AI vs Horse Archers

[Remwr]

I was thinking recently after playing a Byzantine campaign. Do any of you think that the AI will be able to counter horse archers effectively? In both Rome and Medieval II, horse archer armies were nearly invincible in an open field battle.

[Cheap]

Until they got no more arrows. In teutonic, the order's armoured spearmen were pretty good in impaling mongols, lituanians and other novgorodians while taking douzens of arrows.
Plus the soldiers seem to react quite efficiently with their overhead shield formation (I suppose not only the Romans are able to form testudo-like clusters)

and the reason why Parthians did so well at Carrhae was they got ammo supply from very good logistics, so I wouldn't worry too much about that

[Remwr]

Having played little of kingdoms, maybe the horse archer problem was limited to Rome and Vanilla M2TW

[Prince Regent George]

In both Rome and Medieval II, horse archer armies were nearly invincible in an open field battle.

What a negative criticism against CA!
I suppose you are a member of this neglectable minority, which diminishes every effort from CA, because of its comission to trolling, aren't you?

[nomercysniper]

What a negative criticism against CA!
I suppose you are a member of this neglect-able minority, which diminishes every effort from CA, because of its commission to trolling, aren't you?

I don't think he meant to troll or diminish CA, there's plenty of trolls on other threads if your feeling keen.

@OP i can remember what you mean, in RTW i could slaughter whole villages, losing troops only by friendly fire

[Remwr]

Yeah, I was just pointing out what at least I thought to be a fact, that horse archers especially the elite variety, were absolute gods on most settings, except things like bridge battles and most sieges.

[Prince Regent George]

I don't think he meant to troll or diminish CA, there's plenty of trolls on other threads if your feeling keen.

I was refering to this http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...-the-Community

The rest of my post was supposed to be sarcastic.

[RGA]

In RTW and M2TW, the rather simple combat engine means that bows kill like machine-gun and horses can turn on a dime at full speed. Combine these together and you got HA, better known as the P-51 Mustang of the ancient battlefields. Seriously, even human players had huge problem fighting heavily HA-based armies.

Things did change quite a lot since. In S2TW, mounted samurai archer is nowhere good as its pinky Parthian counterpart xD

[Mage de Taverne]

It probably helped that in S2, the most common units were spearmen and archers, i.e. the best ones to counter horse archers: your archers have more firepower than them, horses are nice targets, and the spearmen are there to dissuade them from charging.

It was still fun to use HA to harass the enemy and have him break his army formation. Plus as the Takeda they were actually your best archers until you got monks.

In Kingdoms I had a lot of fun with Lithuania, but it somewhat didn't feel as overpowered as the Byzantines in M2. Probably because the Order had very resilient units, and that I had to withdraw from the battle once my HA ran out of ammo. Then rinse & repeat. A very cowardly strategy that felt satisfyingly realistic ^^

[|Sith|Galvanized Iron]

Horse Archers are as a rule unbeatable and will defeat anything from nuclear submarines to trained killer monkey's to even the omnipotent AI of CA.

[Toho]

Horse Archers are as a rule unbeatable and will defeat anything from nuclear submarines to trained killer monkey's to even the omnipotent AI of CA.

some say that even roman soldiers could potentially wounded by their attacks but that is a groundless statement, there is no record of such an event. nuclear submarines however? highly plausible.
on a more serious note. just stand there with loose formation (preferably mercenary and levies infront) to soak up all the damage.

[Mausolos of Caria]

I usually only had horse archers when the enemy also had horse archers. And mine were always beaten (probably because they were mercenaries). And other than that horse archers seemed rather ineffective. Sure, sometimes the AI had no cavalry and just stood there so you could surround them and kill a lot of enemies without making losses, but most of the time the AI seemed to use horse archers not worse than I did.

[Kushite]

I usually only had horse archers when the enemy also had horse archers. And mine were always beaten (probably because they were mercenaries). And other than that horse archers seemed rather ineffective. Sure, sometimes the AI had no cavalry and just stood there so you could surround them and kill a lot of enemies without making losses, but most of the time the AI seemed to use horse archers not worse than I did.

Depends how you use HA's. I slaughter players and AI alike with HA armies. Especially in m2 with the Timmies. The sabadar militia are just amazing.

[SinerAthin]

I just hope horse archers will be able to fire on the move like in earlier TW games, unlike Shogun.

It was their whole damn point

[Eofor]

I was thinking recently after playing a Byzantine campaign. Do any of you think that the AI will be able to counter horse archers effectively? In both Rome and Medieval II, horse archer armies were nearly invincible in an open field battle.

And in Warscape horse archers, as well as all other cavalry, are far less powerful than in Rome 1 and Medieval 2, your point?