battle advice

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been trying more and more squares of late, and been thinking about trying to split infantry into groups as well for more coverage and flexiblity to protect the archer line, but ya splitting the archers really seems to have made the biggest difference overall.
I've thought about doing this a few times, can you elaborate on this?
My thought was to have the two groups of archers in a V with the infantry in teh middle, once the infantry got into the fight the archers would form two lines on either sides [=].
When I join an army and take control of the archers I position the archers on the left flank [= so they can shoot at unshielded side and enemy reinforcements. It turned out numbered battles into victoriesa few times but could also backfire if the reinforcements came for my archers, they can't fall back fast enough.
 
I've always found putting the archers on the left side of my formation worked better I always assumed it had something to do with shields being more open on that side ie firing at the enemies weapon side rather than shield side

On the other hand horse archers seemed to perform better on the right side of my formation I assume something to do with the side they fire their bow from assuming their right handed

My ideal defensive position is high ground to the left where I put my archers slightly to the side and slightly in front of my infantry wall so enemy attacking the wall are more exposed to arrows I often mix in some two handed spearmen as some cavlry always gets through

My horse archers I keep back from the main formation and to the right and only tell them to attack when I am engaged

My cavalry behind the infantry a bit to the left and often send them at any cavalry who attack my archers


Attacking can be more difficult unless you can entice the other side to attack you
If I'm attacking I send a shield wall to the front in the middle soak up some arrows archers back a bit to the left supported by cavalry horse archers back to to the right

If working with allies wait till they attack then support them don't lead the attack unless it's a fient with cavalry and you are ready to retreat as they often will hang back and leave you to fight the entire enemy on your own

Then again I nearly always use the realistic battle mod which gives a better armour might make a difference to tactics
 
I've thought about doing this a few times, can you elaborate on this?
My thought was to have the two groups of archers in a V with the infantry in teh middle, once the infantry got into the fight the archers would form two lines on either sides [=].
When I join an army and take control of the archers I position the archers on the left flank [= so they can shoot at unshielded side and enemy reinforcements. It turned out numbered battles into victoriesa few times but could also backfire if the reinforcements came for my archers, they can't fall back fast enough.
just like how you split your archers, i was thinking about splitting my infantry and just running 2 squares to spread them out a bit more. as you say, the one square does great, but the enemy has a tendency to bypass them with part of his army and cavalry doesnt seem up to the task by itself.

having a 2nd group of shield or regular infantry might let you try and flank units, let one move while the other attacks or defends etc.
 
I've always found putting the archers on the left side of my formation worked better I always assumed it had something to do with shields being more open on that side ie firing at the enemies weapon side rather than shield side

On the other hand horse archers seemed to perform better on the right side of my formation I assume something to do with the side they fire their bow from assuming their right handed

My ideal defensive position is high ground to the left where I put my archers slightly to the side and slightly in front of my infantry wall so enemy attacking the wall are more exposed to arrows I often mix in some two handed spearmen as some cavlry always gets through

My horse archers I keep back from the main formation and to the right and only tell them to attack when I am engaged

My cavalry behind the infantry a bit to the left and often send them at any cavalry who attack my archers


Attacking can be more difficult unless you can entice the other side to attack you
If I'm attacking I send a shield wall to the front in the middle soak up some arrows archers back a bit to the left supported by cavalry horse archers back to to the right

If working with allies wait till they attack then support them don't lead the attack unless it's a fient with cavalry and you are ready to retreat as they often will hang back and leave you to fight the entire enemy on your own

Then again I nearly always use the realistic battle mod which gives a better armour might make a difference to tactics
enemy cav always seems to attack from your left, and think infantry favors it so might be denser. make sense with the horse archers on the other side as well being mobile and ranged and getting less attention from the other units. will have to experiment thx
 
nother picture of my square disintegrating in a storm of bull****. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2470021646

defense does nothing after a certain point in the battle and the force attacking them started off with about 1/4th the strength of my own troops and before the dying started. going back to shield wall.

i must have watched 150 guys get mown down in about 5 seconds this time. thinking about starting a bug report for this...
 
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then the one after i just had them where i wanted i killed 50 men myself, then midway through when he had like 200 men left suddenly the screen wen red and he killed about 400 of my guys before he died.

ya this is stupid. i had him outnumbered, i had archers all around him, i was in a defensive line it just doesnt ****ing matter.

hell i knocked out every cavalry unit and lord he had, i waited until the enemy was out of ammo, reconsolidated not long before it happened and everything. combat is just ****ing broken (sometimes, had many other battles since and they were fine, but some battles you just take it up the backside for no reason it seems). oh and i retried that same battle 4 times with the exact same results despite square, walls and lines being tested.
 
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this is the result of a battle where i had them bottlenecked perfectly, i had them encircled on high ground i had killed all their lords, had 2 inf and 2 ranged groups, and only died about 3/4ths through.

What the ****? i had every advantage from almost start to finish and somehow this pos somehow still manages to get almost 1 to 1?

sry but this game is broken. there really was no better example then this last one for me. i even had fences that were funneling enemy to keep them exactly where i wanted and still my guys just die and in great numbers.

thanks for the responses guys, but im going to open a bug ticket as thats the only explanation.

 
this is the result of a battle where i had them bottlenecked perfectly, i had them encircled on high ground i had killed all their lords, had 2 inf and 2 ranged groups, and only died about 3/4ths through.

What the ****? i had every advantage from almost start to finish and somehow this pos somehow still manages to get almost 1 to 1?

sry but this game is broken. there really was no better example then this last one for me. i even had fences that were funneling enemy to keep them exactly where i wanted and still my guys just die and in great numbers.

thanks for the responses guys, but im going to open a bug ticket as thats the only explanation.


The game spawns battlefield troops loosely based on your Party List iirc, so very often the enemy will spawn its best troops last - which will result in your current battlefield troops getting decimated. And then once your troops are killed, your reinforcements slowly trickle-in, but those get killed too since they are facing like a couple hundred Legionaries or the like. And then even though you were winning, now it becomes more 1:1.

I'm going to be honest; the spawn system for large Army battles is total dogsh*t.

Larger Battles have to be broken up into Rounds. I don't really like playing 500 vs. 500 since it hurts performance a bit for me, but it makes the game far more tolerable since there are less battles you have to deal with the awful spawn system. To be frank they should have more or less capped Armies at around 500. But doing that now would basically equate to remaking the game. Battles where it's 1000 vs 1000 or higher are just extremely drawn out and boil down more to "spawn management" then tactics.

Edit: It would be helpful to see the actual Party Compositions, your army may not be as good as you think.
 
nother picture of my square disintegrating in a storm of bull****. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2470021646
it says you are down at the bottom... once again. the moment you are down, your troops charge and ignore formations.
basically the moment you fall in battle. it goes to simulation mode, based on tactics, and since you are leading and are you down, your troops have 0 tactics. basically i have the habit of saving before a fight and immediately quit to reload the moment i fall in combat

also like Bluko88 said, sometimes enemies put their stronger troops at the end of the list and come in later. the ratio of troops per formation that gets in also could affect that. meaning if a lord has a lot of strong horse archers say, but his army has a small % of horse archers, which means, only a few of his HA are gonna appear early, and they'll just come in late.
 
it says you are down at the bottom... once again. the moment you are down, your troops charge and ignore formations.
basically the moment you fall in battle. it goes to simulation mode, based on tactics, and since you are leading and are you down, your troops have 0 tactics. basically i have the habit of saving before a fight and immediately quit to reload the moment i fall in combat

also like Bluko88 said, sometimes enemies put their stronger troops at the end of the list and come in later. the ratio of troops per formation that gets in also could affect that. meaning if a lord has a lot of strong horse archers say, but his army has a small % of horse archers, which means, only a few of his HA are gonna appear early, and they'll just come in late.
didnt make any difference when i was alive either man.
 
didnt make any difference when i was alive either man.
Mmm I'm starting to think you're right.

I just had Vlandian Knights soundly beat Vlandian Champions in a straight up 50 vs 50 (44 Knights left, 13 Champions retreated), which quite frankly makes no sense. I thought it was odd how easily Vlandian Knights were beating other units their own tier. I was chalking this up to bad luck initially, but now something seems wrong.

Granted my game is modded and I've been tweaking some things myself. But something at the core of the game seems off. Like how the units engage isn't right or something. Granted could be an issue with Enhanced Battle Test as well I suppose. IDK my performance has really tanked lately with the latest hotfix. Inventory, etc. open horribly laggy.

Only other thing I can think of is the latest Nvidia Graphics Driver borked something. Might explain my crashes, but the rest I think not.

My Current Mods:

  • Enhanced Battle Test e1.5.9 (Active)
  • Fast Dialogue (Inactive)
  • RTS Camera e1.5.9 (Active)
  • UnblockDLL1.3 (Active)
  • Traits Mod (Inactive)
  • Realistic Battle Combat Module v 1.5.9 (Active)
  • Realistic Battle AI Module for v1.5.9 (Active)

If I didn't know better I'd say the randomizer for Troops equipment quality might be out of whack (can't remember if it's still active).


If you really think something is amiss OP you might want to try Enhanced Battle Test. Set up a scenario where there would be a clear winner and run through it a few times. Like maybe have 50 Imperial Recruits vs 50 Legionaries (though even unmodded Recruits should never win). Obviously that may be a little too extreme, something like Recruits vs. Trained Infantryman may be more telling. Or whatever you think best represents your current issues.
 
hell i knocked out every cavalry unit and lord he had, i waited until the enemy was out of ammo, reconsolidated not long before it happened and everything. combat is just ****ing broken (sometimes, had many other battles since and they were fine, but some battles you just take it up the backside for no reason it seems). oh and i retried that same battle 4 times with the exact same results despite square, walls and lines being tested.
Just as a casual observation, terrain can have a large effect on battles. The problem is that it is frequently counterintuitive, for example, most forested maps have these pronounced elevation changes that make the defensive formations break up. The net effect means defending on forested maps tends to result in more losses to your infantry. Meanwhile , a flat steppe or desert map is fine for defending against horse archers because the Circle formation works perfectly.
 
If your elite troops are getting slaughtered by Recruits and looters then it sounds like you are doing something wrong.

That said getting to grips with fighting the Khuzait is definitely a tricky deal due to their heavy contingent of horse archers. Best starting advice is to try and bait them into a wooded area or near hilly terrain and then once they're getting bogged down, order the infantry to charge in and typically that clears it out in my experience. Others i believe try to bait them into the are close to the edge of the map as that works too.

But the game doesn't really have a K/D ratio requirement. It just requires a good understanding of tactics and a decent force composition.

So for curiosity's sake. What army are you playing and how does your force roughly look like ? Might be easier to provide you with more accurate advice depending on on how your force looks. Since different armies do require a slightly different approach to get the most out of them. IE playing an Imperial Army is going to be different from say a Sturgian or Battanian one.
Found this post in a search, but I've noticed that Imperial Cataphracts are really good at killing Khuzait horse archers if they can catch them. On big defensive battles vs Khuzaits I'll have my cataphracts in reserve and as the horse archers are about to circle around my infantry I charge them. The momentum prevents them from escaping quickly enough to avoid heavy casualties, and large groups of tightly packed HA aren't very good at Parthian shotting the Cataphracts. The biggest danger is them getting lead into the main Khuzait force, but you can just tell them to move back to their original position to repeat the process. If you flank with a Fine Steel Menavlion or similar weapon you can hack down quick a few of them on the retreat.
 
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