Which Roman units kill cataphracts and phalanx's?

[Delcore]

Sometimes when I play Rome Total War and I play as one of the Roman factions I can't seem to kill a phalanx or a cataphract because of their immense strength.

What units and methond can I use to take down a cataphract and phalanx. How to kill them with Romans?

[Dave Strider]

Phalanx - Throw a ton of Pila.
Cataphracts - Onagers + Pila + Swarm them.

[SavageFeat]

Phalanx - Throw a ton of Pila.
Cataphracts - Onagers + Pila + Swarm them.

Onagers???? good luck hitting them

[Vercingetorix The Great]

Onagers???? good luck hitting them

Not to bad if you got a couple, one is bound to hit and when it does it does DAMAGE

See I always try and use cataphracts in battles and there is a couple weaknesses.
1.Concentrated arrow fire will kill some and help make it easier on your cav (which never made sense to me they are freaken tanks!!!)
2.If you have good cav units and you surround them catas will break. They panic easy so you can't be reckless with cataphracts (though I usely have archer and cav advantage and will just smash through there cav and do one huge hammor and anvil strike)

I used to use silver shield pikemen (seleucid player here) and realized roman infantry beats them. To beat pikemen with rome
1. Line up with them and if you have more units start to flank them (this was always a big problem with me because I'm not a big infantry guy and will focus on missile and cav, though I wont neglect the infantry, in my strategy I try and beat ur cav with lots of upgraded catas then get my infantry to attack and send my catas around the corner.)
2.If you have superior cav use it. and if there is no other choice wedge formation helps divide the spears helping your cav charge head on into spears... Though I never recommend charging head on with cav always try and flank phalanxes.
3. Most Phalanxes are average and can be beaten fairly easy (phalanxes which can cause problems to roman infantry. Royal Pikes, Sacred Band, Silver Shield, and spartans)

Hope this helped

[dude21862004]

Archers and cavalry are a good tag team for phalanx. As for Cataphracts, I'd probably just make sure I had twice their number in horses and accepted the losses.

[Delcore]

So this is what I'm getting so far....

Missles and cavalry beat phalanx.

Cataphracts.... Twice the numbers?

Does this mean I'm suppose to charge with twice the amount of gladiators? What do I use lol? can someone be more specific?

[NobleNick]

For phalanx: It is best to use tactics to defeat these guys. The best tactics being to -NOT- meet them head on: flank them with any of the following --> archers, cavalry, Heavy Infantry (H.I.). Thankfully phalanx are slow moving and even slower to change direction. Out-manuever them. Shoot them in the back. Or allow your H.I. to make contact long enough to pin them and allow your heavy cav to do a full charge into their backsides.

If you are adventurous, with a little practice you can annihlate entire stacks of hoplites with cav only. Here is a short treatise on Dirty and Underhanded Cav Tactics, which I wrote some years ago. It is a pictorial journey into how 6 units of cav defeated (actually, obliterated is a better term for the first of those two encounters) 2 full stacks of mostly phalanx troops. (It would actually have been easier if they ALL had been phalanx troops.)

For Cataphracts: These guys are very tough. Their biggest drawback is that they are also quite expensive, so the enemy can not field many of them. You are going to take losses; but, again, tactics can help minimize those losses. force them to encounter your H.I. on rough or constricted terrain, or in forests, where they cannot develop the speed for their (very) deadly charge. Roman H.I. is pretty good as butchering horses that stand still, even cataphracts; so engineer an encounter like that.

If worse comes to worse, an LC unit stacked at least 6 rows deep should be able to stop a cataphract charge without routing. Have at least two units of LC (three would be better) at the point of Cataphract contact, so that they can envelope the Cataphracts and kill them before they extract themselves for another charge.

You can take these guys out with heavy cav (I would not try it with light cav); but try to have --AT LEAST-- 3:1 unit superiority (4:1 would be better) AND perform the simultaneous cav attack (charge) from widely different angles onto a lone cataphract unit.

Siege equipment is also good at killing horseys of any kind. Bring your catapults and entice the enemy into attacking you on a bridge.

[Stworca]

Aim for breaking the morale, not the strength, when facing overwhelmingly powerful enemies, such as cataphracts. This can be done with any units and against any units (with the single exception of berserk).

A pila rain coupled with multiple charges, and everything will break in half, before they can even swing a sword once.

[Vercingetorix The Great]

With cataphracts you want fully upgraded cav and focus missile fire on them before they get to you... maybe move a unit of infantry to help against the catas.

For Phalanxes I would suggest a hammer and anvil strike with your cav after they beat the catas.

I might be a little loopy cause I just had surgery though

[Varus12]

pre-marian:
Triarii destroy cataphracts.
There isnt much you can do against phalanxes. Avoid charging frontally, hit them on the back first with infantry/cavalry. When the pikes turning get your cav the heck out of there and hit them from the other side and so forth.
In sieges fight in the streets or at crossroads. Pikes will always glitch and go out of formation.

post-marian:
Cohorts beat any pikes.
Heavy cavalry (legionnary/ praetorian) charges works because the AI hardly uses the secondary weapons rarely, isolates its cav very often and always let you charge him first.

multiplayer:
A mix of triarii and pret cav charges for catas and urban cohorts for phalanxes.

[Chris Death]

Cataphracts = slow - bad morale ==> surround them with cheap light cav and they will panic
Making them tired with light cav before will help alot here aswell.

Phalanx = slower than Cataphracts / spears are long but only into one direction (*cough hint cough*) /
they don't like getting shot into their backs while being fixed from the front (*cough hint cough*) /
A single phalanx chasing horses will insta-rout when getting surrounded by lots of cav or whateva
while trying to chase a cav or whateva (*cough hint cough*)

~S~ CD