best units to beat huns with?

[I2ain_2_Battle]

i'm jutes. just tell me what units i should make and how i should set them up in battle please. the huns are just wrecking everyone with their 6 stacks

[wulfgar610]

Set up a fort, the Huns are aggressive and will attack so you are aided by the fort defenses. Archers to shoot down the Hun horse archers at range. The Huns concentrate their fire on melee units confronting them. So need either affordable arrow fodder or units that can take the punishment. The Hun melee cavalry can be strong. If you can neutralize the Hun cavalry the trick is to isolate the Hun infantry. A problem is the Huns create fear in your units.

[♘Top Hat Zebra]

Try Huscarls. If you can pin the Hunnic cavalry in place, either with spears or a fort, I imagine the Huscarls would be able to tear them to shreds.

Also slingers. Slingers destroy cavalry. I would avoid the pikes though. Nordic pikemen are probably too lightly armored to be of use against the huns, where every damn unit has a bow it seems.

[AnonMilwaukean]

wulfgar610 is right:

Find a good defensive battlefield (one with a very high hill on your side of the deployment) or hunker down in a fortified stance. The Huns will almost inevitably attack with multiple stacks regardless of terrain, and, again, like wulfgar610 is telling you, you want some cheap levy units (probably tier 1 spears) to soak up the enemy ranged attacks, especially the attacks of their horse archers (which will suicide into your units after they finally do run out of ammo). Combine this with your own ranged units (archers work, but slingers are quicker firing if you want to go that route), and try to have one or two units that boost morale to their nearby comrades. Save your best units for when the enemy infantry is about to clash with you.

The worst part of facing the Huns is facing their melee/shock cavalry... they are heavy-hitters, and cause fear. While almost all Hunnic units cause fear, the melee/shock cavalry are the most dangerous because they can quickly route your ranged units almost before you can even react.

Luckily, most factions won't have to face a major Hunnic attack until quite a number of turns into the campaign (415-425 is the time frame where they start to appear in force usually, often just mere turns before Attila himself takes charge). By then, you usually have enough toys to throw at them to try and figure out what to do. The hardest part in the campaign is that you usually end up completely changing your army composition up to face the Huns, needing more spears, fewer berserker/lightly armored expensive infantry, and needing more ranged units than usual. Which is quite a change, because prior to that, Berserkers can be bread-and-butter in many spots.

[RexJayden]

These are good tips for fighting the Huns.

[I2ain_2_Battle]

yes thanks for the wonderful suggestions. but i can't access tier 1 spears anymore. i'm on tier 2. i guess i can use half of them as fodder. and reserve the other half against the shock cav. i only saw 2 of their stacks so i march 2 of my stacks to greet them and they had another 2 stacks in hiding. so 4 stacks against my 2. that's almost impossible to beat right? so now i retreated and i have 4 stacks on guard. but they traveled south to burn everyone they see. I'm the last super power in the north holding Denmark and the south British isles. me and the huns razed every other civilization between here and Italy. i killed atilla luckily like around turn 250. but now around turn 420 i saw another message that said atilla died again. not sure what that meant. but they are a power house civ and hard to beat. once my general died. all my sling shot men entered the game were already wavering. without even fighting the enemy. it's kinda lame.

[RexJayden]

yes thanks for the wonderful suggestions. but i can't access tier 1 spears anymore. i'm on tier 2. i guess i can use half of them as fodder. and reserve the other half against the shock cav. i only saw 2 of their stacks so i march 2 of my stacks to greet them and they had another 2 stacks in hiding. so 4 stacks against my 2. that's almost impossible to beat right? so now i retreated and i have 4 stacks on guard. but they traveled south to burn everyone they see. I'm the last super power in the north holding Denmark and the south British isles. me and the huns razed every other civilization between here and Italy. i killed atilla luckily like around turn 250. but now around turn 420 i saw another message that said atilla died again. not sure what that meant. but they are a power house civ and hard to beat. once my general died. all my sling shot men entered the game were already wavering. without even fighting the enemy. it's kinda lame.

Attila respawns. I killed him three times with agents in my Geat campaign. Its silly.

[peoplescavalry]

If you have had the message that Attilla is finally dead then the Hun armies no longer respawn and you can start to destroy them, they are very strong troops but numbers will now wear them down.

[kanzy]

In my last two Rome 2 campaigns I played two factions that put me in direct conflict with the steppe factions and their ranged cavalry spam and tried so many different tactics with varying levels of effectiveness but the best overall tactic that can be used with any infantry heavy faction against steppes and huns was having atleast 40% of your army as ranged units, archers and javelin men but not slingers and the rest are some heavy infantry that can protect them, arrange your infantry and cover your flanks and shoot away, you have more archers/unit then mounted archers for the enemy add to that the bouns damage your ranged attack will cause to mounted units and you can't lose

unless you run out of ammo that is...so scrap the javelin men and just stick to archers, of-course if you are playing a Roman faction you can also use Testudo formation to further reduce your loses.

[Caligula's_Horse]

A quick and somewhat cheesy way to overcome the Hun's inevitable numerical advantage is through night battles, which if memory serves unlock for generals with a cunning of 6+. If those aren't available, forts are also a decent option, or you could gamble by trying to stage an ambush if the terrain allows it. Speaking of terrain, forests reduce missile effectiveness, and if you're defending rather then attacking, you can't go wrong with finding a hill to bunker down in. Ideally a forested one.
Agents can also be an effective way of separating the Hunnic armies and allowing you to fight them one by one, though you'll want them well leveled and numerous to make sure that an ill timed failure doesn't result in you having to fight multiple stacks at once.

As for the army composition itself, you'll want spears to absorb the brunt of the shock cavalry and soak up arrows, while your own archers or crossbowmen (slingers can also work, but are less effective; cheaper though) take out the enemy's missile cavalry. I usually hold my own cavalry in reserve when fighting the Huns, to block flanking attempts and to hopefully get at the enemy infantry's rear once the Hunnic cavalry has spent itself on my spears. As tempting as it might be, don't go chasing after horse archers; even if you manage to catch them in the end (which is far from guaranteed), by then your cavalry is pretty much spent from being used as a pin cushion.
Shock infantry, like berserkers and two handed troops, and to a lesser extent dedicated javelinmen can be pretty effective against the Hunnic infantry, but are best kept out of the fight until the horse archers are thinned out and the shock cavalry is in no position to charge them.

Oh, and once you finally put down Atilla, nuke what's left of him from orbit. Its the only way to be sure.
Failing that, you might have to kill him 3-4 times until he gets the message and stays in the ground.

[EmperorBatman999]

Javelin cavalry, I found, is surprisingly good at knocking out horse archers. The only thing is that they're delicate and need to be micromanaged well.

[Lugotorix]

Most of the casualties you'll incur against the Huns will be from your own missile infantry (or cavalry, but that's not ideal for Jutes). You'll want a very wide, thin even, if you have spears, line, with an approach that puts more expendable units in the range of the Hunnic horse archers first, to get the Hunnic stack to ball up in a tight formation, then come in from all angles, hitting them with archers at the same time behind the line. Timing is everything, if you rush them once you've encircled them, the attrition from your archers will add up with the sheer numbers of your spears and they'll fall pretty quick. You can get them to ball up faster if you hammer them with onagers first.

[Påsan]

^ That will never work, Jutes have terrible archers.

Line with hirdmen (Or something similar) in shield wall to soak charges and missiles. Four or so Huscarls at the back to deal with the infantry and cavalry engaged with the hirdmen. Then roll out the cavalry and rout the archers.

I dont use spears much due to the Uars and other infantry melt them like butter, which is the real problem. Cavalry can be killed with huscarls just as well once their charge is spent. .


Also whatever archers you've got should shoot the horse archers.





Key here is really not to squander the cavalry, if you loose them then dealing with the archers and horse archers is a nightmare.

[wulfgar610]

Armies that are purely melee infantry might win battles against the Huns, but will lose the war. Not that it matters in the game because one can hire archers and cavalry from the mercenary roster.

[M2TWRocks]

You can attempt to cover them in sweet and sour chicken, but be very careful you don't fall into your own trap.

[Theo]

Speaking generally now, has anyone tried using Taifali cavalry post-patch? Are they any good against the huns?