Your favorite unit formations and strategies in different situations

[merocaine]

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C - Horse Archers
H - Heavy Cav (Gendiemes)
A - Scots Guard
S - Spears, Volgue Milita, Pike Milita

High Period French Army Raised from Citys.

This is the French army I'm using at the moment.

The Heavy Cav and Horse Archers sweep forward in a flanking movement, the combination of arrows and heavy lances should drive most enemy cavalry off the battlefield. The scots guard and Milita spear/pike units fix the enemy infantry in the center. The general Steadies Milita Moral and Buys time for the Cavalry to wheel around and fall on the flank and rear of the enemy infantry.

The great benift of this army is it is city trained and cheap to maintain and retrain.

[Niterider1784]

When you are defending a Siege.

This works well in the early part of the game. When you are a defender and you are out numbered, one strategy I use is sending out a strong cavalry unit to attack the siege equipment. This may sometimes be my general. Make sure the few units I do have are strategically placed, then rush my Calvary unit out as soon as the deployment phase ends.

Whatever siege equipment they are using I try to charge it from the side, usually going for the Ram. Charge, Retreat, and Repeat. Usually they unit may leave the Equipment to try to attack you, given your archers and towers precious time to capitalize their range attacks.

If there are multiple siege equipments, attack the ram, then the others. You'll usually draw the attention of the other units to attack you, and the AI, will usually only push on with one of the (ram most of the time).

Know that the unit you send to attack will take heavy losses if they are not completely destroyed. So strike and move fall back and then charge again. The main goal is to reduce their focus to one siege equipment so you can better defend one point, and it gives your archers more time to shoot.

If you play it smart you can save your City/Castle, Inflict heavy casualties, and give you general exp or positive traits for his brave deed.

[merocaine]

I like to keep a couple of cavalry units in a city under threat, say antwerp or bruges. When the battle starts, run them out the side gate and position them to the flank of the the besieging forces. Wait till they begin there assault then start to slam charges into the flank and rear of the enemy.
I've got some comedy victories with this method.
Works best with Cavalry you can retrain in city, such as merchant Cavalry and a Generals body Guard.

[huysavi]

I am playing Multi with my friend. He uses the Moor, with this formation :
4-5 heavy inf
4 sudan (gun)
4 camel gun
2 heavy cav
4-5 spear

I play spanish, with tercio formation :
4-5 tercio pike
4 heavy inf
4 heavy cava
4-5 long range gun (musket)
1 general

I always face difficult if my friend moves his gun camel + heavy cava to the flank. They are quick, from this, he guns down my men. Also he forwards his sudan (gun) + pike units. If i make my cava to the flank, most of the time my friend win. If i decide to stay, use my musket, with 8 long range units, he gonna wipe out my 4-5 long range units.
Do you have any suggestion for this situation?

[O'Hea]

On the battlefield, I usually gravitate towards one of two approaches. I either
a) refuse my flanks and deploy my troops in deep columns, the idea being to stretch the enemy out accross my line, then punch through wherever a gap appears,
or b) put my flanks slightly forward and leave wide gaps between units, so that the formation starts out loose but compacts tightly around the enemy once they engage.

When sieging, I tend to rush heavy infantry up to the walls with ladders, take control of the walls and towers, then send in my spears and cavalry. I don't bother with rams and I've yet to really take a liking to artillery, although I know for a fact it's effective.

[Emperor Christianos IV]

Sometimes if I'm bored & just for the hell of it, Group all my units & send 'em in. It seems to work well as HRE though

[Nazgûl Killer]

I hear that, Christianos, it's so fun sometimes, just to see an unorganized typical medieval battle.

[merocaine]

@ huysavi

It looks like hes got a higher point army than you?

Quick suggestions, use less muskets, I'd say you would be better off with 3 muskets deployed across your 5 pikes.
5 heavy infantry is over kill, use 3, with the pikes thats all you need.

With the saving you make from the heavy infantry and muskets you can buy 3 maybe 4 mounted crossbowmen.

Use your mounted crossbows to distract his camel gunners, and charge your heavy cavalry directly into his sudanese gunners right at the start of the battle. Your heavy cav should do enough damage to even up the gun fight, pull your Heavy cav out of the fight and use them with your mounted crossbows to beat up the camel gunners.

Keep formation with your pikes and muskets, with his gunners out of action or reforming you should be able to cause him a lot of casulties before he can close the range.
He can try to shoot you up but this time he wont have the advantage.

If he charges your muskets/heavy inf/pike and general should prove to much for his inf....

[huysavi]

@ huysavi

It looks like hes got a higher point army than you?

Quick suggestions, use less muskets, I'd say you would be better off with 3 muskets deployed across your 5 pikes.
5 heavy infantry is over kill, use 3, with the pikes thats all you need.

With the saving you make from the heavy infantry and muskets you can buy 3 maybe 4 mounted crossbowmen.

Use your mounted crossbows to distract his camel gunners, and charge your heavy cavalry directly into his sudanese gunners right at the start of the battle. Your heavy cav should do enough damage to even up the gun fight, pull your Heavy cav out of the fight and use them with your mounted crossbows to beat up the camel gunners.

Keep formation with your pikes and muskets, with his gunners out of action or reforming you should be able to cause him a lot of casulties before he can close the range.
He can try to shoot you up but this time he wont have the advantage.

If he charges your muskets/heavy inf/pike and general should prove to much for his inf....

That's a good advice. However, with MC, even 3-4 units, his gun camel will do much damage and kill my MC because they have longer range. The problem here is his gun camel + heavy cav go to my flank, so I can only move my MC + 4 heavy cav there, use MC until they can do some damage on his gun camel, then charge my heavy cav. However, when MC begin routing, my Heavy cav might do the same.

[merocaine]

Yeah your crossbows are prob doomed, but at least it keeps the camel gunners occupied, there the bait, since they cost about a 1/3 as much as the camel gunners its a good trade.
If they try to ignore your mounted crossbows this will open them up to there unanswered fire.

The range doesent matter as your crossbows will close in fast, he will be forced to micro manage his camel gunners to maintain the range. All to the good, as he will be forced to split his attention.

You out number your friend in Heavy Cavalry, make it count, let the camel gunners wast time on the mounted crossbows, you make sure you mince his infantry gunners with them.

[huysavi]

Yeah your crossbows are prob doomed, but at least it keeps the camel gunners occupied, there the bait, since they cost about a 1/3 as much as the camel gunners its a good trade.
If they try to ignore your mounted crossbows this will open them up to there unanswered fire.

The range doesent matter as your crossbows will close in fast, he will be forced to micro manage his camel gunners to maintain the range. All to the good, as he will be forced to split his attention.

You out number your friend in Heavy Cavalry, make it count, let the camel gunners wast time on the mounted crossbows, you make sure you mince his infantry gunners with them.

I found a solution and testing now. I use xbow not mounted xbow because they have better range + do much more damage, also they are good in close combat as well. with 3 xbow units plus 3 heave calvary backup, I think I can deal with 4 gun camel + 2 heave cavalry. when I sweep out his camel + cavalry, then i can focus on the others.

[french POWN]

When theres like only 300 spearmen i send in balkan archers (5) and own them while my feaudal knights come around to the corner of battle in arrow formation.i order my archers to bak away then order my feudal knights to run down the spear men. (3 feudal knights units grouped). oh by the way i cammand venice right now.

[Raidon_the_Hun]

When sieging, I tend to rush heavy infantry up to the walls with ladders, take control of the walls and towers, then send in my spears and cavalry. I don't bother with rams and I've yet to really take a liking to artillery, although I know for a fact it's effective.

When besieging a settlement, I generally get alot of ladders and send my light infantry with the ladders all over the wall so as to spread out the defense. I then send my heavy infantry up the vital ladders and flank with the unopposed ladders. I send a ram in with peasant level troops (or Mutawwi for Muslim nations). I send in my spearmen in schiltrom formation and bring cavalry in behind.
I don't really like artillery either, but monster bombards are very effective and fun to use.

That is my strategy for siege battles let me know if you know of a better way.

[PubliusKhannus]

well i use ur strategy alot,,,but i like to load up on missiles,,about 7-8 units,,and then send 3 or 4 heavy infantry (or light depending on tower power) and then pepper the enemy units on and just behind the walls.makes my initial gate push much easier to hold and expand. and monster bombards are hilarious to use on enemy wall units...o i love to see em fly!

[Raidon_the_Hun]

and monster bombards are hilarious to use on enemy wall units...o i love to see em fly!

Have you ever used them at point blank range? The AI in this game is so inadequate that I used all of my ammunition for my monster bombards from about 100 ft away and they didn't respond until I brought up my archers to finish them off(then they ran away!)

I got like 50 casualties in one shot before the enemy went to loose formation.

[Deadman1709]

Have you ever used them at point blank range? The AI in this game is so inadequate that I used all of my ammunition for my monster bombards from about 100 ft away and they didn't respond until I brought up my archers to finish them off(then they ran away!)

I got like 50 casualties in one shot before the enemy went to loose formation.

Gotta try that ....
BTW, here's my formation:

This formation works best with European nations againsts which doesn't have a lot of horse archers. Anyway, a strong army with horse archers with just tear apart any formations, except another with even stronger horse archer. I built this type of formation from the time of Rome as the Romans, and now as the English. Others factions are more or less the same with minor modifications.

I build my forces around a concept I call "Brigades". There are 3 types of brigades I use; I will cover their roles in battles later.

- Center, static brigade:
+ 5 units of heavy infantry
+ 1 unit of ranged infantry.

- Flank, maneuver brigade:
+ 2 units of spearmen or heavy infantry.
+ 1 unit of ranged infantry.
+ 2 units of cavalry.

- Artillery brigade:
+ 4 units of artillery. This depends on the type of battle. In open field, use some anti-personnel ones like serpentine. In siege, use basilisk or culverin.

Each army (if I call these brigades, then my "army" will be effectively a division-size unit, in modern terms ), on open field battles will consist of 1 center brigade, and 2 flanks brigade. That would make up a 9 inf, 3 range, 4 cav, and 4 arty. I would usually mobilize the entire brigade as a whole, and they can move fairly independent of each other.

A= archers/range infantry
H= heavy infanty/spear
C= cavalry/general

----[AAA]-----------------------[AAA]------------------------[AAA]
[HHH] [HHH]--------[HHH] [HHH] [HHH] [HHH] [HHH]--------[HHH] [HHH]
-[CC] [CC] ------------------------------------------------- [CC] [CC]

LEFT BRIGD---------------------CENTER BRIGD---------------RIGHT BRIGD

Artillery will be situated in the gaps between the brigades.

Attacking is fairly typical: my archers on the flanks will try to soften up/provoke the cavalry into charging them. Then my archers will quick retreat behind the spear/infantry, any my cav. charge up, attempting to destroy enemy cav. the heavy infantry will provide support for the cav while the cav retreat for a follow up charge. Meanwhile, the center archer will try to soften up enemy center with fire arrows.

If all goes well, then enemy cav should be destroyed and leave the center infantry unsupported. The center brigades will advance, charge and pin down enemy center while the infantries on the flanks will either help pinning them or move around the flanks in attempts to engage enemy reserves. The cav will of course hit the enemy back.

Routing would start very soon.

If the enemy is any of the Italians (xbows ). My archers will be the bait while the rest charge up. Their xbows will fall behind their infantry lines. My inf will engage their while my cav start of charge into their xbows which are now without supports.


One of my favourite battle using this type of force is durring the attck of venice. I stay on a bridge and the Venetian hit be from both sides of the bridges. I put my center brig to guard the bridge. Then I withdraw 1 unit of infantry out and put into a flank brig. The 2 flank brigades now form a line that guard me rear. The Venetians started to cross the bridge. They were drawn into a box formation by my heavy inf. while getting fire arrows from my archer. they were weaken by rotting cows from my trebuchets.

Meanwhile the other army creeps up behind me. I kind expected that se I deployed my force facing them. Since they got quite a lot of xbows so I made a forceful infanty-cav charge while they were showered by fire arrows. The infantry hold the enemy inf off while my cav repeatedly charge into the xbows. The archers hit any units that was not engaged. Soon 1 army rout and since they were so near the border, they ran for good

After finishing the army on my back. I get the flank brigades joins in the bridge battle and made a forceful charge across the bridge. The Italians were till then a cycle of charge, rout, regroup, charge, and rout again. This time, they rout for good. My cav then start to run down any fleeing troops.

HEROIC VICTORY


While assaulting settlements, 2 cav units will be replaced with heavy infantry.

Accompanying each as above army (division, I would like to call), will a support army. This will usually consist of a flank brigade and a center brigade. Making them having 7 infantry, 2 cav, 2 range. The main purpose for this support unit is to replenish heavily depleted units (usually any units that lost more than 1/3 of its men) with fresh ones. Or they can act as baits to lure out enemy into terrains that favor my army (brigdes, mountain pass....) . This is usually needed when 2 fullstacks of enemy is guarding a city/castle. If no favorable presents, I would try to fight the best I can and kill as many as possible.

Garrisoning important settlements will be 1 center brig, 1 flank brig. with 2-3 additional archer/ranged infantry; that'll make a 7 inf, 4-5 range, 2 cav. I adopt an in depth, flexible defense with available counter-attack forces nearby so I usually don't garrison a city/castle in full.

I usually have some mobile forces to do police actions (rebels ) or quickly reinforce certain regions. They usually consist of a single flank brigade with 1-2 additional heavy infantry. That'll make 3 inf. 1 range, 2 cav.

I'm still experimenting my force with horse archers. I think I would replace 2 infantry, 2 cav of the center brigade by 4 horse archers.

[Raidon_the_Hun]

This formation works best with European nations againsts which doesn't have a lot of horse archers. Anyway, a strong army with horse archers with just tear apart any formations, except another with even stronger horse archer. I built this type of formation from the time of Rome as the Romans, and now as the English. Others factions are more or less the same with minor modifications.

I build my forces around a concept I call "Brigades". There are 3 types of brigades I use; I will cover their roles in battles later.

- Center, static brigade:
+ 5 units of heavy infantry
+ 1 unit of ranged infantry.

- Flank, maneuver brigade:
+ 2 units of spearmen or heavy infantry.
+ 1 unit of ranged infantry.
+ 2 units of cavalry.

- Artillery brigade:
+ 4 units of artillery. This depends on the type of battle. In open field, use some anti-personnel ones like serpentine. In siege, use basilisk or culverin.

Each army (if I call these brigades, then my "army" will be effectively a division-size unit, in modern terms ), on open field battles will consist of 1 center brigade, and 2 flanks brigade. That would make up a 9 inf, 3 range, 4 cav, and 4 arty. I would usually mobilize the entire brigade as a whole, and they can move fairly independent of each other.

A= archers/range infantry
H= heavy infanty/spear
C= cavalry/general

----[AAA]-----------------------[AAA]------------------------[AAA]
[HHH] [HHH]--------[HHH] [HHH] [HHH] [HHH] [HHH]--------[HHH] [HHH]
-[CC] [CC] ------------------------------------------------- [CC] [CC]

LEFT BRIGD---------------------CENTER BRIGD---------------RIGHT BRIGD

Artillery will be situated in the gaps between the brigades.

Attacking is fairly typical: my archers on the flanks will try to soften up/provoke the cavalry into charging them. Then my archers will quick retreat behind the spear/infantry, any my cav. charge up, attempting to destroy enemy cav. the heavy infantry will provide support for the cav while the cav retreat for a follow up charge. Meanwhile, the center archer will try to soften up enemy center with fire arrows.

If all goes well, then enemy cav should be destroyed and leave the center infantry unsupported. The center brigades will advance, charge and pin down enemy center while the infantries on the flanks will either help pinning them or move around the flanks in attempts to engage enemy reserves. The cav will of course hit the enemy back.

Routing would start very soon.

If the enemy is any of the Italians (xbows ). My archers will be the bait while the rest charge up. Their xbows will fall behind their infantry lines. My inf will engage their while my cav start of charge into their xbows which are now without supports.


One of my favourite battle using this type of force is durring the attck of venice. I stay on a bridge and the Venetian hit be from both sides of the bridges. I put my center brig to guard the bridge. Then I withdraw 1 unit of infantry out and put into a flank brig. The 2 flank brigades now form a line that guard me rear. The Venetians started to cross the bridge. They were drawn into a box formation by my heavy inf. while getting fire arrows from my archer. they were weaken by rotting cows from my trebuchets.

Meanwhile the other army creeps up behind me. I kind expected that se I deployed my force facing them. Since they got quite a lot of xbows so I made a forceful infanty-cav charge while they were showered by fire arrows. The infantry hold the enemy inf off while my cav repeatedly charge into the xbows. The archers hit any units that was not engaged. Soon 1 army rout and since they were so near the border, they ran for good

After finishing the army on my back. I get the flank brigades joins in the bridge battle and made a forceful charge across the bridge. The Italians were till then a cycle of charge, rout, regroup, charge, and rout again. This time, they rout for good. My cav then start to run down any fleeing troops.

HEROIC VICTORY


While assaulting settlements, 2 cav units will be replaced with heavy infantry.

Accompanying each as above army (division, I would like to call), will a support army. This will usually consist of a flank brigade and a center brigade. Making them having 7 infantry, 2 cav, 2 range. The main purpose for this support unit is to replenish heavily depleted units (usually any units that lost more than 1/3 of its men) with fresh ones. Or they can act as baits to lure out enemy into terrains that favor my army (brigdes, mountain pass....) . This is usually needed when 2 fullstacks of enemy is guarding a city/castle. If no favorable presents, I would try to fight the best I can and kill as many as possible.

Garrisoning important settlements will be 1 center brig, 1 flank brig. with 2-3 additional archer/ranged infantry; that'll make a 7 inf, 4-5 range, 2 cav. I adopt an in depth, flexible defense with available counter-attack forces nearby so I usually don't garrison a city/castle in full.

I usually have some mobile forces to do police actions (rebels ) or quickly reinforce certain regions. They usually consist of a single flank brigade with 1-2 additional heavy infantry. That'll make 3 inf. 1 range, 2 cav.

I'm still experimenting my force with horse archers. I think I would replace 2 infantry, 2 cav of the center brigade by 4 horse archers.

Wow, you really plan out everything. Sounds like a good strategy, I would like to try it sometime except I'm playing with Egypt in the Crusades campaign right now and my enemy(the byzantines are the only ones left who are a threat) have a lot of horse archers and artillery. For some reason the Computor thinks that having 6-10 artillery in one army is a great idea. Do you have a good strategy against an army of 6-8 artillery, 2-4 varangian guard, 4-6 byzantine guard archers, and assorted horse archers and a general? Any help will be appreciated.

Anyway, my normal strategy for open field battles is to use 5-7 good spearmen, 4-8 heavy infantry(my favorite as Egypt being Hashashin), 2-4 horse archers, 2-4 heavy cavalry(including general) or 2-4 archers.
I don't really plan my armies out but I did more of that in Rome total war.
----------------back----------------


[HCHCHCHC]------------[HAHAHAHA]
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[HIHIHIHI][SPSPSPSPSPSP][HIHIHIHI]

----------------front----------------
HC=Heavy Cavalry
HA=Horse Archers
HI=Heavy Infantry
A=Archers
SP=Spearmen

I have archers with skirmish mode off so they can fill a gap in my lines.

For siege defense, my ideal army would include 4-6 heavy archers, 4-6 heavy infantry, 2-4 spearmen, and the rest are cavalry.

[Deadman1709]

A few behaviour of arty that might be usefull.

Siege weapons like trebuchet and catapult tends to over-shoot. Meaning the shells fall behind the enemy lines. You can experiment that using 2 armies full of trebuchets. Canons, like culverins or basilisk, while using exploding shells tends to fell short of targets. Serpentine have excellent accuracy.

I'm still experimenting my formation with horse archers but what I think I will do is:
- Center Brigade:
+ Reduce the strength from 5 heavy inf. to 3 heavy inf.
+ keep the archer.

- Flank brigade:
+ Keep the 2 spears (spears on flanks)
+ Keep the archers.
+ Reduce heavy cav: now only 1 remains.
+ Put in 2 additional horse archers each flanks.


I would like to explain then in details for a general type of army w/o lots of horse archers but I'll do the case of heavy arty first.

If you have arty. Put them on front and start shooting you enemy. Now, It's the tricky part. If they don't attack you and just sit there. Put the rest of you army out of enemy range AND away from their line of fire (to the sides). DONT try to stay behind your arty. Since their shells will over shoot, they'll hit you.

--------------------[ENEMY ARTILLERY] ---------------------




--------------------[YOUR ARTILLERY]-----------------------

XXXXXXXXXXXX-----------------------------XXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXX-----------------------------XXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXX-----------------------------XXXXXXXXXXXX


X= put your armies here. DON'T put anything behind our own arty.

Let them shoot for a while, aim for the troops. Once they both runs out of ammo. Then its easy. Draw fire from horse archers by your archers. Race the horse archers forward, chase theirs. The 2 may eventually get into melee (AI have a tendency to stop running after a while and go melee). Send in your flank spears to support the horse archers. The heavy infantry though outnumbered but with support of the heavy cav, you should be able to rout theirs. Or hold their heavy inf while your heavy cav rout their archers. Then send in the horse archers into melee onto the rear of the enemy heavy inf.

If the enemy go offensive. Charge them, run. Get to melee as soon as possible. Staying around just make your casualties from their artilery worse.

[Raidon_the_Hun]

Thanks, I guess I'll have to start using artillery more often in my armies. I don't normally because it cripples the army's move points.

[Deadman1709]

Thanks, I guess I'll have to start using artillery more often in my armies. I don't normally because it cripples the army's move points.

The small movement point of artillery is quite a PITA. However, it saved me some troops since after the bombardment, the enemy is pretty much torn apart; huge chunks of units gone and morale is also hurt.

During siege: nothing better than a brigade of cannon. It shatters walls, towers on the outer layer; shoot over the wall into the 2nd layer. And then dragged inside to blow apart the last layer . City wall? Piece of cake. And nothing is better during a siege than shoot down the 2 outer most sections of the wall and kill every ing archers standing on the wall . also save me some troops

---------EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE--------
[TOWER]=============XXXX=====XXXX======XXX===========[TOWER]
----------SHOOT HERE----------------------------------SHOOT HERE---------

== : destructible wall
xx : indestructible wall
E : Enemy

Shoot the 2 sections simultaneously (pause for better sync); each using 2 units of cannon. After a single volley ----> watch the enemy flying, falling and screaming .

Also do a good job blasting those wo stand down the street apart