Strategy in the battle when using different factions

[Runner]

What is your strategy in the battle when using different factions？
i think it will be very interesting in learning from other good gamers.

[ShadowKiller2000]

Well it all depends on the faction you use. The best strategy to use is one that plays to your strenghts and your current enemy's weaknesses.

For expamle: Last night I was playing as the Crusader States after migrating to England for fun. And Danemark had just be recociled by the pope, I had full status on the Pope o' meter.

I brought a well balanced army of spear troops, heavy infantry, cavalry, and longbows. Basically, the idea was to outshoot Danemark, hit their infantry with mine, and charge from behind with cavalry until their army routs.

Once you know your enemies weaknesses try to maximize your advantage against them.

[Ichon]

Basic field battle strategy is hammer and anvil. Some infantry lined up along either wide or small front depending on terrain and opposing army sizes and then either shock infantry or cavalry waiting to turn into the flank or rear of enemy when front lines begin to charge.

If your own army has more cavalry then you can eliminate enemy archers or cavalry before front lines even get close or try to kill the enemy general which can lead to entire enemy army routing almost before front lines even start fighting.

If you have horse archers and enemy doesn't, or has weak/less # then you can kill enemy missiles or draw out enemy general and kill.

Lastly, or really should be first consideration after weighing relative strengths of the armies, is the terrain. Obviously elevation is better for archers and usually for normal infantry as well but sometimes forest works well or flat ground. Its too specific to the battle and armies involved to say always one way to use terrain is better than another.

More complicated strategies are with mostly infantry armies or lots of ranged units... crossbows in / \ / \ / formation can work, or hide some archers behind a building or terrain feature on the map and arc their arrows into enemy which has trouble getting into melee with them.

You can also play divide and conquer if you have some cavalry or fast light skirmishers by drawing some enemy units away from main group and then using superior #'s against them to make defeating the rest easier.

My personal favorites are sacrifice hold, and blunt charges. Sacrifice hold is usually done with a good unit with strong morale so it does not rout quickly and angle or position that unit in such a way that half or more the enemy front line is forced to engage it. The way coherent units work is even if only small part of the unit touches and enemy the whole unit tends to slow and bunch up or come to complete stop. Gives you time to maneuver other units to flanks rear of enemy for an easier victory. Often only the sacrifice unit loses many men compared to a battle where the whole front line engaged equally each unit lost 10% vs 1 unit losing 60% which could be the difference using 160 # units of 96 which is 60% of a single unit vs 160 which is 10% of 10 units.

Blunt charge is usually used against enemy cavalry... take a high defense unit, usually General/FM or 2 light cavalry units and charge the enemy cavalry charging your front line. A general BG has high mass and armor and can blunt enemy charge almost completely allowing your own front line to counter-charge enemy cavalry. Timing is everything- start your own General charging too early and enemy cavalry might veer away and come in another angle. Start too late and the enemy reaches your lines and smashes them. 2 light cavalry can often lead to enemy cavalry veer towards them or away from your front lines in a charge. If you can micro well enough you might even be able to draw the enemy cavalry away and then as they pursue 1 light cavalry the 2nd hits them in the flank, and then the 1st turns and hits in the other flank. Sometimes you can kill entire enemy cavalry with quite light losses this way. The idea with using your own General to frontal charge enemy charging cavalry is that the General stops the enemy cavalry are few yards in front of your own lines which then surge forward and pin enemy cavalry and your general retreats to turn and go to the rear of enemy army and charge from there...

For archers you can often use skirmish tactics as well- if ranges are equal or your unit have longer range you come just into range and let loose volley and then either move back out of range for equal range or just move when your unit comes under enemy archers range. Also the units take a few moments to switch between melee and range weapons and sometimes you can use this pause to greatly cut down on your losses.

Probably many other tactics as well but most of them depend highly on the situation so hard to describe.

[SirRobin]

Danemark had just be recociled by the pope, I had full status on the Pope o' meter.

I brought a well balanced army of spear troops, heavy infantry, cavalry, and longbows. Basically, the idea was to outshoot Danemark

With all respect, "Danmark" please my good man

hit their infantry with mine, and charge from behind with cavalry until their army routs.

Once you know your enemies weaknesses try to maximize your advantage against them.

This is pretty much the standard basic tactic for all factions in the game, as far as I am aware of. Flanking is the name of the game, no matter what units you use.

Some factions use lots of horse archers, in which case you counter with archers and go make tea while they have a prolonged shoot-out.

[me_hungarian]

I like to use the Stake'n bake strat. Basicly Heavy infantry and lots of awesome archers. Place a ring of stakes arround your force preventing any calv flanking, and use your heavy infantry to hold them still while your archers shott them to ribbins. Note This only works of the defensivly, and treb/catapults help out to. I used this alot with the English.

I think my fav strategies involve defending, i don't lose very often.

For now as Norway, which has really good AP infantry, and lacks alot of everything else. I ushally use a fodder strat which which i use my crappy millitas to tie up my foes main forces. I leave my heavy stuff and some spears to flank and protect from cavalry flanking. And i use my Cavalry to flank from behind and take out archers or trap the general if he charges. I don't have a screen pick but another one of my fav strats is to group up my army like this
c= cavalry, .=single group of heavy infanty, i= two, I=three or more infantry.

CC ...iiiI

anyways what i do is charge the frist line into the enemies line, then the sceond, then the third. Hope fully routing the ememy where my "I" is. I use my cavalry to support the "." via Flanking from behind and charging repeatedly. It works well with my large infantry force.

[Runner]

I like to use the Stake'n bake strat. Basicly Heavy infantry and lots of awesome archers. Place a ring of stakes arround your force preventing any calv flanking, and use your heavy infantry to hold them still while your archers shott them to ribbins. Note This only works of the defensivly, and treb/catapults help out to. I used this alot with the English.

I think my fav strategies involve defending, i don't lose very often.

For now as Norway, which has really good AP infantry, and lacks alot of everything else. I ushally use a fodder strat which which i use my crappy millitas to tie up my foes main forces. I leave my heavy stuff and some spears to flank and protect from cavalry flanking. And i use my Cavalry to flank from behind and take out archers or trap the general if he charges. I don't have a screen pick but another one of my fav strats is to group up my army like this
c= cavalry, .=single group of heavy infanty, i= two, I=three or more infantry.

CC ...iiiI

anyways what i do is charge the frist line into the enemies line, then the sceond, then the third. Hope fully routing the ememy where my "I" is. I use my cavalry to support the "." via Flanking from behind and charging repeatedly. It works well with my large infantry force.

thanks for your sharing.

i want to know more about one thing, can we charge the 2nd infantry line behind the 1st infantry force, then charge the 3rd line? can the 2nd infantry line squeeze through the 1st line to fight the enemy?

[Neptune7]

I enjoy flanking enemy units, that are already engaged with my units in melee, with missle units like archers or javelins and then launching a deadly volley at their backs..It's like cutting down wheat..It's great...

[Shoryn]

I think it depends of your faction and the enemy you are facing. For example, playing Lithuania, in my early wars against Novgorod and Kiev who had average all-round armies I went usually with 4 heavy cav (1 bodyguard, 3 noble cav), 4 missile cav, 4 archers, 4 light spearmen (baltic ones) and some shock infantry (mainly ducal axe infantry), including later some Dievas' guards, and I usually cut the enemy into pieces with very few losses. I used basic tactics, like hammer & anvil one and was able to have only 50 casualties in a 1000vs1000 battle.

Now, 70 years later I'm at war with Denmark which has very strong infantry and very little to no cavalry. I tried the same sheme and can see it doesn't work well, so I added a lot of heavy cav in my armies to charge non-spears heavy infantry before they can glue my infantry in hand-to-hand (Huskarls, for example, are deadly if you let them hit you ; but charging them with heavy cavalry from flank before they can charge will torn them into pieces, halving their numbers and making them rout quickly).
So I was forced to adapt my tactics.

Lithuania has some big advantages as it gets 3 units that never routs : Followers of Perkunas who makes a really good meatshield with 8 Attack and AP, and an upkeep of 100; Giltine's Chosen, best shock infantry in the world with 180 upkeep ; Dievas' Guards, powerful and resilient heavy cav with 150 upkeep...

Well sorry to tell about my life, just my 2cents

[withfriend2]

hmm do you guys use spear militia or urban spear militia alot when using the eastern factions? other than the factions tht get the sergents, this seem to be the only spearmen to use until pikes but youl probably finish the cdampaign by them

[Shoryn]

When playing Kiev or Novgorod you have the Senior Rus Militia who are pretty good; Lithuania got Baltic Spearmen, Ducal Spearmen and Late Lith Spearmen; Poland has Pavise Spear Militia; Cumans have Dismounted Khagan Druzhina as very good spearmen.
Other than that you have the Eastern Spearmen and Tartar Foot Lancers who are good too.

[RollingWave]

unless the odds are overwhelming and/or the horse archer side is strictly on the offensive, IMHO foot archers really don't do much against HAs in the right hand, especially HAs that have long range missiles.

as for the OP's question , it really depend on what you have to work with. and the particular situation on hand. not to meantion the foe your up against, it can basically be summed up by Sun Tzu's "Know your self and know your enemy and you'll always be victorious"

Is your faction's roster well balanced or extreme? is your foes balanced or extreme? what's the terrain? all of these have plenty to do with how you actually execute.

most things should be pretty obvious, the few aspect that I think more people have problems with tend to be
A. how to use horse archers to maximum effects
B. how to tackle really big siege assaults

[Runner]

unless the odds are overwhelming and/or the horse archer side is strictly on the offensive, IMHO foot archers really don't do much against HAs in the right hand, especially HAs that have long range missiles.

as for the OP's question , it really depend on what you have to work with. and the particular situation on hand. not to meantion the foe your up against, it can basically be summed up by Sun Tzu's "Know your self and know your enemy and you'll always be victorious"

Is your faction's roster well balanced or extreme? is your foes balanced or extreme? what's the terrain? all of these have plenty to do with how you actually execute.

most things should be pretty obvious, the few aspect that I think more people have problems with tend to be
A. how to use horse archers to maximum effects
B. how to tackle really big siege assaults

thanks RollingWave.

1. do anyone can share how to tackle really big siege assaults?

2. how to use horse archers to maximum effects?

3. how to fight good in the forest? how to fight upward in the hill?

[RollingWave]

thanks RollingWave.

1. do anyone can share how to tackle really big siege assaults?

2. how to use horse archers to maximum effects?

3. how to fight good in the forest? how to fight upward in the hill?

1. obviously, having a lot of siege weapons would be the best, though in SS it is hard to get to Trebuchets especially for factions that start out poor, and catapults really don't do jack against anything past basic stone walls.

The key is obviously knowing what you can do and can't do , a full heavy stack in a fortress is basically a no go unless you have very good arsenal of siege weapons, if you don't, then just wait it out or try something else (for example if there's a stack right outside the settlement attack it might draw the garrison out.)

Though tackling those half stacks in fortress / citadals are often what people mess up the most, IMHO the single biggest key in those sort of assualt , espeically if you don't have a lot of siege engines, is to build A LOT of towers and ladders, I mean pretty much every infantry (including archers) should have something in their hand. wait two turns to build it.

The second key is to attack from more than one side, you have more men then they do, use it to your advantage, your archers shooting from under the wall aint gonna do jack, but if they're on the wall shooting down they can devastate enemy cavalry / or other enemies on the walls if the angel is right. also, by spreading your force out you also force your foe to spread out his force, making his already stretched menpower even more tested, the AI will almost surely have one side that is obviously weaker than the other, attack that side first, and they'll usually try to pull troops over to help, and at that point you launch from the other side etc...

also, always try to manage your stamina in siege (the same is true for defense but offense is usually a bigger problem), especially your key troops like foot knights should never waste energy that they don't have to.


2. The key to horse archer is to remember that all archers are more accurate (thus do more damage) up close, and that archers hitting from the side / rear will partially or entirely negate enemy shield bonus, thus Horse archers can often hit a lot harder than their stats would suggest, since they can maximize their effect more often than foot archers (how often can you shoot into the rear of units up close as foot archers?).

Also, moving makes you harder to hit, which is key when dealing with enemies that also have some range fire power, obviously you need to judge the relative numbers, but in most cases going loose formation and running will make you far less suspect to missile fire than your low defense stats would suggest, and once you run around their melee units you can also try to close up and just charge the enemy archers if there's a sufficent opening.

enemy cavalries tend to be the bigger threat to horse archers, but remember that you can often use that to your advantage, as you shoot at their cavalry they'll often give chase. thus pooling them away from their main body, this give you all sorts of option, you can use your own melee cavalry and just intercept their chasers, or you can take advantage of their cavalry's abbesence and just go after their main host. most horse archers move very fast and thus isn't easy to catch, and they can shoot at the enemy cavalry while they're being chased, which tend to be quite devastating, even against pretty heavy onces.

essentially, HA can take advantage of position more than any units in the game, and thus they can often maximize their effect the most, and their tactical option is huge, often they can draw apart enemy forces, or punish them heavily if they don't give chase. or they can just harrase the enemies while they march across the map.


3. wood lands tend to be the most difficult fights, in those cases there isn't a whole lot more to be said then make sure you have better troops, and try to apply your troops better , and don't count on your cavalries as much. for up hill battles the general idea is that you have to try to reverse the cards, I.E run your own horsemans up the flanks so they end up even higher than the enemies. but obviously this can be risky, and often require you sending some troops to lure their fire, if you have things like pavise crossbows that's obviously the best, since they are very very resistent to archer fires. fool them into a shoot out while your cavalries run up the sides. if you lack cavalries then that becomes even more difficult, and in some cases simply impossible.

[Runner]

1. obviously, having a lot of siege weapons would be the best, though in SS it is hard to get to Trebuchets especially for factions that start out poor, and catapults really don't do jack against anything past basic stone walls.

The key is obviously knowing what you can do and can't do , a full heavy stack in a fortress is basically a no go unless you have very good arsenal of siege weapons, if you don't, then just wait it out or try something else (for example if there's a stack right outside the settlement attack it might draw the garrison out.)

Though tackling those half stacks in fortress / citadals are often what people mess up the most, IMHO the single biggest key in those sort of assualt , espeically if you don't have a lot of siege engines, is to build A LOT of towers and ladders, I mean pretty much every infantry (including archers) should have something in their hand. wait two turns to build it.

The second key is to attack from more than one side, you have more men then they do, use it to your advantage, your archers shooting from under the wall aint gonna do jack, but if they're on the wall shooting down they can devastate enemy cavalry / or other enemies on the walls if the angel is right. also, by spreading your force out you also force your foe to spread out his force, making his already stretched menpower even more tested, the AI will almost surely have one side that is obviously weaker than the other, attack that side first, and they'll usually try to pull troops over to help, and at that point you launch from the other side etc...

also, always try to manage your stamina in siege (the same is true for defense but offense is usually a bigger problem), especially your key troops like foot knights should never waste energy that they don't have to.


2. The key to horse archer is to remember that all archers are more accurate (thus do more damage) up close, and that archers hitting from the side / rear will partially or entirely negate enemy shield bonus, thus Horse archers can often hit a lot harder than their stats would suggest, since they can maximize their effect more often than foot archers (how often can you shoot into the rear of units up close as foot archers?).

Also, moving makes you harder to hit, which is key when dealing with enemies that also have some range fire power, obviously you need to judge the relative numbers, but in most cases going loose formation and running will make you far less suspect to missile fire than your low defense stats would suggest, and once you run around their melee units you can also try to close up and just charge the enemy archers if there's a sufficent opening.

enemy cavalries tend to be the bigger threat to horse archers, but remember that you can often use that to your advantage, as you shoot at their cavalry they'll often give chase. thus pooling them away from their main body, this give you all sorts of option, you can use your own melee cavalry and just intercept their chasers, or you can take advantage of their cavalry's abbesence and just go after their main host. most horse archers move very fast and thus isn't easy to catch, and they can shoot at the enemy cavalry while they're being chased, which tend to be quite devastating, even against pretty heavy onces.

essentially, HA can take advantage of position more than any units in the game, and thus they can often maximize their effect the most, and their tactical option is huge, often they can draw apart enemy forces, or punish them heavily if they don't give chase. or they can just harrase the enemies while they march across the map.


3. wood lands tend to be the most difficult fights, in those cases there isn't a whole lot more to be said then make sure you have better troops, and try to apply your troops better , and don't count on your cavalries as much. for up hill battles the general idea is that you have to try to reverse the cards, I.E run your own horsemans up the flanks so they end up even higher than the enemies. but obviously this can be risky, and often require you sending some troops to lure their fire, if you have things like pavise crossbows that's obviously the best, since they are very very resistent to archer fires. fool them into a shoot out while your cavalries run up the sides. if you lack cavalries then that becomes even more difficult, and in some cases simply impossible.

thanks for your advices!

[Black_ice_Spain]

i always do the same regardless of the faction.


take the highest point possible (so you dont attack from down to up). Archers there and stakes. Then just launch arrows and wait for the enemy to come. When they come, put infantry behind archers leaving two spearmen group to help my two flanks cav. launch infantry vs infantry, flank with cav (fight enemy cav with cav+spearmen). Altho i play only spain, gondor and now scotland.

If enemy has more cav than me, then i use my cav to prevent them to charge infantry and then run while enemy cav fights my infantry.

Otherwise its.... square defending on cities and backstabbing enemy cities.


And when i have a big army, i split it on two parts and make the enemy fight between them.

[Medkirtys]

Hammer & Anvil is the easiest, and probably one of the best tactics ever, from Rome to Empire (though it's a bit different there). If you have horse archers, and enemy has no, or is low on missile troops = auto win. Enemy has lots of spearmen, and you have few spearmen, and few cavalry = pretty much win. And the best tactic in the field is, make an army of 20 Byzzies generals, no one can stop you (stakes and pikes sometimes are exceptions)

[SplaTt]

Well, my personal favourite tactic requies archers, infantry and cavalry.
I just put archers in front as long as they are save, then put them on back. Infantry works as flesh wall. Then, when enemy is fighting my "flesh wall" I make hit&run from behind/flank using cavalry and just watch how billion of arrows makes blood soup of my enemies.

PS: Mostly I'm playing as England and it works pretty fine against almost all factions.