So I've been playing my early game on a newish character as a mercenary for Southern Empire, they gave me like a 270 denar merc contract while at war with Khuzait and Aserai. Bonus is that fighting tons of Aserai and Khuzait is giving me many, many horses.
It's been a learning experience fighting Khuzait more frequently and early on in the game. I used to just camp in the left corner with fians. This game I'm trying to be more legit strategery. The new situation with more appropriate world : battle map connection actually changes some things and is pretty helpful for luring or chasing parties into better terrain for you, which makes it less painful not just cheesing them.
The biggest nuisance with Khuzait is you almost always lose some elite cavalry chasing down like 5 Khan's Guards that will almost never route after you've already won the engagement effectively.
The second biggest nuisance is that you can't expect friendly allies to be any help at all against horse archers. Easy way to take tons of losses or even lose a battle - made this mistake a few times in previous games. Horse archers are like psychological warfare against other AI. Don't join them unless the odds are overwhelming in your favor, and even then often it's best you use autoresolve.
One strategy that's been effective for me at taking fewer losses and smashing more horse archers is to send cav after horse archers while they're firing on shield infantry. Horse archer AI is overpowered(relative to other AI) but at least it's still predictable.
Basically you want infantry as bait(their main role in field battles in Bannerlord) and in a front left position, archers ready to fire back right, and cav on the far left behind both and spread out. Depending on elevation, you can have archers behind infantry.
Horse archers charge, targeting shield infantry who will absorb the worst of it. While they charge, your archers get increased damage on them from their momentum, and will land more hits prior to their strafing nonsense. Longer range archers/crossbows are superior for this reason - they can hit horse archers more while they're charging in a group. I'm using Imperial Crossbowmen, not ideal but they get the job done and they're sturdy. While horse archers charge, your cavalry should charge them - getting the timing right for full momentum cav charging into full momentum horse archers can result in lots of damage but you have to get a feel for it. They will have their bows out, your cav will have melee vs. bow during initial contact, and get bonus damage from momentum as well. This is also stops most of them from strafing.
Horse archers will typically retreat, and you want your cav not to chase them too far. If they're out of range of your archer's firing range, pull them back. Depending on how long you think the battle will be, sometimes it's also good to hold fire with archers while the retreating horse archers are at too long range to bother.
Rinse repeat. Terrain that helps: Villages, mountainous terrain, heavy forest... basically anything that slows down or funnels horse archers so that foot archers can deal more damage to them and they can't escape cav as quickly. If you see Khuzait raiding villages this is often easy targets.
Not sure if this is IDEAL, but I've managed to use only empire troops to defeat Khuzaits with relatively few losses this way. Almost all my losses are Cav but you get plenty of horses as loot to get more of them and often you can find parties with prisoners to replenish. The Khuzait AI typically sends horse archers ahead of their inf/archers/cav, so you have a fair number of short engagements to whittle their horse archers down prior to infantry/archer/cav being involved at all. Their infantry and archers are typically never an issue since they field so many cav and horse archers. They would probably be better off with almost all cav and horse archers since they end up splitting their troops up so much, so even when they outnumber you often it's like you outnumber them because you killed a bunch of their horse archers and cav before they were a factor at all.
I am playing Battania with Nomadic Traditions, Sweeping Wind, Day Traveler, Pathfinder. So my map speed is pretty good which is important for Khuzait smashing. I'll eventually get Forced March and Tracker too.
Anyway, wondering if anyone else has anti-Khuzait strategies/tips.
It's been a learning experience fighting Khuzait more frequently and early on in the game. I used to just camp in the left corner with fians. This game I'm trying to be more legit strategery. The new situation with more appropriate world : battle map connection actually changes some things and is pretty helpful for luring or chasing parties into better terrain for you, which makes it less painful not just cheesing them.
The biggest nuisance with Khuzait is you almost always lose some elite cavalry chasing down like 5 Khan's Guards that will almost never route after you've already won the engagement effectively.
The second biggest nuisance is that you can't expect friendly allies to be any help at all against horse archers. Easy way to take tons of losses or even lose a battle - made this mistake a few times in previous games. Horse archers are like psychological warfare against other AI. Don't join them unless the odds are overwhelming in your favor, and even then often it's best you use autoresolve.
One strategy that's been effective for me at taking fewer losses and smashing more horse archers is to send cav after horse archers while they're firing on shield infantry. Horse archer AI is overpowered(relative to other AI) but at least it's still predictable.
Basically you want infantry as bait(their main role in field battles in Bannerlord) and in a front left position, archers ready to fire back right, and cav on the far left behind both and spread out. Depending on elevation, you can have archers behind infantry.
Horse archers charge, targeting shield infantry who will absorb the worst of it. While they charge, your archers get increased damage on them from their momentum, and will land more hits prior to their strafing nonsense. Longer range archers/crossbows are superior for this reason - they can hit horse archers more while they're charging in a group. I'm using Imperial Crossbowmen, not ideal but they get the job done and they're sturdy. While horse archers charge, your cavalry should charge them - getting the timing right for full momentum cav charging into full momentum horse archers can result in lots of damage but you have to get a feel for it. They will have their bows out, your cav will have melee vs. bow during initial contact, and get bonus damage from momentum as well. This is also stops most of them from strafing.
Horse archers will typically retreat, and you want your cav not to chase them too far. If they're out of range of your archer's firing range, pull them back. Depending on how long you think the battle will be, sometimes it's also good to hold fire with archers while the retreating horse archers are at too long range to bother.
Rinse repeat. Terrain that helps: Villages, mountainous terrain, heavy forest... basically anything that slows down or funnels horse archers so that foot archers can deal more damage to them and they can't escape cav as quickly. If you see Khuzait raiding villages this is often easy targets.
Not sure if this is IDEAL, but I've managed to use only empire troops to defeat Khuzaits with relatively few losses this way. Almost all my losses are Cav but you get plenty of horses as loot to get more of them and often you can find parties with prisoners to replenish. The Khuzait AI typically sends horse archers ahead of their inf/archers/cav, so you have a fair number of short engagements to whittle their horse archers down prior to infantry/archer/cav being involved at all. Their infantry and archers are typically never an issue since they field so many cav and horse archers. They would probably be better off with almost all cav and horse archers since they end up splitting their troops up so much, so even when they outnumber you often it's like you outnumber them because you killed a bunch of their horse archers and cav before they were a factor at all.
I am playing Battania with Nomadic Traditions, Sweeping Wind, Day Traveler, Pathfinder. So my map speed is pretty good which is important for Khuzait smashing. I'll eventually get Forced March and Tracker too.
Anyway, wondering if anyone else has anti-Khuzait strategies/tips.
Last edited:
