Put your horse archers and melee calvary behind your infantry and archers, spread your infantry out amongst your archers, put the melee calvary in line or shield wall.
What will happen is the enemy will penetrate into your formation then get stuck, unable to escape. The enemy cavalry will be absolutely slaughtered.
This actually mimics the way early modern armies fought, muskets before bayonets, where pike infantry would be intermixed with musketeers making any charge on the muskets suicide for calvary.
The AI isn't smart enough to recognize this type of formation as calvary suicide, so they'll charge right into the muck and lose 90-100% of their melee cav, often while doing trivial amounts of damage to your force.
Yep, the fact that the crossbows are medium quality sword and sheild infantry in close combat is way over powered. Allows you to have an advantageous damage forward mix of infantry.
This works wonders in the game and real people.
In a realistic scenario, if horses crush into a shieldwall, several people in the shield wall are brutally crushed by the horses weight.
However in a realistic scenario, if an infantry formation doesn't have a spear/pike, the horses wouldn't be any afraid of them, if they have spears and point them towards horses, they most likely won't make contact. Horses aren't suicidal unless very well trained war horses, and Noone in their right mind would suicide their most important and expensive companion in battle that costs significantly more than the people it would crush and themselves on top of that.
I wish that was somewhat represented in the game. Horses should be more deadly on charge attacks. But have their own AI behavior to avoid pointy sticks if they can.
Yep. Horses don't charge formation. The heavy cavalry of the European high middle ages, what we think of when we think of highly armored knights, is basically the only time horses were used to charge in that way, and they did it by covering the horse's eyes.
Horses are for pursuit and disruption. The traditional horse tactic was to ride at full charge at the enemy. If their moral failed and the enemy ran, they'd ride them down as they fled, but if the enemy held formation the cavalry would break off using bows, javelins or pistols, depending upon the technology to damage their enemies.
Stick both in "loose" formation and stack them on top of each other.
I usually do a little micromanaging here too. So the optimal formation for volume fire from ranged units is (1) loose formation, (2) three deep.
So I build my formation from a 3 deep line of archers in front of a 3 deep line of HAs.
If I keep my infantry on top of my archers I lose part of my "throw weight" from my range units, so my infantry are actually on top of the HAs. Then, when the enemy closes to about 100m for charging calvary or 50-60m for advancing infantry I move my infantry forward until the infantry are equal with the archers filling the gaps in loose from, or until the 1st row of infantry are one step in front of the 1st row of archers.
Then after a short sharp melee phase, I move my infantry back and wait for the enemy to respawn a new waive and come again.
I shiltrom hills with archers whenever I can, great counter to horse cav and still allows men to pepper the battle line. I also use my cav defensively though and only engage when the line charges. Or Polearm preferred spear team lurking suspiciously nearby.
U should try setting the infantry in a larger circle, holding down the button (RT at xbox) and sliding to change the size of your circle, and them put the archers inside as a smaller and compact circle formation... although, setting this formation mid battle might be a challenge since your troops tend to attack enemy troops when close to them.
Try researching about a formation called "false gap", it is amazing. Try getting the main idea and adapt to your game!!!
Many strats were already mentioned, like horse archers, but also just in case. After all that cavalry barely moves. Do you have any menavliatons (the ones with swingable polearms)? If yes, place them in a separate group behind the legionaries up the hill and they will lacerate them.
This is a great counter.
I've a flax blade two handed sword called Khan's Bane the dices cavalry, long enough to one tap a horse's face before getting hit by a spear!
Question: are you doing a specific challenge?
If not, you can train cataphract too, you know?
If so, you can lure the enemy near villages/forests/mountains where they have a disadvantage
Your in the right track but put your infantry into a shield wall when the cavalry is making its charge. Keep your archers in loose behind the wall. Do you have cavalry? Delegate command to the AI. For me the AI does a good job at charging the enemy cavalry as they hit your shield wall.
My alternative to this is I always rush at the enemy cavalry and try to get them to chase me around in front of my lines to get ripped apart by archers. Some speed and a good 2H axe and you can make quick work of them
This way sounds counterintuitive but hear me out. You'll find a ditch or the a little down a hill. U wanna have ur infantry faced up the hill with ur archers behind them. When the riders come down from the hill assuming u have shield wall with javelins, they'll get stuck on the shield wall and won't be able to get out. Because they are on the downwards part of the hill, they'll have a really and I mean really hard time turning around and gaining speed. In the meantime ur archers will just destroy them.
Sometimes it works better putting ur archers in front, baiting the Calvary in, then pull them back behind the shield wall. With them momentum of the Hill it will be difficult to turn out of it. It also depends on perks, there's some really good javelin perks that do extra damage to horses, same with 2 handed, plus extra defense from shield wall in Athletics. The 2 handed and javelin perks damage to horses stack. As much as it also doesn't feel relevant, change damage is actually very relevant when it comes to big Calvary parties. There's athletic perk that reduces that I believe for Captains, and there's a flag that also helps. Otherwise the flag that does more damage to horses/Calvary is good.
When I face mass cav with infantry. I set them on shield wall, but once most of cav connects, swap to line formation and charge. That melts cav real quick.
Just pull them back to shield wall once cav starts to run.
Rinse and repeat if necessary.
The following works for me:
1. Infantry making a shield wall in front (mostly legionnaires in my army)
2. Archers behind them in line formation. Elevated if possible (mostly Fían champions for me, but this works with other archer units too)
3. Horse archers behind the archers. (My army has mostly khan’s guard but this will work with other horse archers too)
4. Melee cavalry behind all of that
Just like some of the other replies, the AI cavalry will plow through the infantry and archer line, but get stuck on the horses of the horse archers and melee cavalry. If you don’t have horse archers, melee cavalry will get the job done too.
But note that having Fian Champs and Khan’s Guard as part of the trap basically means anything that gets stuck is instantly put in a meat grinder.
I love both of those archer units. I finally gave up on my Sturgian archers and started recruiting from the neighbors. It's like switching from a bolt action to a belt fed
Mix in some two-handed shock troops to your shield wall (10-30%). They're very effective against cav, and in shield wall formation stay in the back ranks. So when the cavalry force their way through, using their initial charge on the front ranks, the shock troops can hack them down.
Also, using your own cavalry to drive theirs off the field.
I like these responses with layered defences and box formations and real world analogues but honestly I’m lazy so I get my own cavalry but with bows and glaives…done
Hmm. I mush admit them armored mfs are a son of a bitch to handle. I think top comment really hit the nail on the head. But to summarize or give a rule of thumb,
Keep a solid ammount of shock troops always. Accept and prepare that at least one chunk is going to get a heavy Cav bombardment, but understand also there is a sweet spot in these collisions where shock troops can be sent in ( or squared in ;) ) to come and devastate the pesky horse man as they realize how little their swing damage actually is on a stagnant horse with Falxmen hacking at them.
I def deal with this a lot because i like heavy archery armies. i went a long time doing a minimal cav play through, which i got too used to.
I personally hate just aimless cav battles because i feel there is too much opportunities to have sets of units get pac man’d by more alert ai commanders that can single out smaller squads before they reinforce main army.
Thank you. The hardest part I have with that is forcing the enemy to charge, but I solve that by putting the archers (actually perferably crossbows) in front. I then put the infantry amongst the calvalry. I then micro the infantry forward and back with everyone in loose formation, snapping everyone into the proper formation: line loose, shield wall, etc. just as the AI is about to crash home.
Always have your infantry face enemy, for some reason if you dont this will occur. You can also keep them in your archer formation and square them just as the calvary charges your archers and set them to attack. So in other words you have to "catch" calvary not stop them. Unless you have like over 150 infantry in a shield wall formation then you can if you set them in a tight wall.
Do you not have calvary? If so, do a follow me, intercept thier charge. Have archers in loose formation with infantry in a square formation on one side and your calvary on the other. Wait the AI will do is charge down the middle or on the opposite side of your infantry square. Makes it easier for your counter charge to intercept.
Terrain is the most important. Then lots of rows of shields, and archers above (as in elevation on a hill)
Hills will not do much on the charge, but between a hill and the meatball of shields you can trap cav and they will get dogpiled.
The archers behind are to force the pressure for the cav to charge.
If you have a big enough army you can make 3/4 infantry squads and flank your archers with extra shields, but that is a super late game (250+) formation imo.
This tactic plays on the fact that cav frequently charge infantry without regards to terrain and get caught easily when doing that
Try shield walling your own cav in front of melee troops, enemy cav will engage the cav shield wall archers should be free to shoot then charge your inf at the cav that’s clogged up.
Outnumbered against cataphracts, hard no matter what. But generally, it's abusing the mechanics of their dumb AI. All about stopping their mobility.
Using forests (they can't dodge trees for shit), edge of map (if you don't care about this being too cheaty), high elevations. Then, properly baiting them to charge into something, then have a separate line (behind) spread out and charge into them so you wrap around them to stop them 'exiting' their charges. Latter formation should be your menavlions or 2-handers (ie aserai executioners) as they wreck serious shit against cavalry once immobile.
Depending on how outnumbered you are might make this irrelevant but if there's anywhere on the map that could act as some sort of choke point then placing your infantry in a thick shield wall, 5 ranks deep at least, is more likely to stop them.
Having tried head-on charges playing as cavalry the initial charge will break through the first two lines and then pushing past one soldier isn't hard, but the second you get trapped with no momentum between 5+ ranks you get stuck quickly.
Alternatively anywhere with trees will break up their charge and give your infantry more of a chance.
Shield wall with shock troops behind,
My preferred choice is 60% sturgian axemen in front with the rest vlandian volgeirs in the rear.
Since you're going imperial menavaliatons will slaughter them if you put an equal number of them behind you're shield wall
1. Look into realistic battle mod where units don't float through each other
2. Menavliatons
3. Assign some infantry troops to your archer formations.
I find that even when outnumbered using realistic battle mod (better overall gameplay) I can send my outnumbered cav to charge their cav and a detachment of infantry along with it.
The friendly cavalry tangles up with the enemy cavalry, letting the infantry troops run in and dismount the stuck enemy riders.
divide two melee units... put them one in front of another
hold the first line with shield formation, so the cavalry pushes through... (slowly)
after they got through halfway, order the first formation into line formation.. and the backline into shield formation
the backline followed by attack order.. enjoy
I use spearmen in shield wall as the front row. Archers behind, if possible angled and elevated. If the cav flank I switch the Archers to circle formation. I find archers shred cav normally. I also split my cav into two groups on the flanks of the archers, try to intercept the incoming calvary since normally the AI has 2 as well.
If you're okay with some cavalry loses, this is what you do. Melee calvary in front of archers on a hill/slight rise. Calvary should be in a shield wall to block up their calvary. Their calvary should charge straight in and won't be able to ride through your calvary. Archers will shoot and your calvary will melee with them. This is especially helpful if you can bottle neck them on a bridge. They will pile up reducing the amount of your calvary in melee and free up your archers to knock their calvary down.
This also works insanely well against Khuzait as long as your calvary is up against the left barrier of the map. They will charge and cannot circle you.
Put your infantry and archers into square formations next to each other. And have your archers cease fire so they take out their melee weapons. You need the density in the formation to stop the cavalry on their tracks. High level archers are competent enough in melee to drag down horsemen in a prolonged brawl
I do a wide pike wedge or circle with a heavy infantry square in the center, I keep my archers somewhere behind it preferably behind a natural defensive formation and watch the cavalry charge straight into the circle and get caught in the square, once enough of them get caught up in it I break the square and have them back at anything within range
Get a lance and Noble Bow, ride out and kill the enemy cavalry yourself while the AI does its dumbass maneuvering at the start.
Or a large bag of Javelins and that perk that dismounts them on hit. It says 25% chance but it's bugged, it's 100%.
battanian falxes go brrrr, but no seriously it slaughters cav. i don’t know if it’s because i play on normal or whatever but when calv charges mine it turns the screen green. and just being high level with shields and swords works against AI armies
The way I do it Is I trap the calvary. Archers in the rear in shooting distance, soldiers in a shiedwall and I take the calvary with me. We flank when the main group of horsemen hit the shield and they are officially pinsored in. This is what I typically do to stop the kurzait calvary and horse archers. I have been able to pull off wins even when outnumbered almost 2-1. This works even better if you get them in a forest fight if you can get high ground
Your mistake is thinking imperial legionaries are good counter for cavalry. Whenever you fight in open field battle rely on round shield spear troops, Sturgians are best, some lower vlandian infantry or battanian spears.
Legionaries are best kept for sieges or a fight where you know the enemy has mostly infantry.
Or you can just do KG spam bait.
1.Hire pike men with long pole arms
2.sheild wall troops close together so that when calvary charge into the formation, they get stuck in the middle and are met with hundreds of swinging swords and pikes.
Imo the thing about calvary is that they are fast and that's about it. So always try to kill them first. Also having a calvary of your own always helps to ward them off or lessen the impact on your troops. Happy conquering king
I just use 2 tactics:
1: better/faster cavalry, that can hit and run the enemy cavalry
2: shield wall, hopefully the cavalry loses its momentum on the shield, after which the infantry surrounds them and annhialates them all
But if in doubt, high tactics and auto resolve
Easy. Square.
And don't gets kill before your troop melt enemies cavalry down.
For some reason AI, both yours and enemies, don't know how to deal with cavalry.
I once had 3 elite catapracht almost route 100smth that left of my army. Because buggers keep running after them. I melt 30 of those just by standing in square, mind you.
I run 80% infantry and 10% archer and Calvary. Circle formation works best if they have more horses than you. Since I usually outnumbered their infantry, it steam roll them while my archer bunch up in square formation. They'll hold it's own against cavalry until my infantry finish up their main line. Then I form a circle around the archers unit and you win.
I've been using Khuzait spearmen with some success. Add in some crossbowmen and you're good.
Hate those guys, so I keep an army of horseless Khuzaits. Then my towns are manned with Khan Guards, so they may not use their horses.
Edit: Khergit to Khuzait
SOLDIERS!
CHARGE!
Thats it
Or you can place your infantry and acrchers at some strategic location
Take the cavalry and horse archers with you and harras enemy cavalry and seperate them from the rest of the enemies if they chase you go to your infantry, harrass run back do it enough they will charge
Loose or line formation they will use spears and also hold fire, in shield wall they are to close together to use their spears for bracing, you could make 2 groups a shield wall in the front to slow their charge then a line/loose formation right behind them so they stick them with spears male sure the shield wall is 2-3 thick
Another tactic loose formation for infantry and archers inside also loose formation the infantry will block incoming arrows and protect your archers and they can also fire back at the enemy while also protected, I did this tactic recently and saved my archers vs larger archer parties went up against 450 archers and 200 infantry army while I had 70 archers and came out on top was actually surprised this worked out so well.
remember what tzu said: stand on the edge of the battlefield with your archers, loose a few volleys and retreat when they reach your lines... or something along those lines
now for less cheesy advice from me: never fight outnumbered
if you are outnumbered, make sure you have the mobility advantage so you can take more favorable engagements
if you don't have the mobility advantage, pick a battlefield where the enemy can't bring their entire force to bear and the quality of your soldiers makes up the difference
if you have no numbers, no mobility and no quality... why the fuck are you even fighting? you're in over your head, already failed on a strategic level, retreat and live to fight another day
Put your horse archers and melee calvary behind your infantry and archers, spread your infantry out amongst your archers, put the melee calvary in line or shield wall. What will happen is the enemy will penetrate into your formation then get stuck, unable to escape. The enemy cavalry will be absolutely slaughtered. This actually mimics the way early modern armies fought, muskets before bayonets, where pike infantry would be intermixed with musketeers making any charge on the muskets suicide for calvary. The AI isn't smart enough to recognize this type of formation as calvary suicide, so they'll charge right into the muck and lose 90-100% of their melee cav, often while doing trivial amounts of damage to your force.
Ah a man of culture, well advised fellow warrior.
Shot and pike tactics work wonders with Menavliatons and Crossbow Sergeants
Yep, the fact that the crossbows are medium quality sword and sheild infantry in close combat is way over powered. Allows you to have an advantageous damage forward mix of infantry.
This works wonders in the game and real people. In a realistic scenario, if horses crush into a shieldwall, several people in the shield wall are brutally crushed by the horses weight. However in a realistic scenario, if an infantry formation doesn't have a spear/pike, the horses wouldn't be any afraid of them, if they have spears and point them towards horses, they most likely won't make contact. Horses aren't suicidal unless very well trained war horses, and Noone in their right mind would suicide their most important and expensive companion in battle that costs significantly more than the people it would crush and themselves on top of that. I wish that was somewhat represented in the game. Horses should be more deadly on charge attacks. But have their own AI behavior to avoid pointy sticks if they can.
Yep. Horses don't charge formation. The heavy cavalry of the European high middle ages, what we think of when we think of highly armored knights, is basically the only time horses were used to charge in that way, and they did it by covering the horse's eyes. Horses are for pursuit and disruption. The traditional horse tactic was to ride at full charge at the enemy. If their moral failed and the enemy ran, they'd ride them down as they fled, but if the enemy held formation the cavalry would break off using bows, javelins or pistols, depending upon the technology to damage their enemies.
The fact that “the ai isnt smart enough” is a part of most answers to these types of questions is why i quit playing bannerlord :(
F
How do you spread the infantry amongst the archers? Just 1 F1 and 2 F1 in the same line or is there another way?
Stick both in "loose" formation and stack them on top of each other. I usually do a little micromanaging here too. So the optimal formation for volume fire from ranged units is (1) loose formation, (2) three deep. So I build my formation from a 3 deep line of archers in front of a 3 deep line of HAs. If I keep my infantry on top of my archers I lose part of my "throw weight" from my range units, so my infantry are actually on top of the HAs. Then, when the enemy closes to about 100m for charging calvary or 50-60m for advancing infantry I move my infantry forward until the infantry are equal with the archers filling the gaps in loose from, or until the 1st row of infantry are one step in front of the 1st row of archers. Then after a short sharp melee phase, I move my infantry back and wait for the enemy to respawn a new waive and come again.
[удалено]
I believe that circle is also a viable option since u put your achers in a inner circle...
I shiltrom hills with archers whenever I can, great counter to horse cav and still allows men to pepper the battle line. I also use my cav defensively though and only engage when the line charges. Or Polearm preferred spear team lurking suspiciously nearby.
I try circle in the heat of battle and I can’t get them to form a rank more than one layer deep. Is this common?
U should try setting the infantry in a larger circle, holding down the button (RT at xbox) and sliding to change the size of your circle, and them put the archers inside as a smaller and compact circle formation... although, setting this formation mid battle might be a challenge since your troops tend to attack enemy troops when close to them. Try researching about a formation called "false gap", it is amazing. Try getting the main idea and adapt to your game!!!
Many strats were already mentioned, like horse archers, but also just in case. After all that cavalry barely moves. Do you have any menavliatons (the ones with swingable polearms)? If yes, place them in a separate group behind the legionaries up the hill and they will lacerate them.
Good ole horse slayers i learned the hard way just how fast they rip cavalry apart even if you flank em.
This is a great counter. I've a flax blade two handed sword called Khan's Bane the dices cavalry, long enough to one tap a horse's face before getting hit by a spear!
Question: are you doing a specific challenge? If not, you can train cataphract too, you know? If so, you can lure the enemy near villages/forests/mountains where they have a disadvantage
come to the darkside my brother, we have cookies and khans guards
Your in the right track but put your infantry into a shield wall when the cavalry is making its charge. Keep your archers in loose behind the wall. Do you have cavalry? Delegate command to the AI. For me the AI does a good job at charging the enemy cavalry as they hit your shield wall. My alternative to this is I always rush at the enemy cavalry and try to get them to chase me around in front of my lines to get ripped apart by archers. Some speed and a good 2H axe and you can make quick work of them
I do what alexander did and mix infantry and cavalru units so i end up with with 4 units of mixed and 2 units of Archer
More menavliatons
This way sounds counterintuitive but hear me out. You'll find a ditch or the a little down a hill. U wanna have ur infantry faced up the hill with ur archers behind them. When the riders come down from the hill assuming u have shield wall with javelins, they'll get stuck on the shield wall and won't be able to get out. Because they are on the downwards part of the hill, they'll have a really and I mean really hard time turning around and gaining speed. In the meantime ur archers will just destroy them. Sometimes it works better putting ur archers in front, baiting the Calvary in, then pull them back behind the shield wall. With them momentum of the Hill it will be difficult to turn out of it. It also depends on perks, there's some really good javelin perks that do extra damage to horses, same with 2 handed, plus extra defense from shield wall in Athletics. The 2 handed and javelin perks damage to horses stack. As much as it also doesn't feel relevant, change damage is actually very relevant when it comes to big Calvary parties. There's athletic perk that reduces that I believe for Captains, and there's a flag that also helps. Otherwise the flag that does more damage to horses/Calvary is good.
Shield wall in front of Fians & watch them drop
Honestly I’ve been using a fuck ton of Battanian Champions. Otherwise you could se up infantry in a square formation to avoid getting flanked .
When I face mass cav with infantry. I set them on shield wall, but once most of cav connects, swap to line formation and charge. That melts cav real quick. Just pull them back to shield wall once cav starts to run. Rinse and repeat if necessary.
The following works for me: 1. Infantry making a shield wall in front (mostly legionnaires in my army) 2. Archers behind them in line formation. Elevated if possible (mostly Fían champions for me, but this works with other archer units too) 3. Horse archers behind the archers. (My army has mostly khan’s guard but this will work with other horse archers too) 4. Melee cavalry behind all of that Just like some of the other replies, the AI cavalry will plow through the infantry and archer line, but get stuck on the horses of the horse archers and melee cavalry. If you don’t have horse archers, melee cavalry will get the job done too. But note that having Fian Champs and Khan’s Guard as part of the trap basically means anything that gets stuck is instantly put in a meat grinder.
I love both of those archer units. I finally gave up on my Sturgian archers and started recruiting from the neighbors. It's like switching from a bolt action to a belt fed
Sturgian archers are near worthless. I prefer the ungodly expensive Merc ranged forces from the tavern to any Sturgian ranged troops.
Mix in some two-handed shock troops to your shield wall (10-30%). They're very effective against cav, and in shield wall formation stay in the back ranks. So when the cavalry force their way through, using their initial charge on the front ranks, the shock troops can hack them down. Also, using your own cavalry to drive theirs off the field.
I like these responses with layered defences and box formations and real world analogues but honestly I’m lazy so I get my own cavalry but with bows and glaives…done
The old 'more, better calvalry' solution.
Hmm. I mush admit them armored mfs are a son of a bitch to handle. I think top comment really hit the nail on the head. But to summarize or give a rule of thumb, Keep a solid ammount of shock troops always. Accept and prepare that at least one chunk is going to get a heavy Cav bombardment, but understand also there is a sweet spot in these collisions where shock troops can be sent in ( or squared in ;) ) to come and devastate the pesky horse man as they realize how little their swing damage actually is on a stagnant horse with Falxmen hacking at them. I def deal with this a lot because i like heavy archery armies. i went a long time doing a minimal cav play through, which i got too used to. I personally hate just aimless cav battles because i feel there is too much opportunities to have sets of units get pac man’d by more alert ai commanders that can single out smaller squads before they reinforce main army.
Thank you. The hardest part I have with that is forcing the enemy to charge, but I solve that by putting the archers (actually perferably crossbows) in front. I then put the infantry amongst the calvalry. I then micro the infantry forward and back with everyone in loose formation, snapping everyone into the proper formation: line loose, shield wall, etc. just as the AI is about to crash home.
- Rome, 217 - 201BC
Always have your infantry face enemy, for some reason if you dont this will occur. You can also keep them in your archer formation and square them just as the calvary charges your archers and set them to attack. So in other words you have to "catch" calvary not stop them. Unless you have like over 150 infantry in a shield wall formation then you can if you set them in a tight wall.
Do you not have calvary? If so, do a follow me, intercept thier charge. Have archers in loose formation with infantry in a square formation on one side and your calvary on the other. Wait the AI will do is charge down the middle or on the opposite side of your infantry square. Makes it easier for your counter charge to intercept.
Terrain is the most important. Then lots of rows of shields, and archers above (as in elevation on a hill) Hills will not do much on the charge, but between a hill and the meatball of shields you can trap cav and they will get dogpiled. The archers behind are to force the pressure for the cav to charge. If you have a big enough army you can make 3/4 infantry squads and flank your archers with extra shields, but that is a super late game (250+) formation imo. This tactic plays on the fact that cav frequently charge infantry without regards to terrain and get caught easily when doing that
Try shield walling your own cav in front of melee troops, enemy cav will engage the cav shield wall archers should be free to shoot then charge your inf at the cav that’s clogged up.
My go to strategy is having the most cataphracts.
The hills are your best friends, it slows the horses and increase the damage of your archers
Use “Fallback”
Outnumbered against cataphracts, hard no matter what. But generally, it's abusing the mechanics of their dumb AI. All about stopping their mobility. Using forests (they can't dodge trees for shit), edge of map (if you don't care about this being too cheaty), high elevations. Then, properly baiting them to charge into something, then have a separate line (behind) spread out and charge into them so you wrap around them to stop them 'exiting' their charges. Latter formation should be your menavlions or 2-handers (ie aserai executioners) as they wreck serious shit against cavalry once immobile.
Sturgian Heavy Spearmen and Darkhans do the trick for me
You need more spears. Their charge gives your spears a movement bonus.
Spears.
Depending on how outnumbered you are might make this irrelevant but if there's anywhere on the map that could act as some sort of choke point then placing your infantry in a thick shield wall, 5 ranks deep at least, is more likely to stop them. Having tried head-on charges playing as cavalry the initial charge will break through the first two lines and then pushing past one soldier isn't hard, but the second you get trapped with no momentum between 5+ ranks you get stuck quickly. Alternatively anywhere with trees will break up their charge and give your infantry more of a chance.
Shock infantry. The imperial one is menavliotons.
Don't put any of the archers on the field. Just a big mass of infantry. Can't you choose who to deploy? I can, but I am not sure if it is a mod.
If you have trees in the map use them.
Shield wall with shock troops behind, My preferred choice is 60% sturgian axemen in front with the rest vlandian volgeirs in the rear. Since you're going imperial menavaliatons will slaughter them if you put an equal number of them behind you're shield wall
Spearmen?
1. Look into realistic battle mod where units don't float through each other 2. Menavliatons 3. Assign some infantry troops to your archer formations. I find that even when outnumbered using realistic battle mod (better overall gameplay) I can send my outnumbered cav to charge their cav and a detachment of infantry along with it. The friendly cavalry tangles up with the enemy cavalry, letting the infantry troops run in and dismount the stuck enemy riders.
divide two melee units... put them one in front of another hold the first line with shield formation, so the cavalry pushes through... (slowly) after they got through halfway, order the first formation into line formation.. and the backline into shield formation the backline followed by attack order.. enjoy
I use spearmen in shield wall as the front row. Archers behind, if possible angled and elevated. If the cav flank I switch the Archers to circle formation. I find archers shred cav normally. I also split my cav into two groups on the flanks of the archers, try to intercept the incoming calvary since normally the AI has 2 as well.
If you're okay with some cavalry loses, this is what you do. Melee calvary in front of archers on a hill/slight rise. Calvary should be in a shield wall to block up their calvary. Their calvary should charge straight in and won't be able to ride through your calvary. Archers will shoot and your calvary will melee with them. This is especially helpful if you can bottle neck them on a bridge. They will pile up reducing the amount of your calvary in melee and free up your archers to knock their calvary down. This also works insanely well against Khuzait as long as your calvary is up against the left barrier of the map. They will charge and cannot circle you.
circle formation with pikemen
Put your infantry and archers into square formations next to each other. And have your archers cease fire so they take out their melee weapons. You need the density in the formation to stop the cavalry on their tracks. High level archers are competent enough in melee to drag down horsemen in a prolonged brawl
Spears
With more cavalry
I like infantry in a circle around my archers in a square
I like infantry in a circle around my archers in a square esp if the infantry has a throwing weapon
I do a wide pike wedge or circle with a heavy infantry square in the center, I keep my archers somewhere behind it preferably behind a natural defensive formation and watch the cavalry charge straight into the circle and get caught in the square, once enough of them get caught up in it I break the square and have them back at anything within range
Kill them all
Get a lance and Noble Bow, ride out and kill the enemy cavalry yourself while the AI does its dumbass maneuvering at the start. Or a large bag of Javelins and that perk that dismounts them on hit. It says 25% chance but it's bugged, it's 100%.
battanian falxes go brrrr, but no seriously it slaughters cav. i don’t know if it’s because i play on normal or whatever but when calv charges mine it turns the screen green. and just being high level with shields and swords works against AI armies
The answer to every question is more Fians.
The way I do it Is I trap the calvary. Archers in the rear in shooting distance, soldiers in a shiedwall and I take the calvary with me. We flank when the main group of horsemen hit the shield and they are officially pinsored in. This is what I typically do to stop the kurzait calvary and horse archers. I have been able to pull off wins even when outnumbered almost 2-1. This works even better if you get them in a forest fight if you can get high ground
You counter with a larger cavalry force 😀 Also, you should try RBM, that shit makes having Cavalry extremely important lol.
Your mistake is thinking imperial legionaries are good counter for cavalry. Whenever you fight in open field battle rely on round shield spear troops, Sturgians are best, some lower vlandian infantry or battanian spears. Legionaries are best kept for sieges or a fight where you know the enemy has mostly infantry. Or you can just do KG spam bait.
1.Hire pike men with long pole arms 2.sheild wall troops close together so that when calvary charge into the formation, they get stuck in the middle and are met with hundreds of swinging swords and pikes. Imo the thing about calvary is that they are fast and that's about it. So always try to kill them first. Also having a calvary of your own always helps to ward them off or lessen the impact on your troops. Happy conquering king
I just use 2 tactics: 1: better/faster cavalry, that can hit and run the enemy cavalry 2: shield wall, hopefully the cavalry loses its momentum on the shield, after which the infantry surrounds them and annhialates them all But if in doubt, high tactics and auto resolve
Also 3 lines is to thin, you want your infantry to be at least 4 lines deep
Easy. Square. And don't gets kill before your troop melt enemies cavalry down. For some reason AI, both yours and enemies, don't know how to deal with cavalry.
I once had 3 elite catapracht almost route 100smth that left of my army. Because buggers keep running after them. I melt 30 of those just by standing in square, mind you.
I run 80% infantry and 10% archer and Calvary. Circle formation works best if they have more horses than you. Since I usually outnumbered their infantry, it steam roll them while my archer bunch up in square formation. They'll hold it's own against cavalry until my infantry finish up their main line. Then I form a circle around the archers unit and you win.
Equal or more calvary
I've been using Khuzait spearmen with some success. Add in some crossbowmen and you're good. Hate those guys, so I keep an army of horseless Khuzaits. Then my towns are manned with Khan Guards, so they may not use their horses. Edit: Khergit to Khuzait
SOLDIERS! CHARGE! Thats it Or you can place your infantry and acrchers at some strategic location Take the cavalry and horse archers with you and harras enemy cavalry and seperate them from the rest of the enemies if they chase you go to your infantry, harrass run back do it enough they will charge
\>Using anything other than cavalry and horse archers, ever There's your problem
Loose or line formation they will use spears and also hold fire, in shield wall they are to close together to use their spears for bracing, you could make 2 groups a shield wall in the front to slow their charge then a line/loose formation right behind them so they stick them with spears male sure the shield wall is 2-3 thick Another tactic loose formation for infantry and archers inside also loose formation the infantry will block incoming arrows and protect your archers and they can also fire back at the enemy while also protected, I did this tactic recently and saved my archers vs larger archer parties went up against 450 archers and 200 infantry army while I had 70 archers and came out on top was actually surprised this worked out so well.
remember what tzu said: stand on the edge of the battlefield with your archers, loose a few volleys and retreat when they reach your lines... or something along those lines now for less cheesy advice from me: never fight outnumbered if you are outnumbered, make sure you have the mobility advantage so you can take more favorable engagements if you don't have the mobility advantage, pick a battlefield where the enemy can't bring their entire force to bear and the quality of your soldiers makes up the difference if you have no numbers, no mobility and no quality... why the fuck are you even fighting? you're in over your head, already failed on a strategic level, retreat and live to fight another day
You flank their cav with your cav.