Help me get the hang of cavalry fights...

[Somerandomdude2]

How I got into this was: France, trying to take out Milan early and march on their capital after I take Genoa the Pope orders me to stop. Cool, I'll send my infantry over to Genoa and retrain them and have them back by the end of our 6 turn ceasefire. I'll also have paid off the Pope by then and he'll turn a blind eye.
But... I'll leave my cavalry right out the front of Milan to encourage them to attack me, maybe they'll get excommunicated, and if they don't... well, my cavalry can probably mess them up a bit before fleeing and regrouping with my infantry.

They attack right away.

I have 5 generals and 4 units of mailed knights.
Enemy main army has:
General
Genoese Crossbow Militia x2
Italian Militia x5
Italian Spear Militia x6
Peasant archers x2

Enemy has 2 sets of reinforcements. 1 is just a General and the other is a General + a couple of units of spears.

Battleplan: two waves charge the enemy, leaving just enough time in between for the first wave to get out of the way. I chose mailed knights for the first wave, because I figured they'd hit a wall of spears and cause some chaos for my generals to charge into. It seems genoese crossbows aren't so bright, or like melee, or think horsies are preity or something because they didn't run. Mailed knights wiped them out in about two seconds and mangled up a mix of spearmen and peasant archers, before all being told to withdraw (suffered like 20 dead mailed knights, including their retreat).
Generals charge into a wall of spears, carve them up a bit and very quickly withdrew (I didn't see any point in losing any generals, they're just in this for the charge).

Battle results:




So, how should I have done this differently?
Could I maybe have stuck around and actually won the fight?
Did I target the right enemies?
Should I have taken the time to swing around to their flanks? (I would have done this, if I didn't want to get out before the reinforcements came)
Should I have been in the fight with just melee cavalry in the first place?

Edit: Also, as a side note, I discovered that my game crashes when I use print screen. Therefore, I have to re-do this battle. Tips would be good!

[painter]

Crossbowmen take much longer to reload, giving a slightly larger window of opportunity for your cavalry to charge into them in force first.

As for the spearmen, do your best to avoid charging your cavalry into them head on. You will lose a lot of men unnecessarily. Always try to flank the enemy.

I would recommend sticking in an infantry unit. Be sure to keep some distance between their infantry and your own, your infantry's primary purpose is to give the enemy something to focus on and not to fight; march them beyond exhaustion to keep that distance. After annihilating their crossbowmen, you should be able to use your mailed knights to flank the enemy as they will be inappropriately focused on your infantry. If their enemy general charges your infantry, just retreat them. Cavalrymen, including general bodyguards, are unable to properly charge into men moving away from them and greatly reduces the damage from charges. Expect the same from your own cavalry when charging into the enemy's infantry who are marching to engage your own infantry.

With nine cavalry units, five of them being generals, yes, it is quite possible to win that battle.

[Silverheart]

It was a good move to attack their missiles, I think, but you screwed up on the teamwork.
While your knights were making the enemy archers busy, your generals (at least 2 of them) should have tried to outflank the enemy, so that they would at least be able to take down the enemy general.

Just like how you focus on the queen in chess, it´s always a good idea to take out the general in M2TW.
Also, once the general was dead, and most of their missile troops dead, it should be easy for you to take out the infantry.
And their reinforcements were nothing that a few hundred knights can´t handle.--

So I think you should have stayed and finished the battle. Humiliate them! And do it good...

[SimonSays]

Dunno if you have played it again yet. but it would be an idea to go for the 1st reinforcement (Duke Giorgio) first. You have a mobile all cavalry force, whilst the Duke is isolated, all by himself. It would be an idea to go for him asap and try to take him prisoner for ransom. And since you outright outnumber their 2nd reinforcement, you might as well rout him quickly by charging from all sides if the main force isn't too close by then.

Both of Milan's faction leader and faction heir are in the battle, if you take the Duke and Count out, maybe their faction will be destroyed? Since they seem to be left with 1 city, not that worth it, but still you can take Milan a few turns earlier :/

For the main force, you can split your army and charge the spears from behind.

[happy01]

My suggestion and Strategy
1st strategy Divide and conquer spread your troops (you have mobility as your upper hand your enemy as you said only have 3 cavalry)
Seriously you could won this match because you have 5 best unit in the game called generals bodyguards.
Seriously a normal unit of generals body guard can killed 4 stacks of militia spearman by flanking or attacking from the rear except they form schiltron usually Ai is stupid and would not do that most of the time even one unit of mail knight could be decimate by your generals bodyguard without casualty if the generals body guard charge first.
Also mail knight can decimate those pesky archer.

2nd Learn How to use Cavalry Charge and Flanking

3rd Use Hit and Run Tactics in this round
Cavalry are only useful if they are using lance so swords are useless against this horde. Also you are using an early cavalry whose survivability rate really low called mail knights don't use them to attack the generals as i said before General bodyguard could quickly decimate this guys so use them only to decimate your enemy's missile units or a bait. Remember to preserve your units in this round

I suggest one or two unit of mail knight unit would be your bait to lure those pesky general unit then some two or three general body guard could finish them off. Just remember one unit at a time so that they can use their lance then retreat then charge then retreat then charge until they rout or mostly they would give up chasing you. (don't use swords in cavalry battle)

Then some of your cavalry unit would focus destroying those pesky archer.
Archers are your biggest pain in this round. Just remember use Hit and run tactics due the spearman would protect those archers.
Not those spearman if you have killed or captured the leader.

Then do the same thing with those militia use hit and run tactic and attack them in flanks or attacking them from the rear. Usually if they became small they would rout.

Usually this strategy cannot be use against Missile cavalry or other missile units who can use stakes.

[Thefallenhun]

Don't hit the front, and try and stay away from the crossbows, you have enough heavy cave to destroy them without the support of the heavy cav. So what I would do is try and get the generals bodyguard away from the main body and smash him, then run around and smash the reinforcements as they entere the battlefield, as they are pansies with the exception of the bodyguards. Then once its just your cavalry versus their infantry, with all the moving around that has happened, I bet that their crossbowmen will bea long way from the spearmen. Use your whole cavalry force and rout the crossbowmen. Then pick apart the spear formations by using one unit of mailed knights to get the spearmen to turn their backs (don't charge with it, just have them hang around and tempt them). While you run the entirety of your cavalry force up their rear. Rinse and repeat, the whole army should rout soon.

[dandus]

I notice you didn't have any light cavalry in your army.

Light cavalry is quite faster than heavy cavalry and thus is preferrable if you have to use it as a bait for your opponent, or maybe to run after a routing unit. Besides, as you don't use them to charge you might as well keep them in loose formation to minimize casualties from enemy missiles. They are also way cheaper than heavy cavalry, so if I were you I would have exchanged one or two mailed knights with mounted sergeants.

For strategy, I would recommend either happy01's tactic or SimonSays, depending on the distance of the reinforcements and my mood. Since you have superior mobility, i maybe would have chosen to crush the lonesome general if I had enough space to manouver (killing an enemy general always makes my day when it comes to battle :-).

I also endorse that the two waves of charging should be coming from different directions, especially when fighting spears. You charge with one wave, then disengage, and when the enemy hopelessly chases you you just charge him from the side or the back with the second wave.

[xxxMoRaVexxx]

I remembered my campaign against Milan and Venice while playing as HRE. Charging head on is heroic(and cool)but you won't want to charge a spearmen unit head on... and those spearmen unit are Italian militia so I'm sure you'll have a hard time doing damage to them. Since your army is purely cavalry, you should try to divide and isolate them(lots of micromanagment in this one). Like lure a unit of spearmen then charge them on their flank where they will not expect it. I think you can actually finish the fight going like this. And from what you depicted, you didn't have a light cavalry, I think they are very helpful as baits on my said tactic, even a few could manage because they can cover more ground(being faster than Feudal K's). The main problem here is the battlefield because once you make the wrong move and your cornered by that many men, you'll easily get slaughtered.

So just drop the number of casualties to as few as possible while doing this so once you decided to initially surround them(after they got high enough casualties and a probably dead general)you'll have an easy time routing the Milanese. I did this in about 5-7 battles, running around northern Italy(I actually held Venice and Bologna by that time) and doing all kinds of damage against the enemy armies... I ended up having 6 units of mailed knights having full chevrons and a soldier count of around only 12-23 per unit(used large unit scale), 2 units of light cav with silver chevrons with almost the same casualties and two "almost" intact 10 star generals. I actually fought my last battle with this army going back from northern italy and into my castle north of Venice coz I have to retrain and ended up with a milanese force blocking my way.

Maybe you can replay the battle again and use different kinds of tactics and you'll get the hang of using cavalry... good luck!

[Blaze of Macedon]

Mobility is the name of the game. Your knights are on horseback and much more fast and mobile than the Italian foot soldiers.

Only engage them when you are certain you can rout them, stay out spears way if you can't surround them and deal with them peace by peace. I never like charging anything with a pointy thing in it's hand head on so avoid that. Always try to flank them - (devide ur knights into 3-4 groups and make the Italians run towards some of them. That way they will always be turned with their backs for some of ur knights to charge them). Mass charges and charges from different directions will result in some quick routs.

Dealing with their crossbows first was a good move but never let ur knights get bogged down in a melee - make sure your charge is good enough to insta-rout the crossbows, and if you mess it up get out of there before the militias get in there and engage the knights.

Also, since i like playing with the HRE i always deal with the Italians at the beginning of the campaign - knights are definatly ur huge advantage. Milan is small and doesn't have the recruiting capabilities of the HRE (or France in ur case). You need to use ur mailed knights to win some decesive victories. Very important: USE THE TERRAIN! There are a lot of bridges in Italy (especially between Milan, Bologna and Genoa) - USE THEM! Position a weaker army on them, the Italians will feel cocky and attack - always! Bottleneck them with ur weaker spearmen, place some archers and crossbows behind and place the knights in position for a good charge from all sides if you end up needing to resort to that (if you bottleneck them well i don't think your knights will need to see any action though).

Cheers

[MarcoPollo]

Mobility is key the TW world. But, cav are expensive and need to be managed so they don't get shot up by Xbows etc. When charging a bow line, you can put the horses to "loose" formation. And just before they hit, put them back into tight, for max impact on the charge.

Also, if your army is smaller, I find the AI will march towards you. So you can tire them out with your higher stamina horses. March them around, pick off the weak units that fall out of order, and whittle away. But deal with the archers first, and then be patient with the rest of the army.