The harassing of the Russians

[Shazz]

So, even though this is mainly involving multiplayer, since AI doesn't really resort to this, at least not to its full extent anyway, I think it still fits in to this subforum.

I'm talking about the annoying cavalry archer/musketeer harassing that really goes for more factions than Russia but still, I chose it because it was driving me insane and I couldnt think clear enough, laggy and such during the previous game I had.


Are you forced to engage his army in full scale attack to fight this, because it didnt seem to do much good using my Retinue Longbowmen (I was England). I also had 2 mortars that shot at him but they were moving around so it was almost impossible to hit. The other part of his army was behind his 3-4 units of Son of Something , and they were just churning away their ammo at my units, and ran as soon as I tried to engage with my Demi Lancers.

[Zhou]

The only way to beat a missile cavalry unit is to encircle it and destroy it if you don't have light cavalry troops of your own. If you do, then the best way is just to use the exact same tactic as your opponent. In any case musketeers should have been easy prey for your Demi Lancers and you probably could have brought up your archers as backup. I am rather surprised to find that your Retinue Longbowmen were having problems against Kazaks (or were they Dvors) and Boyar Sons though. I think if you planted your stakes correctly before the battle began (across as much of the battlefield as you could), you would have forced your opponent to let you attack, and since your longbows outrange all of his horse archers, you should have been able to keep them at bay.

[Shazz]

Well he kind of moved his entire army around that part, and I was a little clumpy re-organizing the line-up, but I got disconnected due to lag issues so I never really got to finish the game, but yeah, perhaps I should've let my longbowmen take care of it.

[Zhou]

How exactly did you clump your stakes and how many units of longbowmen did you have? If you space your stakes out so that they're seperated by only a bit, and you're at a relatively narrow part of the battle map, he will be forced to micromanage his horse archers a lot or else risk losing a few of them to the stakes while your longbows can pick them off. Remember, if you go on the offensive against horse archers with your longbowmen, there's almost no way he can win as long as you support your longbowmen with either heavy infantry or heavy cavalry (assuming he's using Dvors).

[Shazz]

Well it was REALLY not a narrow map, he had plenty of room to move around my stakes, but I think the major fault was my lack of experience, and I'm doing a bitt better with it now (alot of people use the tactic).

Thanks anyway mate .