[Tactics Guide] The archer/cavalry sally defense
The Sally Defense-Archer/Cavalry
This guide is for MII/Kingdoms, vanilla AI.
Tired of siege battles? Here is an alternative to the standard seige defense. It offers low friendly casualties, high enemy casualties, and is almost mistake proof. (Even if you lose most of your cavalry and missile, just escape the battle. Your infantry remain.)
The tactic I will describe relies on 2 things:
a) A couple of cavalry units of Mailed Knight quality or better AND at least 4 archer units of any quality. Obviously, higher tier units will produce better results. Crossbows are better than bows. Hobilar quality cavalry will work, but you have to be more careful.
b) Patience. This type of defense takes a bit longer than a standard siege. You will have to micromanage the missile troops and cavalry to be successful. The amount of micromanagement will dictate the final tally.
How it works:
The AI lays seige. Instead of waiting for the seige battle, you attack his siege army with troops from inside the city/fortress.
The AI in sally defenses is utterly foolish. Generally, he will move his army some distance away from the initial lines where he built his ram and other siege equipment. He will usually leave his siege machinery there as well (catapaults, ballista). He waits for you to sally forth, and when your troops get to a certain distance from his lines, he charges.
Using a tactic very akin to the MMO technique of "pulling", you can inflict tremendous casualties on his army with minimal risk to yourself.
The Sally:
1) Deployment- Man the walls with enough units to flag the towers. Stack your archers and cavalry as close to the gate as you can. You will need some spearmen with your archers if he has more than 1 or 2 cavalry.
2) Positioning manuevers- Give your cavalry a move to order well to the left or right of the enemy formation. If he has catapaults or other siege engines, line up to flank them first. You don't want to charge directly from the front, as the machinery will break the charge up and force your cavalry to melee, which is not desireable if he has any missile troops of his own. If no siege engines are present, line up to charge his missile troops from a flank. Your far flank should be close to even with his lines, extending toward your walls. This covers the open field between him and your archer lines. Again, it isn't desireable to charge from the front towards his lines, because as his archers skirmish, you may have your cavalry drawn into a melee with spear or heavy infantry. Charging from the flank won't prevent him from skirmishing toward his lines, but it will help you prevent losses from line infantry.
While your cavalry are marching towards their position, line your archers up immediately in front of your walls. Line them up as wide as you can, but not wider than your opponents lines. Try for 2 or 3 men in depth. If you have mixed archers, try to keep the same unit types together in seperate lines. Put your shortest ranged units up front, followed by longer ranged units. As an example:
MMMMM
XXXXXXX
LLLLLL
Where M= archer militia X = Crossbowmen L= Longbowmen
I prefer to use one line, and I prefer to keep my units of uniform type.
Keep the distance between the lines fairly close. Turn off skirmish and autofire. DO NOT USE GROUPING. Grouping causes less than desireable effects when targeting enemy foes.
This ends the Positioning.
3) Advance to Contact
As you are probably aware (but I will mention in case you aren't) you can check the range of missile troops with the cursor. With the archer unit selected, the red circle on the cursor indicates that the ground it hovers over is out of range,green is in range. Why does this matter? Because at this point, you do not want to click on an enemy unit to give the fire order. You want to advance your lines until they are in range. By the time they get in range, you should have a pretty good idea what enemy units are where. Advance your units to range, keeping the lines intact. If you have multiple lines, it's ok to give them a little more room from one line to the next.
At this point, you may notice that the AI sends some units to attack you. That will be particularly likely if you are using the shorter ranged archers like Balkan Archer mercenaries or Archer Militia. Not to worry, this is what you were looking for. If you have more than one line, select the front line and give it a run order to the walls. Let any additional lines go ahead and engage. Give them similiar orders as the enemy unit approaches. Watch for when the enemy unit returns to its lines. It helps if there is a terrain feature that you can take note of and use as a reference point. During this movement, it pays not to mess with your cavalry too much, unless he has a significant number (3 or more) quality archer units of his own that begin to engage your archers. In that case, go ahead and eliminate them. When you finish them up, return your cavalry to the flanks. You will also wish to eliminate his siege engine crews if they decide that they are going to work their engines.
End of Advance to Contact
4) Battle Phase
Now that you have a good idea of where you must be for him to charge and where you must be for him to reform, you want to position your archer line just behind that point where he charges you. You will either be A) In range or B) Out of range
A) In Range
Focus your fire on one single unit. Priority units are professional troops with anti cavalry weapons, then professional heavy infantry, then spear milita. Bow units will have much less ammunition than crossbow units, so you will want to soften up rather than eliminate your targets. It won't take long to bring a unit to half of it's manpower. Switch targets when you get to less than 50 if you have bows, less than 30 if you have crossbows. It is not necessary to eliminate or rout the unit. Often while your units are firing, another unit or two from his lines will charge. Switch to that target, unless it is a low value target like peasants or town guard. You should get a volley or two off before you have to run back to the walls. If it was a low value unit, go ahead and charge it with one unit of cavalry. Return your cavalry, reform your archers and repeat. Don't use more than one cavalry unit when you charge. Very often, a charge will "aggro" other line troops, and you want to avoid melee at this point. Rout the unit, or charge for shock and pull back. Don't target the objective of the cavalry charge with archers!
Rinse and repeat.
B) Out of range
Your archers are lined up, but not in range to shoot. Select ONE archer unit, give it a march order forward of the line. When the enemy sends units to charge it, immediately give it a run order to the walls. Select the rest of your archers, and target that unit (unless it is a low value unit like peasants or town guard). Give that unit a couple of volleys, and pull back any archers on your lines that have a chance to become engaged. Leave the rest where they are, and let them fire. When the enemy unit(s) begin to pull back, reform your lines and repeat. Again, go ahead and charge those low value units with a cavalry unit, but be careful because things can become hectic at this point.
5) Mop Up
After several exhanges like this, the enemy forces will be greatly reduced. The number of casualties inflicted coupled with the lack of casualties on your side will have professional units breaking as they approach your archer lines. Now's the time to bring your cavalry to bear. Make sure your archers are no longer shooting. You want to approach in a walk from the flank with your entire cavalry force on a single line. If you only have two or three units, seperate them about a units width apart. Select the target you want to charge first, and use a cavalry unit from the middle of the line. You want to keep the rest of the line in reserve. Let your charging unit impact with the enemy, and immediately give it a run order back behind the rest of the cavalry. If you didn't rout the unit on the charge, the unit will follow your cavalry peicemeal. Send a second charge, this time from a far side of the line. Make sure you wait until the entirety of your first cavalry unit is moving away. This will keep the first unit from interfereing with the charge of the second, and guarantee a rout or destruction of the unit you were fighting. Reform your line, repeat.
6) Profit.
If you use this tactic a few times, you will discover that you can effectively use your cavalry to disperse enemy archers and siege crews while your archers are still positioning. You'll notice sooner the point at which he will send units from his lines and how far they will run before they return.
Q) Hey, you didn't mention enemy Cavalry!
I know. I am now.
If he has any more than one cavalry, you will need to cover your archers with a couple of spear units. You will want them stretched thin across your archers frontage, and maybe one unit on each flank. There's a good chance you will be able to park your archers with a building on the flank though. Unless you are only fielding a single cavalry unit, you can use your cavalry to eliminate his cavalry by charging him at opportunity, like when he charges your line with his cavalry. You really don't want to risk your archers to a charge, though, so be full of care.
Q) What about my own seige engine?
If you have a couple of cats or ballista, send them out. Send them to the same flank you put your cavalry on. Send them on a path that follows closely the walls, or better yet bring them out a side gate. Same principal as the archers, use the cursor to guide them to long range, then open fire. This works really well with ballista, as you can occasionally get lucky and send a flaming harpoon not just through multiple men, but through multiple men in multiple units. The closer you get to a true inline firing angle, the more casualties your ballista will cause. Your enemy will even be kind enough to let you use multiple ballista, using the next to relieve the first when it gets down to it's last shot.
Q) This is an exploit, not a tactic!
That depends on your definition of tactic and exploit. Is it an exploit to shoot at an enemy army that's just standing there waiting around? If so, than any manuever other than what the AI uses is also an exploit. It's not my fault the AI is only marginally smarter than crushed limestone. If you have played Total War games for any length of time, then you know it's not about winning or losing, it's about how few casualties you take.
Q) I screwed up and my archers got slaughtered!!
No worries. Get your survivors in the walls, hit escape, then quit battle. You will get a "successful sally" or "draw". Fight the siege next turn. You did kill the siege engine crews though, right?
Q) Just how effective is this REALLY?
In my current England campaign, I have taken Genoa during a Crusade. I parked 5 units of mercenary crossbow and 3 units of mailed knights along with some spear and pilgrims.
The first turn I held Genoa, I was seiged by a full stack. I inflicted over 900 casualties and lost 45. The second turn, I was seiged by a full stack. I inflicted about 700 casualties and lost 60. The third turn, I was again seiged by a full stack, and took another 50 or so casualties. I reinforced Genoa with 2 Mailed knights and 2 Longbow, and took another seige with similiar results. Now Milan has no more armies and I have three unbloodied stacks just chomping at the bit to end Milan.
I'd say it's pretty effective.
Q) Pics or it didn't happen!
I managed to get France to attack a small force. I'll post screens of the battle development and results if there is any interest in the post.
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Originally Posted by xcorps
