Battle tactics

[Mahatma]

Does anyone have any tactics to use for the French? I was thinking of how I can line up in an open battlefield and try to coordinate an attack.

One idea I've seen is something like the following:

Position your army in a line with the cavalry on one side and your infantry/missile troops on the left. The idea is that you advance, your cavalry hit the enemy on the edge of their line, while the missile troops shoot the rest of their army. Hopefully your cavalry will be attacking the weakest troops of the enemy, beat them then work on flanking around their line and coordinating with the infantry (which have recently made it to the enemy) and outnumbering your foes. Eventually you should roll up their line and by the time you're fighting their best troops, have a numerical advantage

diagram

yyy.xxx.xxx.yyy.yyy.cc.cc.cc

y=infantry, x=archers. c=cavalry

****************cc.cc.cc (the asterix are only to get the letters in the right position, they don't represent anything)
*********yyy.yyy.
yyy.xxx.xxx.

Left side weakens enemy, cavalry engadge weakest enemy units while infantry in center advance toward the centre of the enemy line, hoping to hold them in place long enough for cavalry to rout their left flank and wheel around to attack enemy center from behind.

What do your think?

Regarding opening positions, it's obvious what you're plannig if you place all your cavalry on one side, so you can place them in the middle behind your lines and then swing them around to the wings like so:

yyy.xxx.xxx.yyy.yyy
******cc
******cc
******cc

[Mahatma]

Another is the wedge, which is basically putting all your best melee units in the middle of the line, with weaker melee units on the outside with missle units:

yyy.xxx.cul.yyy.cc.cc.yyy.cul.xxx.yyy

what the missile and culverins do (cul) is concentrate all their fire on the center of the enemies line, once these central units are at about 1/2 strength, you get your cavalry and best melee units to charge at them, kill them, and therefore split the enemies line in two, the cavalry charge through the middle, wheel around and charge the remaining units from the rear, while your elite melee units work on the enemy units next to them, and the rest of your archers/wide melee troops advance to combat the enemy flanks.

[Nikko0102]

sounds intersting. How do you suppose the wedge would work in an earlier era, without the culverins?

[Mahatma]

I think that lots of long range missile fire would do it. 4 units of scots guard would do it, arranged 2x2 with 2 units of pikemen shielding them. Use flaming arrows and concentrate them all on 1 or 2 units.