Favourite BC Unit / Favourite tactic?

[Ansar Warrior]

So what are your 3 favourite units in Broken Crescent and what is your favoured method of winning battles, what's your main battle plan or formation?

I'll start.

Fav Units:

Oman - Ansar
Ayyubid - Mamluk Heavy Cavalry + Askari Knights
Ottoman - Jannisaries

Special mention to Rajput warriors (glad you can play Chaucans in BC 2.3) and Abna Pike men of the Abbasids, Kurasani Heavy Spear men of Ghazni and the Ghorid elite Ghazi warriors and the Varongian guard and Kypchak Khan Horse men ........ sorry couldn't hold back lol Sogdians as well.
In fact it's really hard to pin down 3 only in BC because there are so many great units, credit to the BC team for the research on that.


Favourite battle plan: Omani Army

Using alot of cavalry lancers Rashidun Army style, I tend to swirl my opponents on their flanks looking for units that have seperated and charge them repeatedly.
Spear men can be a problem but I leave them till last then charge them similtaneously from the rear then the front.
If I have infantry I engage them with the enemy whilst flanking with my cavalry in a similar fashion and attacking from the rear and or clearing archers and opposing cavalry.


Let's here yours.

[Iguanaonastick]

My favourite units... hmm, good question.

Looks-wise probably the Roman elite units, specifically the bodyguards, kavalleroi and pelekyphoroi. They just look so very intimidating yet beautiful.

Gameplay-wise I like the kontaratoi because they're so unique in the mod as the only pikemen, the ghaznavid light lancers because they're versatile and perform so well against enemy cavalry because they only fight with spears, and the omoro raiders because they taught me just how effective javelin cavalry can be if you micro-manage them. Note that these aren't particularly powerful units, just ones I enjoyed using in tactical battles a lot.

For battles, I usually prefer to play factions that can form a solid line of spearmen that acts as an anchoring point for supporting light and heavy cavalry and foot-archers. (the Ghaznavids were made for me) The infantry takes up a defensive position, the cavalry fights a war of mobility, trying to eliminate enemy cavalry and archers but fleeing back behind the infantry in the face of concerted counter-attacks. Thus the enemy is weakened severely by the time they engage my infantry-line, and my cavalry can easily swoop around the flanks and break them in a strong rear-charge, since my initial skirmishing will have eliminated most of their mobile strength.

[Dogensu]

KOJ - Outremere Knights
KOJ - Knights Templar
KOJ - Dismounted Templars

Tactic - FLANK FLANK FLANK

[zburanuki]

1) Royal Kataphractoi
2) Varangian Guard
3) Spatharioi Guards (for their appearance and thir effectiveness)/Kontaratoi (they are unique)/Guards or Knights of Jerusalem (they spearmen unit,for their appearance)

A s for my tactic it's very simple.Usually i play as the Byzantine Empire and i personally prefer the defensive battle style.I have one pike unit on the center,on the 2 wing i place skutatoi spearmen and next to them spatharioi guard,either on an arrow formation or Y.behind kontaratoi i have skutatoi swordsmen and behind them my missile units(menavlatoi or toxotai).around the missile units i have my melee units (1-2 vestiaritai and 3-4 varangians).on the flanks i have my heavy cavalry and send my skirmish cavalry to annoy the enemy cavalry.once they start to chase me,i charge the enemy cavalry with royal kataphracts and i send kavalarioi lancers to charge the enemy missile units or the infantry that attacks on my front line.when my spearmen and crap swordsmen start to collapse send vestiaritai to hold the line and finally charge and surrounding with varagians and the remaining hevay cavalry.that strategy a bit more difficult to succeed agianst the turks as they have endless missile cavalry units,but in general it works for me,especially against the crusaders.

[Ansar Warrior]

Hmmm some interesting formations and battle plans, I am actually torn between trying 3 new ones because although my own is my favourite I just completed the game with the Omani's so I want to try something new ....

I'm thinking either Kypchak's but once I settle I want to just use the Slavic warriors, they operate and look similar to Saxons/Vikings and I want to do raids by boat across the Middle East and set up Island ports for access and defence by not being land connected.

Also want to check out a Heavy spear/pike capable army like Iguana said and finally I'm considering maybe a Rajput kingdom now you can be the proper elite Rajput warriors from the Chaucans (spelt right?).


One thing I will add ...... what are your tactics for dealing with mass Horse Archers, i.e Mongols?

......... and I mean in open field battle not drawing them to siege.

[Ichon]

One thing I will add ...... what are your tactics for dealing with mass Horse Archers, i.e Mongols?

......... and I mean in open field battle not drawing them to siege.

Get them to divide their army as much as possible- bait unit with your BG or ambush hiding half your army in a forest the Mongols will walk past.

Then get in close quick before their showers of arrows cause you too many casualties. Its essential to come from 2 directions so the HA skirmish away from 1 direction right into melee with your other forces. Mongol are still ok in melee but not longer invincible.

I find trying to duel them with mass foot archers can be effective but its not reliable if you get some bad terrain or they attack with more HC than you expected.

[Iguanaonastick]

One thing I will add ...... what are your tactics for dealing with mass Horse Archers, i.e Mongols?

Now you know why Ghanzavid Light Lancers are on my favourite unit list. They're fast enough to catch horse-archers and with their spears they kill them en-masse.

Of course, you can't field enough of these guys to match horse-archer heavy armies in a simple head-on charge. So more tactics are required.

Actually, my basic battle-plan as described above tends to work quite well against horse-archers if the terrain cooperates. The horse-archers usually want to engage in a missile-duel, (if not immediately, then they will when I harass them with my own horse-archers a bit) which leads them to approach my infantry line. Here they'll get shot by my foot-archers, but after the first few volleys I counter-attack with my lighter cavalry units. (I make sure my foot-archers are not firing at will, but make them shoot at more distant enemy archers.) The enemy horse-archers skirmish away, but usually at least one unit gets caught and at this my other sallying units turn back to rear-charge the engaged unit and kill them quickly.
This aggressive move on my part usually prompts the AI to send in their own heavy cavalry and/or infantry to help their beleaguered cavalry archers. Cue my cavalry falling back behind my trusty heavy spear-line. The AI cavalry now is fighting my infantry, which is bad for them. (Or they fall back too, in which case I repeat the above until I've killed most of their horse-archers.) Their infantry, if any, usually engages a bit later. My heavy cavalry then comes out again to smash the engaged enemy.

And the best part? Once a general mêlée is started, the enemy horse-archers very frequently charge in to support their heavy cavalry and infantry. Which makes it a lot easier to beat them.

All that said, horse-archer heavy armies still tend to inflict more casualties on my guys in the initial missile duel than more infantry-based armies do. My Romans suffer more than my Ghaznavids, because the former use lightly armoured pikemen and for the latter I generally use their better infantry from Ghulam-spears upwards. Of course, the Romans aren't fighting Mongols either. The Turks have plenty of horse-archers but they're not quite as dangerous.

[Kitsunegari]

War Elephants as pink Rajputs
/thread

[goldenhorde]

1) Kontaratoi. they are fast and can take on even the most top tier enemies when they have Proniarioi/Kataphractoi/Kavalleroi /Stratatoi/Anatoli Eugenisis/Latin Knights on their flanks.
2) Elephants
3) All the Latin Knights mounted

[zburanuki]

Kontaratoi are the only unit that can't run.the just walk because they carry pikes.just 2-3 times i saw them run only to take formation.with kataphracts or proniarioi or even varangians on their flanks they can beat everyone EXCEPT horse archers.i agree with the other 2 but in general it depends on what faction you have and what faction you face.

The turks surely have many horse archers,but the byzantine units can handle them.but i'm not sure if the byzantines can cope with the much more nimble mongol army.the same goes for the crusaders (more difficult for them as they don't have missile units at all,except crossbowmen).khwarezmian,ghorid and kypchak rosters are ideal against the mongols.in the case of the kypchaks we talk about the same roster as the mongols in general, and of course elephants can smash even a citadel's walls

[DirtyACE]

I've become extremely fond of the Emir's Ghulam Warriors that Ghorids have. Just pure cold killers. They could be charged from every direction by elephants and will never rout.

[zburanuki]

the same happens with the ghorid axemen!

[nein]

as others have mentioned, the elite roman units are very pretty... I find kontaratoi relatively useless in vanilla but with the gamegeek edu they become very powerful, capable of destroying most units in a head on fight

favorite tactics are the easy ones: elephant zerg or horse archer zerg

[Ansar Warrior]

I've become extremely fond of the Emir's Ghulam Warriors that Ghorids have. Just pure cold killers. They could be charged from every direction by elephants and will never rout.

Hmmm they do now lol, I had a custom battle with them 3 sword units of Oman vs 3 sword units from the Ghorids and they ended up routing.

[Archbishop Turpin]

Just give me 3-4 units of fast moving horsemen and a couple of Family Members and I can conquer the World in the twinkling of an eye. So Turkoman Mercenaries or Tribal Cavalry, Turko-Persian Horsemen and Kypchak Tribal Cavalry - Kypchak Auxillia or Afghan Raisers at any rate.

If you are old hand at the game, these units can be unmatched and invincible. You can capture cities, take citadels by assault and annihilate great rebel armies. If I've used my whole bag of tricks, and I still have not solved a problem, I invoke them, and everything will be fine.

They are useful to build up great empires at a short notice, if I do not want to waste my time with conquering. After that I have My Precious Empire I can tinker around with it easily.

[Archbishop Turpin]

Oh, and my favourite tactic is:

Attack a city with three or four units of fast moving horsemen, make sure that your army is weaker than the defence. If the city under siege has only one defender unit or lacks any cavalry, only one unit is enough.

When the outranking army breakout behind the walls, go (or run) to the corners, then simply overrun your enemies, take control over the city, use time limit (of course), and take care of the main gate or corridor with an armoured unit. Other units can toll the enemy cavalry. So, if you do not have siege machines, just great distances (Kypchak Confederacy) you must siege without engines.

With this tactic Kypchak Hordes unites by the 7th turn, Georgia is elimitaned by the 8th. My Khwarezm-Shâh Empire has 96 provinces by the time turn 66 (and eliminates 8 factions), so I can face with the Mongol invasion leisurely.

Don't forget that the AI is as stupid as Men can be. Similar tricks used by Francis II Rákóczi' Kuruc forces (often), and by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent on 29 August 1541 when Buda was occupied again by the Ottomans without any resistance.

[nein]

the old 'lure enemy to corner and charge horses to the town center' trick eh, I use that to grind through rebel settlements too. One could say that it is an exploit

[RexJayden]

Love the elephants!

[Ansar Warrior]

Yeah in all fairness the only Army I ever had to do that with was the Kypchaks so that kinda put's a dent in your Kypchak super soldier claim.

I played with Oman who are far from having the heaviest armoured troops and never had to stoop to such tactics lol.

[Archbishop Turpin]

I played with Oman who are far from having the heaviest armoured troops and never had to stoop to such tactics lol.

To stoop or not to stoop. Save time, save lives, avoid casualties. I always try to avoid open battle and prefer outmaneouvering, to fatigue the enemy infantry with fast cavalry, confuse and disarray with strom of arrows from 4 sides, use 4-5 spies at the same time on the same target and have 120% chance opening gates etc. Oman is relatively isolated and has relaxating music, so I can operate with it patiently, just like with Makouria. Anyway if I want a very hard campaign on very hard I choose Inuit nations in TW: Empire and conquer France or try to find something similar challange. I don't know yet what's the greatest challange in BC. Any idea? I play it because I like this era and find the graphics wonderful.