Hey fam,
Started a new Pontos game for 2.35. I got bored/frustrated with the last game because it was a slog dealing with the north side of the Black Sea. Honestly, I would just happily never expand north of the caucuses if it wasn't for the fact that I need to take Khersonesos to trigger the imperial reforms.
My biggest gripe is that dealing with mostly horse archer armies in the open field is basically impossible unless you're fielding an army of mostly fast cavalry yourself.
I remember in EB1 that foot archers used to fare pretty well against horse archers, but now they barely make a dent. This is even after I tweaked the battle_config file so that the missile-target-accuracy is 0.275 vs cavalry (and infantry, although they still seem to take more casualties from missiles than horses, which just feels wrong considering the difference in target size). This is especially an issue because coordinated charges by light cav, even those with poor combat stats, will break most archer and other light skirmisher units.
Fielding spearmen, even cost-effective units with high armor and big shields to soak up arrows and blunt charges, isn't terribly effective because they rely on the AI charging their skirmisher cav into them. When using them as backup for already engaged horse archers (by attacking them with a unit of fast cavalry and having the spearmen run up to join the fray) it's still micro hell on a large scale.
It's really boring to have to run around the Ukraine with stacks of horse archers to fight other horse archers, and the battles themselves feel so chaotic. It also feels very ahistoric. Traditionally, I've run less than historic army comps, but I've been trying to diversify and use more well rounded stacks. I'm at my wit's end, and this close to just tweaking the battle_config to make cav even more susceptible to missiles.
Does anyone have any suggestions? I can't possibly be the only one who's dealt with it.
Edit: found old thread http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...-archer-armies
Going to try these tips. Still, I recall cavalry taking way too few casualties from foot archer units.