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Thread: Horse archer armies

  1. #1
    Ultra123's Avatar Senator
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    Default Horse archer armies

    Wondering if anyone has tried horse archer armies (scythian) in latest version of DEI? Any tips? i do enjoy pure horse archer armies just wondering if its viable to play seriously in this version.
    Originally Posted by Garbarsardar
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  2. #2
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    Default Re: Horse archer armies

    Quote Originally Posted by Ultra123 View Post
    Wondering if anyone has tried horse archer armies (scythian) in latest version of DEI? Any tips? i do enjoy pure horse archer armies just wondering if its viable to play seriously in this version.
    Use one army full of Horse archers(20+) , another army of infantry behind. Horse archers open up engagements, foot army cleans up the mess and assaults settlements. Split your horse army into hotkeys for 4-8(depends on how lazy you are), kite , kite.and make sure you're doing most of your damage from behind/or opposite of sheild . I royal scythia'd it Hun style through Europe before it was cool (200bc+).

    Lol it's fun, but it can be boring. I think Parthia is better with their armoured archers, with a few perks into movement speed the purple authority general perks, first one is moral, than its speed, and more speed+ moral, which effects your units. You can get armoured horse archers at base light horse speed. o.P

    Have fun, scythia is decent, confederate with others and become the horse(pun) of the steppe
    Last edited by T2av; May 06, 2018 at 07:50 AM.

  3. #3
    KAM 2150's Avatar Artifex
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    Default Re: Horse archer armies

    Key to understand horse archer combat, both from game and historical point of view is that horse archers are not the main thing here, at least when it comes to decisive strikes. In all of history, most famous horse archer heavy armies always left proper punch to their heavy cavalry units. When we think of Mongols, we see their light horse archers but they were used to bait and bleed the enemy while main strikes were done by their pretty much cataphract lancers, who for the most part had heavier armours than any other units in the world at that time.

    Same principal works here, you take lots of light horse archers and you use them to weaken and isolate potential targets. When you see an opportunity you close in with your heavy cavalry, preferably from front and back of that isolated unit. When in range, you simply charge in with the heavy cav from both sides, pretty much putting to rout if not outright killing that enemy squad with little to no losses.
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  4. #4

    Default Re: Horse archer armies

    I played Saka Rauka and all horse archer army worked fine for me until I needed to take a walled settlement. But you can research siege reduction times technology + raid stance to where it becomes doable. I found ammo to be a little tight against some of the more heavily armoured opponents but if you toggle fire at will on/off to shoot them in the back or left flank selectively, and then use 2 or 3 lancer style units to finish those units off, as other suggest, I never ran into problems, although towards the end of the campaign I switched over to having more melee infantry units because all horse archer armies become a bit tedious to fight constantly with imo.

  5. #5

    Default Re: Horse archer armies

    Parthia is for sure the easiest of the horse archer factions, they get an extra bonus to ammo from tech and you they have far better buildings and tech imo. You don't need a full stack in fact I find it's harder the more units you have because the more you have to micro. I stick with Heaviest Cav Gen and 12 light horse archers and recruit about 4-5 units of local levies to be used as meat shields and to engage the enemy melee while my cav sweeps around to deal with their missiles, then you just stand behind them while your levies are fighting them in the front and shoot away. You can pretty easily finish fights without losing a single horse archer which is great because they gain experience very quickly this way. Because these armies are only 13-18 essentially levy units they are really cheap and you can afford 2 of them after you take your first province. Later in the campaign though and this would be same for Schythia, I end up swapping the 12 units for armored noble horse archers. Pick the ones that have extra missile damage and range, like KAM said get the speed boost and you've got the most deadly cavalry in the game. QED.

  6. #6

    Default Re: Horse archer armies

    Quote Originally Posted by KAM 2150 View Post
    Key to understand horse archer combat, both from game and historical point of view is that horse archers are not the main thing here, at least when it comes to decisive strikes. In all of history, most famous horse archer heavy armies always left proper punch to their heavy cavalry units. When we think of Mongols, we see their light horse archers but they were used to bait and bleed the enemy while main strikes were done by their pretty much cataphract lancers, who for the most part had heavier armours than any other units in the world at that time.

    Same principal works here, you take lots of light horse archers and you use them to weaken and isolate potential targets. When you see an opportunity you close in with your heavy cavalry, preferably from front and back of that isolated unit. When in range, you simply charge in with the heavy cav from both sides, pretty much putting to rout if not outright killing that enemy squad with little to no losses.
    Yes, DEI did great here- HA still very powerful but really unlikely to absolutely destroy enemy armies on their own unlike in most TW base games and mods.

  7. #7

    Default Re: Horse archer armies

    I actually find full horse archer armies of the basic skythian horsemen are extremely effective and possibly the strongest early game army for aggression since they're very cheap.

    They require a little micro but all you really need to do is split your army into 2 or more groups and run around til the enemy is exhausted and any time an enemy unit becomes isolated you charge them from both sides. Or if any skirmishers lack melee support you can easily rout them with a charge from the basic horse archers.
    They also allow you to cheese tough opponents who will outlast your ammo by just attacking them, firing all your arrows and then retreating to fight a second battle now that they've lost some men. Its unfair on the AI but pretty accurate to horse archer army tactics.
    IIIRC Parthia has access to Dahae horsemen or something similar who are basically the same but monsters in melee too.

    For walled settlements my tactic is pretty much the same as I do for most armies, I encircle the wall with an inferior force and then wait for them to attack me.

    The only armies that really counter them are other horse archer/cavalry heavy armies or sparabara spamming eastern civs.

  8. #8
    RollingWave's Avatar Praepositus
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    Default Re: Horse archer armies

    Yeah it's usually quite viable. Royal Scythia especially given it's massive ammo bonus, which if you combine with the general's bonus also on ammo can sustain fire for a long time.

    The general key is to just set up your group into 3 to 4 and keep running them in different directions. the AI especially (and hard even for human) can't keep up and generally would leave a lot of opening exposed, try to run down the soft targets like archer / slinger / siege units quickly when these opening shows up and then you have all the time in the world to shoot up the rest.

    If your going to get really micro intensive you could try to stop units shooting at anyone from the front and only shoot when you can hit them from the back, though generally I find that to be rather unneccesary for Scythians given how much ammo they usually have.

    Also, because most battles you can win without taking serious casualties, it's not too hard to build up armies full of high experience units (especially since cavalry bonus buildings are generally more common and accessible.) you could end up with some crazy high level armies that shoot at a ridiculous speed and also fights very well in melee (all the charge bonus stacked up can end up in pretty ridiculous territory.)
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  9. #9

    Default Re: Horse archer armies

    Kam hit the nail on the head. Once you begin to face armies of better quality troops the horse archers can no longer destroy them outright. Use them to weaken and fatigue the enemy (enemy archers should be your first priority followed by any spear units). Then clean them up with your cataphracts. Ideal army composition, from my experience with Parthia, is 15 horse archers, 4 cataphracts/lancers and a horse general. Its the best single army comp in the entire game aside from imperial reform Rome and is available far sooner.

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