How the Hell do I defeat Horse archers

[Hides]

Against kuzait army's they are by far most difficult to fight.

My Army consists of 75% archers all high tier.

(forest bandits are the best for range and dps if leadership is low to convert them)
Fian champions are what you want.
Imperial palentine are good also and other high tier archers.
Place on loose formation preferably on a slope facing enemy, if not possible make sure there's good line of sight. They should be fine with little to no casualties.

Usually get a small squad of elite troops to hold off infantry. Depending on your total size of army I recommend 10-20 units. Place them in shield wall and behind archers. Move forward roughly 15 metres in front when enemy infantry are 60 or so metres away.

Horses usually consists of cataphracts and Sturgian raiders. 10 cataphracts and 20 raiders are good. Split them into groups heavy Calvary and light.
Just press F6 when your shield wall makes contact and they should clean up.

Invest in archers in my opinion very low casualties in the army make up and should be able to take on army's 2 times your strength. Also if you want you can split the archers into two groups with F7 and you can have to rows of loose formation to help with horse charges.

Crossbow men seem to lack open ground combat, try not to invest in them.

(Realistic Difficulty)

 

[gq87]

Horse Archers are annoying, but hardly are they invincible. I just form a skirmish line with my ranged troops and the infantry just behind. I set my cav to follow me and keep the rear of my infantry clear and watch as my ranged mow the horse archers down. Archers do best with a clear field of fire and if you have some tier 3+ archers, then you won't have much trouble with horse archers as far as them killing you. The only challenge will be killing them all off once you have the battle won.

 

[pww217]

Lure them in with your own cav and horse archers and let your spears and ranged mow them down.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

AFter wiping out their whole faction as a rogue clan I agree they are harder then others.
What I do is move all ranged units to the back left of the map, as horse archers seem to favor the approach on your left. Have Cav on fallow me and go watch how they approach with out getting to far ahead, as it may make the HA change direction. As they ride into range of range units circle around them and charge the Cav, hopefully you get them stuck in the fire area and they mostly die on the spot, if not then keep chasing them and if you have HA charge them now once the enemy HA aren't in the fire area. Your HA do more damage when stationary so it's best to use them like that whenever possible. Use fallow me to re-collect you Cav, get around the HA and charge them again. If this get out of hand and the rest of the enemy gets to you, just retreat and do it again. As similar tactic works for regular Cav enemies too, though in general they will ride back after approaching so they not very threatening unless a very large number, which Khuzaits sometimes have.

 

[badman]

What I do is put my cav far off to the left flank, with a defensive ring of archers in square with inf in circle surrounding the archers. When the horse archers begin their cantabrian circle, charge the cav to pincer them and you should be able to eventually win since they wont send reinforcements to aid the horse archers.

That organisation sounds beyond the limits of what you can do in the game.

 

[paladinx333]

10% cav, 45% inf, 45% archers

Not enough cav. I find a lance to the chest will stop most horse archers, but you need a lot of cav to chase them effectively. They need to be really good cav too. Tier 4,5,6 Vlandians or Empire. At least one third of your army should be heavy cav.

 

[Stratigo]

I only play Sturgians w/ mostly archers and infantry, and I really struggle here as well (of course, we should as well, the legions of Rome struggled with Baktria). There's no easy solution to horse archers, if you don't want to use cavalry yourself, except to weather the storm of arrows until they run out. Stacking a bunch of archers helps though.

The romans and bactrians never fought. Did you mean Parthia?

 

[kweassa]

1. With around 3 times number of foot archers of similar tier
2. With around similar numbers of melee cavalry to intercept their envelopment maneuvering
3. With mixed troops ranging in the similar numbers if the HAs, using smaller number of cav to first intercept their movement, and then drawing everyone -- both melee infantry and ranged -- to mix into the fray to take them down.

4. With no way to use above 1~3, retreat to fortifications and simply outlast them.

5. If the HAs are controlled by a human player that actively counters all of the above:
(vs 1) Simply retreat and refuse to fight
(vs 2) Retreat to lure out enemy melee cavalry away from the main body of troops, and bring in your own melee cav to overwhelm them
(vs 3) Same as 2
(vs 4) Raid and pillage everything outside of enemy fortifications and go home

...then there's simply no way to win. The best case scenario is stick with 4, and just let them take whatever scraps on the field, and protect the actual people and soldiers. But luckily, the AI in the game are rarely as smart as people.


Currently, of the above options, 4 doesn't work too well, because the actual historic representation of just how inept steppe armies were in sieges that required advanced engineering and mechanics, is not properly represented in the game.

 

[Kharille]

Hi guys, I'm curious but is it possible IV troops will behave in that 'horse archer' tactic by default? Seems its something that resets itself and I have to reassign.

 

[kweassa]

Hi guys, I'm curious but is it possible IV troops will behave in that 'horse archer' tactic by default? Seems its something that resets itself and I have to reassign.

As a matter of fact, it does behave that way.

If you assign javelin armed cavalry and group them to "4," they skirmish in the manner HAs do.

 

[HumanCancer]

with more horse archers

 

[Kharille]

Hm, hope the bannerlord wiki will cover it. Usually spend ages reading and rereading game wikis. Noted my companions don't use their bows when I'm doing bandit lair missions.

 

[Pejot]

I usually put archers in circle and place them in center while my inf and cav or inf splitted into 2 groups are on both sides a little back. HA always tries to surround central formation and in this case they bump into inf/cav, stop and turn back. In this situation my archers in circle shoot them down. HA rarely go to melee and if they can't go around they just turn back and are easy targets while doing it.

Edit:

The formation should look something like this:

_ O _

 

[kweassa]

Ranged circle formation is useless against HA.

Defeating HA with foot archers requires a mass volume of arrows that overwhelm the amount the HAs are shooting. If you put the archers in a circle, only those currently facing the HAs will be shooting, while the other ones are looking at a different direction, all the while being hit with arrows from the rear.

If the circle formation is working, that means your quality and quantity of archers are superior enough to outright defeat HAs, or the number of HAs are too small to be of any consequence.


Put them in split formation, with F2-F2 face enemy command. ALL of the archers fire upon the HA, and the formation rotates to face the HAs no matter where they go. Even if they are riding horses, your archers are the center of the circle rotating, whereas the HAs are traveling at a much larger circumference of a circle. Your archers have no problems at all rotating with the HAs.

 

[Old One-Eye]

Hm, hope the bannerlord wiki will cover it. Usually spend ages reading and rereading game wikis. Noted my companions don't use their bows when I'm doing bandit lair missions.

Press F4 when entering the bandit lair map. All troops are in Hold Fire mode by default.

 

[Pejot]

Ranged circle formation is useless against HA.

Defeating HA with foot archers requires a mass volume of arrows that overwhelm the amount the HAs are shooting. If you put the archers in a circle, only those currently facing the HAs will be shooting, while the other ones are looking at a different direction, all the while being hit with arrows from the rear.

If the circle formation is working, that means your quality and quantity of archers are superior enough to outright defeat HAs, or the number of HAs are too small to be of any consequence.


Put them in split formation, with F2-F2 face enemy command. ALL of the archers fire upon the HA, and the formation rotates to face the HAs no matter where they go. Even if they are riding horses, your archers are the center of the circle rotating, whereas the HAs are traveling at a much larger circumference of a circle. Your archers have no problems at all rotating with the HAs.

In my case ranged circe works only cause I'm able to stop HA movement and make them turn back. This lowers their possibility to shoot and makes them easy target when they turn back (they literally stop or slowly change direction).
Probably this is caused by stupid AI cause it never tries to round the formations i put on the sides. They always focus on center and since they avoid melee they stupidly turn back. Forgot to mention that both formations on the sides are in shieldwall making them almost invulnerable against frontal archers attack.
If they change AI behaviour to better adapt to situation this formation will become useless.

 

[Beau Vine]

My favourite way is to out maneuver them with own horse archers - lower numbers will do, just keep them firing from right flank, dis and re-engage using trees as cover. Staying on their back works too, maybe it's confirmation bias but I did think the AI is aiming better up front than towards the back, might just be an impression.

On some maps you're just f-d - but if there are boulders - they're your friend. The horse archers try to cut it pretty close when circling prey, so they'll often bump into them, stop and can be easily killed. For that, I keep spearmen grouped together with archers - basic infantry stays in group I, any elites with polearms go to II. Annoying that you need to put them in groups after each game load, but there's also two mods for that, I was just afraid that they'll be prone to break saves as hotfixes come in.

With noble shortbow, you should be taking one with most shots as they have a considerate habit of bunching up, but that'll not cut it if they hit critical numbers. You need to find a way to disrupt them.

 

[Tintenkobold]

Hey y'all, so I've spent about 2 hours in custom battles, and have found that although in theory @JustinTime49 tactic should work it just wouldn't. The archers in the middle of the formation would rarely fire, leaving their inf barrier to get slaughtered until they eventually fell. I believe this is down to buggy ai, if anyone else can get it to work plz tell me. I have found relative success with getting my archers in a loose formation behind my inf who are in a circle formation in front of them. The enemy HA will start to ball up near the archers and the archers will actually fire at the Khuzaits. While the HA get distracted with the archers, I charge my inf and they take care of the enemy inf. After they're dealt with I charge them back to the ball of horse archers in a shield wall formation and they slaughter the HA. This grants me victories most the time, but they're almost always pyrrhic as my archers become easy pickings. If anyone else is having different experience with the archers in a square formation plz tell, I am playing on e1.1.0 btw.

It's because inf is in the archers way and sometimes archers block other archers. It's realistic and somehow different than in Warband. Just use a different setup, don't expect arrows to go through your soldiers heads without damage. So they don't shoot at all.

To be honest:AI could be a little bit smarter at that point. Moving some meters out of formation to find a spot to shoot from shouldn't be a problem or big deal. Because they stick in their formation they often block themselves or get blocked by other troops nearby.

Another aspect is, AI often turns slowly. This results in archers never shooting and always turning, getting slaughtered by horse archers. It's the same problem in tournaments. AI turns slowly -> easy win for experienced player. Just circle around them.

 

[Apocal]

Hm, hope the bannerlord wiki will cover it. Usually spend ages reading and rereading game wikis. Noted my companions don't use their bows when I'm doing bandit lair missions.

In hideouts your troops start off on Hold Fire orders. Press F4 and they will fire.

 

[CarbonadiuM]

Love the people who obviously play on easiest and just say, "use your OP hero". When playing on realistic you get 2 shotted so unless you want to watch the rest of the battle under crappy AI this isn't an option.
You should easily be able to have 2:1 ratio of archers to their HA, place archers ahead of infantry (if behind infantry they wont fire) slightly favoring right side, as HA usually come to the left. Often times the HA group will retreat if they suffer a few losses before they can fire more than a few volleys. Place your Cav behind your army and charge if the HA goes behind you, make sure to monitor them, some might go for the enemy main army instead. At this point if you feel confident in the size and your HP, you can try and chase some down, but be aware that the main force of the enemy should be closing in soon if they are on offense. At this point i often pull my cav back and charge the front line once both infantry clash. The HA should be dimished enough to focus your Cav elsewhere, the last thing you want is your CAV tied up chasing stragglers.