lil help

[Slimshoom]

ok, i started a campaign as brutii, and took the three Greek and Rebel settlemens along the coast of Greece. I got a ceasefire with Greece, and was planning to sit and boom. Then, all of a sudden, i get attacked by Macedon, and i win huge battles, but take heavy casualities due to phalanxes, anyone have any advice on how to beat phalanxes with hastati and principes?

[Captain_Paulentineous]

What I do, is I use two units to any one phalanx, one to keep the phalanx in place, the other to hit to the side. If I am outunumbered by phalanx units, I usually just overwhelm one side then continue the stratagy. Hope that helps.
P.S archers, velites and equities (sp) really help against them.

[adamus]

What troops do you have available? If you have cavalry auxilia, then they are really good because they can pepper the phalanxes with missiles and then withdraw before they are attacked.

Macedon is a tougher opponent than Greece, because unlike the Greeks, they also have good cavalry units, so you need 2/3 units of Equites in your army - Macedonian cavalry is superior, but the point is to keep them from attacking your infantry.

The key to fighting phalanx units is not to fight them "head-on" with your Hastati / Principes because you will lose (or at least take very heavy casualties). However, if you attack a phalanx unit from the sides (or even better from the rear) you will tear them to shreds. This is an important point to remember, as is the "domino" effect of routing units (if you rout one, the others will soon follow), so if you're outnumbered, focus on one flank of the Macedonian battle line.

Phalanx units are also very slow, so place 2/3 units of your skirmishers (velites) in front of your main battle line and use them to "harass" the enemy phalanxes as they approach your troops (this has two benefits - 1) Lowers enemy morale (so their units will rout quicker) and 2) Reduces the number of enemies you have to fight). When the velites have "spent" their missiles, place them behind your battle line and then use them to flank the Macedonians when the two main battle lines are engaged.

A particularly good tactic is to use a unit of velites (with equites in support), use their missiles to attack a phalanx unit on the flank of the Macedonian battle line, when the unit breaks formation to attack the velites, move them away slowly, drawing the phalanx unit away from the main battle line, then charge your equites into the rear of the phalanx unit and it should rout fairly quickly.

[Tacticalwithdrawal]

Greeks and Macedonians are a dream to fight, slow moving is easy to kill, if you do it right you will get loads of Heroic victories (even in SPQR).

To do it, set up a formation something like this:

...........HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.................
...........VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV.................
...........AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.................
......TTT...PPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP....TTTT...........
......CCCCCCCC.......GGGGG.........CCCCCCCC............

where H = Hastati, V = Velites, A = Archers, T = Triarii, P = Principes (must be one unit here but could be more Hastati), C = Cavalry (preferably Auxilia cav but equites will do) and G = Genral.

Hastati and Velites are set to fire at will and Gaurd mode on (and velites have skirmish switched off)
Archers have gaurd mode on, skirmish off and fire arrow on (not fire at will though)
Triarii & Principes have gaurd on
If you are using cavalry auxilia then fire at will off and skirmish off.

Ok the basic principle is that the hastati (your cheapest troops) will stand and act as the anvil, your Triarii will protect your flanks from cav (as will the Principes if you have them) and your cavalry is the hammer.

As the Macedonians advance your archers targets are as follows:
- primary target is any enemy archers (switch fire arrows off), I concentrate everyone of my archers on them to kill them quick, if you don't you'll take a lot of casualties from them.
- secondary target is any cavalry that come in range (switch fire arrows off first), archers will decimate them.
- tertiary target is any skirmishers, knock them down to about half strength and then move targets, half strength AI skirmishers tend to charge your infantry for some reason so they aren't a threat. If they do start throwing javelins, switch your archers back onto them
- finaly, fire arrows on his phalanxes as they close in, each archer unit picking a different phalanx. Start with the ones at the front and then switch to ones further back as they appraoch your lines (otherwise you end up killing your own men). The fire arrows won't kill many of the phalanx, but it sure does mess with their morale.

What generally happens is this:

- enemy advance and your archers massacre his cavalry and missile troops.
- phalanx gets in range of the Velites and hastati, massed javelins rout the first units (who are already a bit upset by all the fire arrows). Archers should have switched off these phalaxes by now or they will be shooting your own troops.
- enemy general will charge the centre of your line, as he comes in your reserve principes/Hastati should immediately counter-attack (using swords only) to fill the gap, but be careful they don't chase after him when he retreats.
- any phalanxes that don't rout (often they all do) will now engage with your hastati. Let them and keep your hastati in gaurd mode, all they are there to do is pin the phalanx.

- at some point his surviving cavalry may charge (you get battles where he has so much cav your archers can't deal with it). In which case, counter charge with you cavalry but ensure that all your cav are charging at the same target. Throw in your Triarii if his cav are close enough. When they rout pull your guys back behind your infantry.

now comes the fun bit , choose which flank you are going to attack, bascially choose the one he is weakest in. Move your cavalry (including the general) round that flank and charge the phalanx there from behind with all the cavalry. If they don't rout immediately (often they will rout before the charge makes contact), pull back and charge again. When they rout send your velites to chase them down and your cavalry plus the now freed up hastati charge the next phalanx down the line.

Rinse and repeat all down his line using the velites to chase down routing troops not the cavalry (yet). When his whole army is routing, then set your cavalry free on chasing down routing troops.

A couple of tips for chasing routers:
- if you move your cavalry past the routing troops they will turn back, away from safety and towards your pursuing velites .
- Always, always keep and eye on his routing troops and make sure none of them are trapped and fighting to the death (you'll get people killed). If that happens immediately withdraw your troops from around that unit and it should switch back to rout again.
- if you find your cavalry are walking beside a unit rather than attacking this is usually because the enemy unit has become split up and the pathfinding for your cav is shot to peices. In this case this is where the Cavalry Auxilia javelins are very useful!

If you do it right he shouldvery rarely manage to get any troops to escape :laughing:

[gardibolt]

The original poster asked how to beat the Macedonians with Hastati and Principes, which makes me suspect he hasn't yet teched up to archers. That makes it much harder. You do need to build some cavalry to stand any chance against the Macedonians. Don't forget to set Hastati and Principes to Fire at Will; you can thin the phalanx some and disrupt its morale that way. Basically, after you've thrown your pila, retreat and then throw your pila again. Repeat until you're out of pila. This works because the phalanx moves more slowly than your men. In the meantime, swoop your cavalry around behind the phalanx. Once you're out of pila, brace for the attack. The instant the phalanx has engaged your men (they have good morale and armor so they should last a little while), charge them in the rear with the cavalry.

If you can't build cavalry for some reason, then you will need to do the flanking with infantrymen, which is rather dodgy. But at least they can run, which the phalanx can't. You will lose a lot of men, but the only way to deal with the Macedonians is to get behind the phalanx. If they have lots of cavalry themselves, you may want to consider a strategic retreat until you have teched up a bit.

[Slimshoom]

i used hastati and principes as an example of what stage of technology i am in currently, i do have archers and can pump out cav, so i guess that makes it easier.

[Tacticalwithdrawal]

archers are just the icing on the cake really, they minimise the casualties you take rather than being the battle winners.

Its the joint pilum/javelin attacks on the first ranks of phalanxmen that does the real damage, and then the front rank acting as the anvil to the cavalry's hammer.

It gets a whole lot more interesting when he brings along a load of cavalry (I've seen armies with 8 lancers + a general ) with the rest as a couple of skirmishers and then 10 phalanxes. In that case you have to have your second rank of troops ready to counter-charge his cavalry attacks on your fron rank, and support the Triarii on the flanks. You also have to keep your cav hudled in a tight little group in the middle. Their job becomes to counter-attack.

What you hope the AI does (nd it usually does) is to move a couple of cav round each flank and throw the rest at your centre. The centre has to look after itself (with support from the velites (who actually make quite good cav killers) and the 2nd line principes. You then have to wait until one of his flanking cav's attack your triarii guard (you can provoke them by moving the triarii forward a bit). Imediately they engage with your triarii move your cav round behind and counter-charge. Once you have broken the cav on one side then move the freed up triarii to support the other triarii, and start using your cav as the hammer again.

It makes for a brilliant battle as you desparately try to smash his cav and work down his army from one flank, while praying that your centre and other flank holds. The 3 times I've done it I only won because the velites reinforced the centre and wings and managed to bolster them long enough. I had one battle wher the centre routed and all that saved me was that the left flank was stuck and fighting to the death. It gave me enough time to regroup the remainder of my right wing and attack. Very close run thing though

If you like tough battles though, go play SPQR, maddest baddest battles around (including my favourite when my Roman army defeated a Carthaginian one with 92 elephants in it

[Scarecrow]

What i did one entire campain was enstead of building armys at home, i built them far away. Use diplomats to help by off enemy units and citys

[Slimshoom]

yea i think i figured it out
i had my crap army (velites, hastati, prinipes) moving to another town, and suddenly a macedonian army attacked me (not ambushed) i had a 1/2 stack, they had a full stack
in the battle, the first line of their phalanxes were decimated by javelins before they even got to my lines
lost one of my generals though. was one of my greatest victories ever

[Slimshoom]

here's a screen



sry for the crappy screen w/ banners, but i recently reinstalled and so it reset all of the crap

[Tacticalwithdrawal]

yea i think i figured it out
i had my crap army (velites, hastati, prinipes) moving to another town, and suddenly a macedonian army attacked me (not ambushed) i had a 1/2 stack, they had a full stack
in the battle, the first line of their phalanxes were decimated by javelins before they even got to my lines
lost one of my generals though. was one of my greatest victories ever

congrats, it's great when a plan comes together

[Gogoas]

O wow, well that's great victory indeed. Ack, i can't ever get used to normal sized units...

[Slimshoom]

i like it better cause im bad at multitasking so i can control the chaos of 500 men better than 3000 men

[Slimshoom]

yea it was a sweet battle, ive never seen soldiers fight as hard, my generals fought like kings, i told u an entire unit of cav got destroyed