to my existence within 5 years of starting a campaign. Probably because the AI hates human players.

How'd you get Galatia to ally with you? I find that after I take Sinope they start throwing small armies at me and they seem to stall. Could be a problem with them trying to hold Nicomedia or something? I know I have trouble holding it.

Imitation legionaries are available after Marius then? I'm looking forward to seeing the new reform plans implemented. Should be sweet