Ideal army makeup

[jackbush]

I'm playing as England and I'm wondering what the ideal combination of units would be for defending and attacking. I'm intrigued by the longbowmen but so far they're not doing as much as I thought they would. Maybe I should have a bunch? And then what behind them?

[klc123]

England are one of the best teams, their rooster is good at pretty much everything except spears, with cavalry that isn't too far behind France.

Longbow men, even the basic ones, can absolutely devastate armies, especiall when in numbers. One of the things I have found throughout total war games is that the morale penalty you inflict on the enemy is far more useful than their actual killing ability. With longbow men, because they are so good, cheap and able to be fielded in large numbers, they get a huge amount of kills at the same time. Very easy to get a mass rout going with them quickly.

The main thing about archers in general is that they are a defensive weapon. The very nature of them tells you this, they have to stand still to shoot, if you are standing still, you are not advancing on the enemy or flanking them. So to get the best out of them, try and fight defensive battles, particularly at bridges or in sieges. On vh vh I have had battles where a garrison of 2 spears and 3 longbow men stopped a Milanese army of 1000 from even taking the walls, they routed by the time they reached the top of their ladders.

In terms of attacking, in medieval 2 especially, cavalry is everything. Good micromanagement of Cav can win you battles that you thought were impossible. I recommend legend of totalwars blitz videos to learn how to make the best use out of your various types of cavalry.

On my vh vh English campaign, I have eliminated France by turn 30, predominantly with all cavalry armies. The only time I need infantry is when I am seiging, and I try to avoid that.
A good balanced army would be 1 general, 8 infantry, 4/5 archers and then as much cavalry as you want, filling in the extra spots with more cav, archers or infantry depending on your factions strength.

[Sar1n]

Longbowmen are fun. Don't underestimate them, I recommend having 4-6 units of those in every army. Of course use best available. They'll be main killers for most of the time. Don't bother shooting enemy ranged units, focus on melee troops and don't forget to deploy stakes. Try to get hospitaller guild ASAP and spam those, four per army+some spare for cleaning up brigands. Melee infantry would be a mix of heavy billmen against cavalry and for flanking and armored swordsmen for defensive infantry. If you're fond of artillery, two units per army seem to be ideal.

[jackbush]

Great answers! Thanks, guys.

[Sitalkes]

Try to get your bowmen on a hill and make sure you have more bowmen than your opponent. Having more bowmen than him will help ensure that the AI gets off its hill an attacks you. So you need a respectable number of bowmen with skirmish mode turned off, standing behind stakes. Then you need some heavy infantry behind the bowmen as the only thing they fear is good heavy infantry. If they have some anti-cavalry ability so much the better. Place them to cover the gaps between the stakes. If the enemy sends heavy infantry against your bowmen, shoot them up for as long as possible then charge through your bowmen at them. You could put them in front of the bowmen if you are on a hill but then your heavy infantry would not be protected by the stakes from enemy cavalry, their worst enenmy. The line of stakes won't be long enough usually so a couple of units of spearmen would be helpful, at least one at each end of the line, this gives you more tactical flexibility. Using at least six longbowmen with stakes you can defeat an enemy cavalry army with just three (or even two) cavalry units of your own as long as you can guard your flanks with some AP heavy infantry (bills I suppose) and spearmen. Just have something ready to defend the bowmen if the enemy can get into contact with them. The idea is to encourage the enemy to attack your bowmen, then when he is in trouble, move your flank guard around onto his flanks and charge into the enemy flanks with your spearmen and billmen. By the way, another good thing about bowmen is they tend to have high kill scores against enemy units - usually causing hundreds of casualties per bow unit. This means that if you want to follow the chivalry path and release prisoners there will be fewer prisoners to release, since a cavalry army tends to capture rather than kill enemy troops.

[shikaka]

As England, in the early game, I would take (considering a 15 unit army, which is more then enough):
1 general
2 mailed knight
7-8 longbowmen
3-4 mercenary spearmen
2-3 spear militia

general and knights: to counter enemy cavalry, and to act as hammer when the lines are already engaded.
l
ongbowmen: DO NOT use only the best type! Enemy settlements will not have uprgraded archery ranges most of the time, so it is good to have basic longbows, which you can always retrain.

merc spearmen: yeah, english anti-cav infantry sucks. I found it a bad idea to depend on militia, or to use those billmen. Merc spearmen are more dependable, easy to retrain, and not expensive. Just don't let them rot in cities, use them.

spear millitia: only as tagalong, so that I have an instant garrison in the first city I take


Later in the game use armored swordsmen.
Also, it is tempting to use high-end units, but it is not necessery against the armies the AI makes (militia, peasant archers and all that useless stuff), and these are more problematic to retrain. Use the basics if you want to have fast conquests.

[Sar1n]

It is not necessary to have longbowmen in front of your melee infantry. What I do is to draw my melee infantry in 4 ranks deep line in front of longbowmen so close that their formations touch, then plant stakes. This will position stakes right in front of melee infantry, making breaching of the infantry line very difficult.

I recommend setting longbowmen skirmish mode on, and once enemy troops reach the melee infantry, run them to the sides of the enemy and shoot from there.

[eugenioso]

all of the above does tend to have the effect that campaigns are much more methodical rather than assault focussed. here is a tiny trick you can use with autoresolve:

if your army of longbowmen/infantry/cavalry meet a weakly defended enemy settlement, get the archers out of the army and place them behind the army so they wont intervene in the siege. assault and autoresolve the battle (note i say weakly defended settlements, not citadels with full armies). replacing longbowmen during a campaign can be really difficult, but infantry are thankfully nearly always available. ive started campaigns in which ive had 6 groups of longbowmen survive practically the entire european war, changing 2 generals in between. after the battle is over, rejoin the archers with the main army. infantry can be replaced (theyre the fodder of Total War Games) but longbowmen are tough to replace.

[Double A]

Infantry aren't fodder in Rome. Legions are everything.

It's worth noting that billmen are crap at absorbing charges. You want to use a spear militia or some stakes to take the hit and then flank the engaged cavalry with the billmen.