4 Archer Units rout an entire Seleucid army

[SnArF|D]

I started a new campaign last night as Egypt on M/M settings, and I had recently beat my campaign as Parthia, and from Parthia I learned the importance of archers. As Parthia I had devastated entire armys with my horse archers. And by the end of the campaign I had the best horse archers in the game and it really wasn't even fair for the enemy. I pretty much took Rome with a meager 8 horse archer units and some cataphracts supported by sub-par eastern infantry. So as Egypt I certainly wasn't going to pass up on there excellent archer units.

After a good 12 turns or so of building up my forces to ridiculous sizes, I split my full stack up into 3 parts, each part went after different settlments. 2 parts attacked 2 rebel settlments and my bigger part of my stack went after Seleucids. So I siege a seleucid settlment bordering egypt, I was expecting them to sally forth, but they didnt, so I build up some siege towers and to make a long story short I take the city. So I send the main inf and calvary occupying the newly captured seleucid settlment off to campaign and I only keep 4 archer units there. The archer units are the pharohs guard type archers, not the other ones. So 3 turns later selecuid counter attacks, apparently they want there city back. I have a total of 4 archer units and 1 general. I place my general at the city square and keep my archer units on the walls.

Make a even longer story short. I use fire arrows and burn there 3 siege towers to the ground. They have 1 RAM, they attempt to use it and I slaughter them and the RAM falls apart.

if I remember correctly they had like 5-6 units of inf w/ 2 calvary and 1 archer unit.

they have no more siege equipment so they rout.

THE END

[Hader]

This belongs in TW battle planning.

Cool batte, I have had one like that before, many actually. Once I had one unit of horse archers nearly rout a half stack of rebels. It was close, I didnt win but I inflicted many casualties.

[Marcus Scaurus]

Archers aren't really effective in the field, but they can be killers on walls. In my Macedonian campaign, I took Halicarnassus by surprise. The Seleucids didn't appreciate this, and soon there was a full stack near my city. I had two peasant units in the city, useless against their hoplites, archers and light cavalry. Luckily I had a general at Rhodes. He hired 3 units of Cretan archers on the island, sailed to Halicarnassus and hired another two Cretan archers. With no more than 200 Cretan archers I had to stop about 800 Seleucids, who soon laid siege on the city and attacked after one turn. First I used flamed arrows to destroy their towers, so they had to use the ram. Needless to say, the ram was destroyed and no crewmember was left alive by my archers. After that, I turned my attention to their archers, annihilating them in a few minutes. The archers were gone, but the enemy still had more 6 militia hoplite units and even more light cavalry, and they were digging a tunnel to destroy my walls. Couldn't prevent that, soon my walls broke down and their cavalry poured into the opening. Golden rule in RTW is that the guy upstairs pawns the guy downstairs, especially when the latter has no armor. The sky was almost black with arrows, few horsemen survived it. Same with the hoplites, but some of them managed to reach the city plaza, where they swept away my peasants. In a desperate attempt to keep the city, I ordered my archers (only after they were out of ammo) to charge in the mass of pikes. The Seleucids were victorious, but it was a Pyrrhic victory. All of my men (about 300) had died. Of their 800 men only 750 survived.

[Caius Britannicus]

The Seleucids were victorious, but it was a Pyrrhic victory. All of my men (about 300) had died. Of their 800 men only 750 survived.

So you only killed 50 of them? :tooth:

Anyways, ya in vanilla at least if you have archers that can shot down and around the shield side they will decimate anyone.