How to fight Khuzaits with composite army?

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What are the best tactics to fight a veteran Khuzait army when you are inferior in Cav numbers, and have a mix of archers and normal infantry? I find those armies very hard to beat on realistic difficulty. I don't have time to even position my troops, as the enemy cavalry comes charging immediately...
 
What are the best tactics to fight a veteran Khuzait army when you are inferior in Cav numbers, and have a mix of archers and normal infantry? I find those armies very hard to beat on realistic difficulty. I don't have time to even position my troops, as the enemy cavalry comes charging immediately...

Put your infantry in the shield wall well ahead of your archers (about 10-20 meters). Tell both your infantry and archers to face direction instead of default face enemy, otherwise they will be turning all the time to face horse archers and not fighting/shooting. Use your cavalry to basically distract enemy horse archers so that they don't shoot at your archers. Put your cavalry behind your archers, tell them to shield wall and once enemy horse archers start circling, tell your cavalry to charge. They will keep their shields up and that will help them against arrows when they chase enemy horse archers. Javelin cavalry like Sturgian hardened brigands and raiders are excellent against horse archers.

Watch for enemy infantry and archers, Khuzaits armies always have some. Use your infantry to deal with them. Their foot archers can sometimes do more damage then their horse arches if you let them act freely.

You can also detach small groups of infantry and put them in the shieldwal on the flanks or rear of your archers facing outwards to protect your archers. Although usually it's not necessary.

Another thing you can do is mix your archers with few pikemen or 2H to deal with enemy lancers or command small detachment of them manually. Or you can protect your archers from lancers yourself, there are usually only couple of them.
 
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The Key to killing Horse archers is to understand there Shooting angles, They Cannot shoot to the Right!

- Always have a hill or edge of the map on your left this means they cannot circle you while shooting you

- because the cannot shoot right the will always attack your left flank

- when attacking them use a mendo / long two handed weapon stay to their right and start slashing.

- try to run the enemy horse archers in a corner or pinched between your cav and infantry. getting them to stop is a lethal blow .

-Do not concern yourself with lancers only care about the Horse archers and archers (if archers have a firing angle). Most of the time lancers will chase you but since you are chasing horse archers they rarely have any impact.
 
What are the best tactics to fight a veteran Khuzait army when you are inferior in Cav numbers, and have a mix of archers and normal infantry? I find those armies very hard to beat on realistic difficulty. I don't have time to even position my troops, as the enemy cavalry comes charging immediately...

1. Use your own cavalry to counter-charge their horse archers right as they being to break to the side to begin their circle. It will cause them to scatter.
2. Anchor your left flank on terrain; buildings and fences work great, large boulders, streams, etc. Set your archers and infantry into loose formation.
3. Pull your cavalry back after a bit and reform. Let your own archers do the grim work they can, while protecting them from Khuzait lancers with your infantry. Don't worry about loose formation getting hurt by lancers; it is better than shieldwall against cavalry due to weapon and unit collision.
4. Repeat the counter-charge against the circle if it threatens to form up again. You have to lead your cavalry yourself for this or be exceptionally good at directing units via F1 movement commands. Using the F3 charge command will make your own cavalry scatter and do dumb **** like death ride into infantry.

Disrupting the circle is key or else your archers will keep turning and not spend time engaging. Horse archers actually have terrible accuracy but tight formations (like shieldwall) help them because they can't miss when it is a solid mass of bodies. Forcing them to fire individually, at individual targets, makes them far less effective.

If you find yourself consistently fighting on terrain with no real terrain to anchor your force, you need to get cavalry of your own though. Fighting Khuzaits on the steppes with infantry blocks is not a long-term winning proposition, unless you can somehow bring so much superiority in numbers that your archers shoot their horses from under them every time.

Alternatively: just stock up on Fian Champions.
 
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