Aserai strategy

[Dude760]

Hi there, i am mid game in my campaign, siding with the Aserai. Playing as a lance / horse archer atm.

I am curious about the strategy used by other players with the aserai troops.

I run an army of 150 soldiers. 25 Faris, 30 heavy horse archers, 30 master archers, 25 palace guards and a mix of Aserai inf.

Most of the time i let my faris cav follow me while we try to kill as much enemy melee and ranged cav as possible. In the meantime i let my inf , archers and horse archers close in using advance. I try to lure the enemy front line and their archers fire towards the shield wall, and in the same time position my horse archers on their flank or back while i ride down their archer backline with my Faris group. Faris javs, inf javs, palace guard axes and horse archer and master archer arrows nuke the enemy from front / side / back. I prep my faris, inf, and palace guards to charge just before the frontline collapses. They usualy break fast with the palace guards chopping heads fast front right behind my shield wall or from a flank position (they need swing space) I mop up using faris / horse archers.

Loving the aserai, but damn so much micro management. Does anyone had tips to play them and to make the aserai battles less micro heavy? F6 is rather tricky :-/

I also tend to struggle against Vlandia because of their knights couched lances and sharpshooters (killing my Faris rather fast...)

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

No you're right to micro them, it's very important IMO in bannerlord.
I would do a as you, but use even more HA and Archers! In fact I would leave Infantry as garrison filler once I had more ranged units, or just the low tier units to use as a disposable shield for foot archers.

Using Jav Cav on fallow me is Pro! I would position archer and HA slightly apart at the rear of the map so they slightly converge fire on the center where enemy approaches and kite all mounted units into their fire range and kill with player and Jav cav. I the Cav has shields you can put them in front of stationary HA in SW formation too, it's pretty good defense, basically enemy archer will shoot at them while you HA/archers shoot the enemy archers and obviously you come out ahead in that exchange. Of course the noble Jav cav may be too good to subject to this...

As the enemy get closer I would move the HA formation more to their side, then to the rear to **** over any shield wall units remaining in enemies, putting archers on advance should make them back up, but be careful if the enemy is too close already (they may melee instead )

 

[Dude760]

No you're right to micro them, it's very important IMO in bannerlord.
I would do a as you, but use even more HA and Archers! In fact I would leave Infantry as garrison filler once I had more ranged units, or just the low tier units to use as a disposable shield for foot archers.

Using Jav Cav on fallow me is Pro! I would position archer and HA slightly apart at the rear of the map so they slightly converge fire on the center where enemy approaches and kite all mounted units into their fire range and kill with player and Jav cav. I the Cav has shields you can put them in front of stationary HA in SW formation too, it's pretty good defense, basically enemy archer will shoot at them while you HA/archers shoot the enemy archers and obviously you come out ahead in that exchange. Of course the noble Jav cav may be too good to subject to this...

As the enemy get closer I would move the HA formation more to their side, then to the rear to **** over any shield wall units remaining in enemies, putting archers on advance should make them back up, but be careful if the enemy is too close already (they may melee instead )

Thanks for the advice, i started playing Vlandia and then imperial army compositions, so the big inf frontline is a habit, but i like yor suggestion to steer away from that bulky front and go heavy ranged. It’s crazy how many kills those horse archers make (they usually get the bigest kill score). I recentely noticed the high increase of accuracy on those horse archers when stationary. If i would double their numbers i’ll get a machine gun. Good idea for the shielded cav wall in front of the MA. Thus could help a lot against nasty crossbow sharpshooters. Whats your thought on the palace guards? I love them so much (looks-skill-speed) but they need so much babysitting.

Do you prefer follow or charge on the Faris?

Any Vlandia specific tips?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

Whats your thought on the palace guards?

I feel infantry without shields are too vulnerable and hard to use. They're kind of "win-more" where if you're in a position to use them effectivly…. you've pretty much won already.

Do you prefer follow or charge on the Faris?

Fallow always for cav, I only charge in short burst and then quickly put them back on fallow and only in situations like when enemy cav or HA is close to my side of field and infantry/ranged is far away. Having them in SW infront of HA/ranged to block some of the cavalry attack, then charge them to finish off the cav, but you have to always baby sit them of somebody rides way of into enemy infantry to die. You can charge them in SW too and they go a bit slower but hold shields up more, it may help them land hits to be going slower too, but hard to tell. I'll bring cav on fallow me around to attack the archers from the side or back, but as usual it's a spike attack to make the turn around and stop shooting at my ranged of a few moments, and they go right back on fallow me. I'l never do a normal charge until the enemy is basically finished though, because IMO cav always gets killed.

Any Vlandia specific tips?

Try to get their cav to chase you into firing range, cav SW infront of ranged units works good for them, vlandian cav is a little more dangerous in open back and forth fighting (longer spears? shorter spears? not sure why)then other cav, but if you keep them more face to face and stop them with you character they with die pretty fast, they're not very bulky. Vlandian Xbows are their biggest strength and they can kill your units easier then other ranged units. There is usually a time during their approach where they go ahead of the infantry, if you can fire on them at this time (meaning you ranged is pointed at them and not distracted by cav)it's a big help and they will pull back to line up and take a lot of damage, I also like to ride my character behind them and make them turn or slow down so they don't all line up to shoot at my ranged at once. They're really dangerous luckily they usually don't have too many of the tier 4-5 xbow. Low tier vlandian infantry die faster then others to ranged attacks, I think they have a shield problem.

Usually once Vlandian has lost a few battles they become much easier as they have less high tier units, kinda true for all factions but it makes a big difference IMO for aserai and Vlandia as they're high tier units are much better then the lower ones.

 

[Irfan Ross]

With Aserai, I only use horse archers, it is fun. I am playing as Aserai vassal, I only take command for horse archers (I myself use Javelins, long Scimitar and mamluk lance) and leave rest for other commanders. I know they can manage troops better than me. I do hit and run. So far we have conquered Southern empire completely.

 

[murtega]

Micro managing an army during battles is fun and core of the game but if you want to eventually win, I agree that horse archers are the way to go. I used to have epic battles until I read here somewhere from a dev (I think) that AI gets horses for free so I decided it should apply to me as well. Crafted 2 pointy sticks, traded them for 100 Aserai horses and now battles are not going very well for AI. Sometimes I don't even move them around and they annihilate the enemy entirely while staying where they were deployed. Killed the fun? Kinda. But campaigning became much more rewarding. I'll go back to good old army composition when Khuzaits get entirely destroyed so there won't be anyone around spamming 50 horsemen in 2 days after getting defeated.

 

[Apocal]

Hi there, i am mid game in my campaign, siding with the Aserai. Playing as a lance / horse archer atm.

I am curious about the strategy used by other players with the aserai troops.

I run an army of 150 soldiers. 25 Faris, 30 heavy horse archers, 30 master archers, 25 palace guards and a mix of Aserai inf.

Most of the time i let my faris cav follow me while we try to kill as much enemy melee and ranged cav as possible. In the meantime i let my inf , archers and horse archers close in using advance. I try to lure the enemy front line and their archers fire towards the shield wall, and in the same time position my horse archers on their flank or back while i ride down their archer backline with my Faris group. Faris javs, inf javs, palace guard axes and horse archer and master archer arrows nuke the enemy from front / side / back. I prep my faris, inf, and palace guards to charge just before the frontline collapses. They usualy break fast with the palace guards chopping heads fast front right behind my shield wall or from a flank position (they need swing space) I mop up using faris / horse archers.

Loving the aserai, but damn so much micro management. Does anyone had tips to play them and to make the aserai battles less micro heavy? F6 is rather tricky :-/

I also tend to struggle against Vlandia because of their knights couched lances and sharpshooters (killing my Faris rather fast...)

****, I had this thing I put on Reddit a few months back, let me see if I can find it.

edit: Here.
This is if you don't just want to pure cheese with nothing but mameluke horse archers. It was written almost a year ago but at a quick glance it should still be valid in the current game.
...
The way that works for me is leaning into the idea that Tribal troop tree isn't capable of much more than holding a line, while the Mameluke and Noble lines handle the decisive action.

Their shock infantry is good, yeah, but requires excessive micro-management to keep them from being arrow fodder and get good results. The easier way to handle them, rather than having to waste clicks and brain-cycles meticulously keeping them behind the shieldwall of tribal infantry, is to use the mounted Mamelukes to harass and distract those archers instead. Bring the shieldwall forward a bit, just enough to draw the enemy in, then commit the Mameluke axes to one flank or the other -- never the center. Their axes will get caught in the moshpit too often if they swing and overhead attacks miss out on the ability to cleave through multiple enemies, which is honestly one of the most bonkers things about Mamuluke axemen. Posted out on one flank, they'll not only get many-on-few engagements repeatedly, but have enough space to get in big swings on guys facing the other way.

Alternatively, if you can acquire enough Faris (although Haramis, the T4 desert bandit, work well enough) you can use that as your flanking force. But it is important that you somewhat control their release of the javelins. They don't have very many of them, so you want them to count. If you only have a few Haramis/Faris, you'll want to lead them yourself, on hold fire orders, until you can get a decisive flank then slow to a trot and get them to throw their javelins. A javelin's accuracy is immense in AI once they're moving slow and you can literally watch something like 10 or 15 Aserai-flavored javcav crumple a rank of enemies in front of them with a good release. The best part is that Faris (maybe only the high-tier ones, I don't recall off the top of my head) have javelins that one-shot almost anything with even a modest speed bonus.

 

[KingEroc1st]

damn so much micro management

that's not a lot of micro management, it only gets more advanced from there. and once you are dealing with large army battles and reinforcements. you have to manage more to avoid pointless spawn deaths.

try the RTS mod. it allows you to pause game and zoom out

however, if you just want an easier time managing things. the only option is to have a more simplified and streamlined troop composition. cavalry tends to need the most micro so they are the first to go. then maybe the palace guards since they require shields. or you can keep a few of them in the infantry line and always keep the shield wall deep enough to cover their asses. and never charge. frankly i reserve the charge command for when the enemy has routed. for other times, i simply click move. i tell my troops to occupy the space currently held by the enemy, and they march forward and start engaging at close, but never go past the line or lose formation. (i found mixing 2h shock troops in the shield wall is also fantastic vs cavalry that charge into our formation and get stuck, they immediately get chopped down by 2h guys that aren't holding shields). ranged units are all effective, and function best when standing still so position your horse archers and archers in decent spots and leave them there or just have one of the 2 types to further simplify things,

another way is to fight battles slightly differently by forcing your opponent to attack you EVERY TIME (i found if you shoot at the enemy formation with enough arrows they'll forget all logic and recklessly charge you with everything, having a few horse archers can speed up the process) and forming your ranks around the spawn. this way your reinforcements will spawn on top of you making it no longer something you have to worry about, and the enemy has to reach you. giving you time and space to work. for example, when they are marching towards you, have your cavalry go from the side and distract their archers from behind. this way. instead of coming as a cohesive mass, their infantry will charge your frontlines and their archers are standing still, too far to actually hit your frontlines, or be defended by the infantry from horsemen.