Army Composition

[The Unknown General]

I've recently downloaded EB and while I love it, I find to be way over my head. Due to the government and area of recruitment system, I can't always recruit or retrain my faction's units. So I was wondering besides going back to one of my homeland regions, what else could I do to alleviate this problem? As for the actual army composition, what would you guys suggest my armies to made up of?

[the man, the myth, the legend]

Depends on the faction you're playing. I highly recommend installing the "RecruitmentViewer" that comes with the install or you can download it from the EB website if you didn't install it with your EB. Spend some time and figure out how it works, it can give you a ton of info that would otherwise take a looong time to figure out by just playing. It will tell you what units are available for each factions and where you can recruit them and which government building you'll need. It also tells you what government building you can build in certain area and probably some other stuff too.

[Boriak]

I've recently downloaded EB and while I love it, I find to be way over my head.

Lucky dog. I would do anything to be a noob again, exploring the vastness of EB.
Recruitment Viewer is a must. Also, this is useful too: http://europabarbarorum.heimstatt.net/

So I was wondering besides going back to one of my homeland regions, what else could I do to alleviate this problem?

In EB, you have the biggest mercenary pool ever, though it takes some times for the pool to fill up with available units. Also, you can build Regional barracks in just about every non-Homeland province and hire regional units. The Recruitment Viewer is the ultimate tool for exploring which units are recruitable in each province.

As for the actual army composition, what would you guys suggest my armies to made up of?

Personally, I always strive for flexibility so I tend to compose my armies of all the possible types of units. If you check the battle screenshots, you will see other people have quite different preferences. It's all about your personal fighting style. If you don't have one, I encourage you to develop one.

BTW, which faction are you playing? Each has a specific set of strengths and weaknesses. You would be wise to use the former to hide the latter. If you're playing Rome, for example, your strengths are cheap, decent infantry and strong economy, your weakness lack of quality skirmishers and cavalry.

[Kanov]

I have a bit of OCD and can't play without checking Roman historic expansion. So when the time for invading territory comes I levy the main army I will use to conquer the area/tribe/settlement etc and then I levy one or two of each of my main army factional component (hastati, principes, triarii) to serve as refit components of the main army. The other army components (auxilia if you will) I gather from mercenaries, be it missile units, light infantry, elite shock infantry and cavalry.

When the invasion begins I send my main army to attack, I leave my refit units inside a fort or something until my main army incurs in heavy casualties. I usually let a single unit of hastati for example to drop as low as 110 troops (huge unit size) before refitting or merging it with another.

So I guess what I want to say is that is easier for me to send fresh units to refit and merge with your vets than bringing back decimated units to re-train. Also is far more satisfying for me and I find it more realistic.

As for composition of armies, for Rome I usually just keep one army for each front initially (1 for northern Italy, 1 for southern Italy, for example), most of the time you only need one full stacked army to conquer another faction (H/M) anyway. I have my armies like this: 3xhastati, 3xprincipes, 1 or 2 triarii, 1 equites, 1 general and the rest as I see fit in italian allies or local mercenaries, usually 2xSamnitici/bruttian infantry 2xpedites extraordinarii, 2xequites extraordinarii, 2xakontistai or peltasts and some sort of pike infantry, really fond of the iphikrates hoplites mercs.

[Entropy Judge]

Due to the government and area of recruitment system, I can't always recruit or retrain my faction's units. So I was wondering besides going back to one of my homeland regions, what else could I do to alleviate this problem?

Depending on the faction, either:
A) Ship units from your homeland to the front; use this with factions like Rome, which have great factional units and an economy powerful enough to handle masses of extra troops.

B) Hire Mercs and Regionals to fill out most positions in your armies, only shipping in special units you can't get otherwise from your homeland. For most factions, Regional troops aren't quite as capable as their own Native troops, and they can't get as much variety, but the units themselves are still good enough to use.

As for the actual army composition, what would you guys suggest my armies to made up of?

This is a complicated answer; two of the major factors are what faction you are, and how you want to play. Generally, though, I would say that you need to have at least one third of your army be quality Infantry; Cavalry - if used - should be either Skirmishers (Javelin) or Shock (AP Lance), and should comprise no more than one third of your army. These two rules give you solid staying power due to the infantry, and if you use Cavalry then you get a nice punch without shoe-horning yourself into needing to be good with cavalry. Archers and Slingers are nice to have, but in many cases are a luxury you can afford to live without; Melee-capable Skirmishers like Peltastai are a great general-purpose unit to add to your force. (One other thing to keep in mind is the time period; many factions have unit Reforms that change available units; for example, the Roman Camillan Principes have a Spear, but in the Polybian era only the Triarii have Spears.)

[athanaric]

I concur with the above. It might also be worth mentioning that it's a good idea to go for specific unit traits such as anti-cavalry, anti-armour, fear inducing, area attack, high lethality, etc. While Total War in general and EB in particular places more importantce on tactics and doesn't revolve around hard counters as much as the average RTS game, such traits can still be important. For instance, the AI loves throwing masses of armoured infantry at you. If your army only consists of light spearmen, archers, and some unspecialized swordsmen, this can be a nightmare scenario (a frequent problem when you play as Gauls against Romans, by the way).
The good thing about EB's stats is what you see is what you get. The highly standardized stat system means that values and traits like lethality and armour piercing are consistent across entire weapon classes, no matter who wields them (attack value and defence skill, however, depend on the quality and tactical role of the respective unit).

Whatever faction you're playing, make sure the infantry units of your main battle line have large shields. Or are phalanx pikemen, if available.

[The Unknown General]

Thanks for all the advice guys. I'm currently playing as Casse and I have all of the United Kingdom, along with two settlements in Northern Spain. So while Casse has great shock infantry, they don't have anything in the way of calvary or missile units.

[Perdiccas]

add-on question:

anybody with suggestions on how to kill the nomad factions in open battle? I'm getting massive casualties playing as Baktria trying to kill Saka and even the archer heavy bandits.

[Entropy Judge]

Thanks for all the advice guys. I'm currently playing as Casse and I have all of the United Kingdom, along with two settlements in Northern Spain. So while Casse has great shock infantry, they don't have anything in the way of calvary or missile units.

Casse get some native Cavalry (by which I mean without relying on Mercs; IIRC, the Caledonian and Goidelic cavalry require Regional MICs), though the Myrcharn are not that good. Argyn Marca are dependable heavy Middle-weight skirmishers, and the Cruvamendica are a bit lighter. Still, you want to get into Gaul so you can recruit Leuce Epos, as they fulfill a handy Shock Cavalry niche that Myrcharn and Cidainh don't fit very well. Iaosatae are pretty good slingers, though Sotaroas are pretty bottom-of-the-barrel as far as Archers go :/

[ooji]

@Perdiccas
Have bunch of archers and slingers. You want to at least match the number of horse archer counts they have with your foot archer count. Get some phalanx units behind your archers and mobile spearmen in the flanks. Cavalry is not necessary, but it's a nice addition to your anti-horse archer army. Place your archers in loose formation and focus fire enemy horse archers. That should do the work. Do not try to kill their general with archers, it'll be a waste of arrows. Use slingers on them.

[Perdiccas]

thanks ooji.