Battle Tips?

[Jage0910]

I can manage my Kingdom well in Stainless Steel but battles I do pretty bad. Any general tips? Faction sepcific ones work too because I'm playing as England. I use RR/RC and Savage AI btw.

[Alpha Zeke]

Flank the enemy, use spears against calvary, fight against calvary in the woods or with them in the field, use arcers - a lot, fight downhill, defend uphill.

[Jage0910]

That's pretty helpful. So should at least half my army consist of archers or is that too much?

On another note my merchants are getting bought out often. How can I prevent this? Also how can I make my merchants not be bad at merchanting? Being a noob feels like such a burden haha.

[Alpha Zeke]

Noob is a burden indeed, but you grow out of it!
have your merchants practice on low level resources for a while in your own territory, or in very isolated places. keep a spy with them. if someone starts heading over to get him, move him off, let the other guy get on, and either eliminate him or find a new resource. building enough merchants and doing enough trade also gets you the merchants guild, which gives a huge (3+ I think) bonus to a merchants finance thats recruited there.

my personal preference for army is 4 or 5 archers, lots of heavy inf and heavy cav, a small amount of light infantry for going around flanks, and light cav for chasing down enemy archers. use heavy cav for flanking the enemy as well. if you use your general, pull him out 3 or 4 seconds after you flank, and then repeat the process!

[Jage0910]

One final question. How can I get better units? I've been seeing rebels have like Longbowmen and Knights but I'm trying to fight them off with militias, levies and peasants >_>.

[Alpha Zeke]

Depends on if you have RR turned on or not, but generally speaking you must upgrade your buildings like barracks, archery ranges, and stables to get better units. The buildings in castles produce much more militarily adapt units though.

[Jage0910]

I am using RR and thanks I'll get right on that.

[Marcvs Antonivs]

Personally I would say at least 6 to 8 units of Longbowmen/Yeomen, heavy infantry and some spearmen to counter cavalry. Only 1 general and other unit of heavy cavalry, at least it worked for me very very very well.

[Alpha Zeke]

As I said, personal preference. I (although I love assassins even more) love the brute force of an army, and the pleasure of smashing militia in the back of their heads with heavy cav makes me happy

[Jack95]

I use around 6 missle units, consisting of usually 2-4 crossbowmen and 2-4 archers, 3 cavalry, dread general, and 10 infantry of spears and non-spears.

I like to know what I'm fighting so I usally have a spy nearby. So if I see that the enemy doesn't have a lot of cavalry then I don't have to worry about setting up spears on the flanks as much. If I see a lot of missles then I know I have to try and hit them with the cavalry.

During a regular battle I like to have the spears on the flanks to protect against the enemy horses flanking, regular infantry in front to fight the enemy infantry, 1 or 2 spearmen close behind incase of a cavalry charge, archers on the flanks behind, crossbowmen in the middle behind, cavalry on the flanks, general in the back. I like to have the archers on the flanks so they have a better firing angle on the middle so they can more accurately hit the enemy with fire so they'll more easily rout. When they waiver, cavalry go in and break 'em. Mass rout, the end. Spears on the flanks have the ability to flank around.

It's so easy to get them to rout with a dread general, a cavalry charge, and a large fire barrage.

[Jage0910]

I like Chivalrous Generals lol. So I guess routing them is a whole lot more difficult for me.

[NewUser]

Spearmen are much better at holding the line than swordsmen or axemen; this is great for the old hammer and anvil tactics. With the militia forces you start out with, always fight with a general in it as this will be the main way you will defeat enemy armies. Hold the line, then focus archer fire on one unit, then attack them in the rear, not flank, with your general on a good charge (you have to start charging a comfortable distance away for it to be effective). This will most likely rout that unit, then you collapse on their flank with your spearmen and then it will turn into a mass route. Be careful which enemies you engage, as mass values was heavily tuned up for SS and this means that heavy cav will be devastating to your low mass units (spearmen levy, spearmen militia comes to mind).

Also, just a side note, archers have been seriously nerfed in SS 6.3, which means that their arrows will have much less effect on armored units.

[Lushang]

I overuse the Horns strategy a lot, calv run around the sides while spear hold in middle, hvy helps in weak spots and on flanks to push a route, calv charges and rolls up enemy line. The newer AI knows how to try to stop you though..

[Paladin94610]

What do you mean of the Horn Strategy? I think it's very familiar for me.

[Alpha Zeke]

Just noting, hiting an enemy in the rear is a form of flanking. Flanking is from any angle not head-on. Someone cite my wrongness if im wrong

[RollingWave]

Another aspect is to remember to not exhaust your troops, obvious first tip is to never run unless you must. there are more complicated (and risky) advanced tricks concerning this as well, especially in siege assaults. but that's really up to urself to figure out.

With RR, it's less of a matter of what's the best combination of your troops then what you actually have to work with since most of the time you'll be forced to use a lot of junk low level units ... you know... like in real history .

essentially though, the standard idea for most factions (the exceptions would be nomadic onces like the Cumans) would be something like this..

1. Spear -> center of your formation, always. all your battles should center on the spearman. they should bear the blunt of the assault on defense. and should try to pin down the opponent's army on offense. low level onces in higher difficult RC make this more problematic, since they tend to run pretty quickly. but that's the challenge .

2. archer types -> the tactical use of archers, especially in the field. can often be tricky and more varied. first it depends on how many archers you have in comparason to your foe (and quality). and then it depends on the relative terrain . and ofcourse it depend on wether your on offense of defense.

For defense, the matter is usually simple, just find a defensible highground and keep firing, remember that archers do A LOT better when there's a direct line between them and the foe (and crossbowmans even more so), so if your not on a very steep hill, try to keep your melee units BEHIND your archers units until the enemy is close. one trick is to simply keep skrimish on, that way the archers themself will run back when approached.

On offense, it gets a lot more tricky.

If you have significant advantage ... wether in quality or quantity, then the most obvious tactic is to just stand your archers in the front, and shoot at them , since it'll force the enemy to come and get you or suffer casaulties.

if you DON'T have the advantage. then it really depends. sometimes I just hold them from the battle completely, holding them as reserve just in case the enemy suddenly decide to attack instead. especially if it's better quality onces that I don't want to lose. if it is just levy archers though, what you COULD do is to spread into loose formation, and have them approach the enemy first, which will draw most of the missile fire , helping your melee units avoid casualties from missile units.

Another possible but more complicated approach is to have them follow behind your melee units, once the lines engage. run to the flanks / backs of the enemy (must turn off skrimish for this) and then open fire, this is obviously more risky and complicated, but if pulled properly you can do MASSIVE damage, since almost anything gets high damage bonus when hitting the rear/ back of the enemy.. not to meantion fairly up close.


3. sword types : generally, they should be on the flanks of your spears, wether it's both or one is really up to you. they act as protection from flank attacks. and also can wheel around and flank the enemy lines themself.

If the enemy has a very obvious spear line and more cavalries than you though, you might want to do the opposite, aka have the swords as the center and the spears as the flanks. as swordsman are not as cost effective against horsemans. espeically those charging into you.

swordsman are also the most overall useful type of units on walls. wether defending or attacking .



4. cavalries: cavalries are a pretty simple matter. find weak spots, charge home. of course you must realize what weakspots are. generally though, the most obvious are the archer types units. just wheel around the main line and charge into them directly should do the trick most of the time. for melee units. try to find the back and flank and charge, preferablly with heavier cavalries.

If they have cavalries of their own, just remember the obvious... heavy > light, more > less, high ground > low ground. move fast > not moving.


Also, cavalries are relatively more suspect to missile fire, so keep that in mind when approaching.

5. misc units : since your mostly talking England, the other units will be less of your concern. namely javelin, javlin cavalries, and horse archers.

javelins obviously have lower range than bows, but they HIT A TON when they do hit. so never take them lightly, one of the easiest way for a general to meet untimely demise is often at the hand of javlins. javelinmen are also more useful in melees than archers (but should not be mistaken for swordsmans)

Cavalry javlines are even more scary when properly handled, since they are basically light cavalries that also have a punch that can kill even the heaviest units with ease. the AI typically don't do a very good job with them though. remember to just not panic against them and shoot them as much as possible.


Horse archers are another story altogether, as England you probably wont run into them too often though. suffice to say that if there is one unit where you can just form an entire army with and be invincible on the field, it's horse archers.

If you do somehow need to fight a army of mostly horse archers, remember to keep your formation, have A LOT of bows and preferablly a lot of siege weapons as well.

[Lushang]

http://www.fortunecity.co.uk/amuseme...00/battle.html

This is kinda a summary of what I was talking about.