Effective tactics for a redicilously-easy-obtainable-units-only-army

[Zaakjes]

If you just lost your entire army and need to get as many units you can get as fast as possible, sometimes you just got no choice than to build an army consisting of the following units:

Manhunters
Caravan Guards
Mercenary Swordsmen
Mercenary Horsemen
Townsmen
Peasant Women
Farmers
1-tiered faction troops
tavern mercenaries

Imagine that this is your situation, plus you don't have much money left (just about 2500). What units would you gather and what would be your tactical plan in the field battles?

Yeah, if you did guess it, you were right - I'm in that situation right now. :p
I figured that cavalry-only armies don't last very long, so i'm trying to find a better way. Thanks for any help!

 

[Michiko]

Hmm... Well my first choice would be tavern mercs, but that's risky if you're broke like you are.

Volunteer troops from any friendly village would do for me, then try to train them little by little by fighting smaller bandit parties. Let your troops get all the kills (don't personally kill anything) so they get all the experience. Soon you'll end up with a bunch of tier 3 and 4 troops, which could buy you some time to earn more to raise a bigger army.

- edit: Forgot the second part of the question.

As for tactical plans, it depends on the troops/faction. Shouldn't be too hard to figure out if you end up picking up troops that you already know how to use.

If you think you're at a disadvantage, try turtling. Set up a good strong defensive formation and lure the enemy in to attack. Actually they seem to be more likely to attack if they think they have the advantage anyway. If you end up drawing their line to your line, move your archers (or a secondary archer line) to an enfilading fire position. If you don't know what that is, the basic idea is:

>
> vvvvvvv
>
> ^^^^^

Where red is the enemy line, white is your line, and green is your secondary enfilading fire line. Advanced tactical skills will let you include cavalry or infantry units with the secondary, and it effectively becomes a pincer movement, close the pincers manually via the commander HUD, instead of ordering a charge so they all stay in formation. When they reinforce, pull your secondary back to the original formation, then repeat.

Will take some practice to master the choreography, especially if you get carried away and join the battle instead of commanding it from safety. But if done properly, you can minimize your casualties a lot even with inferior troops. That said, it's best to use bread-and-butter troop types if you're leveling emergency troops up. Get archers and defensive infantry (shields and/or spears) in particular as much as possible. You can get cavalry if you want but I say they can weaken your formations a little unless you really want to do some flanking runs with them, which I don't advise.

 

[Xenomion]

Concerning that you have only 2500 denars left, I'd advise to recruit in villages.


Concerning the tactics... Well, NEVER send tier 1 units into battle. They are too easily killable. If you have upgraded your training competence, it will be useful. If not, try to fight in training areas on the map.
Then, here are some choices you have for battles, assuming you are outnumbered:

If you have only infantery: As Hanakoganei said, turtle them... and prey. You could too divert the ennemy by running around them (with your horse of course) to disperse them.
If you have only archery: Well, hang yourself.
If you have only cavalry: Make them in a long, very espaced line, let the attackers charge and when they are close (about to 30 feets), make your cavalry charge. They'll circle the ennemy and make a lot of kills.

Combo Infantry/Archery: Turtle + attack by the archers, don't forget the "Skirmish mode" to make them flee if they are attacked.
Combo Infantry/Cavalry: Take a few cavalry units (light) and disperse the ennemy while your infantry turtle and advance, and your cavalry advance in front of your infantry. When the ennemy is dispersed enough or if your lines come very close, charge.
Combo Cavalry/Archery: Use your archery as a bait and then charge with your cavalry.

All type of units: Turtle your infantry, put your archery behind and on the flank (make two distinct groups). Run with you cavalry to divert the ennemy, and make your lines advance. Make the infantry charge first, followed by your cavalry.


Don't forget to hire manhunters and to capture prisonners to earn money quickly. Or win a few tournaments!


I hope that helped.

 

[Zaakjes]

Well, to explain the situation in a little bit more detail... there's an army of 600 nords about to besiege my town. I will no matter what not allow that . They will need to make a siege tower which will take about 66 hours. I got an army of 55 manhunters, 30 caravan guards, 20 swordsmen, 7 mercenary horsemen, 11 women warriors, about 10 rhodok infantry, few sarranid horses and horse archers and alot of tier 1 farmers and peasant women, just obtained from hunting bandit. So, I guess I'll have to search for replacement for the tier 1's.

I might be able to lure small groups of enemies from my town so I can take them out slowly. Now the only problem is that their troops are waay better than mine. But I'm happy that they at least don't have much cavalry.

Since I don't have any archers, except one hunter from a village :p and the horse archers, Hanakoganei's secondary enfilading fire line can't be used. The swordsmen could be used to lure the enemy, but I don't know about the women warriors since they're not really defensive. I could make a seperate group of them... Also I think I should make two groups of the cavalry, one with the manhunters and the other with the rest, which I could send to the left and to the right. I'm not sure how that should work out. Also I'm not sure who they should attack. I could sandwich the enemy's infantry or send one group to the infantry and the other to the archery line.

So that's all that I could come up with. :p

 

[Xenomion]

In a castle defense, your character can be extremely powerful. One time I killed more than 500 ennemies in one battle!

If you have a two-handed weapon, use it and crush the heads of the invaders.
Concerning the placement... One thing you must know is that the first minute of a castle defense is the most dangerous. The ennemy will attack with his better pack of units. If you manage to take down this pack, the battle is almost won.
This is why you should put the strongest units first. The problem is that the Nords will probably have 7 or 8 I7 units, which is extremely dangerous for you. You'll have to prove your worthy as a warrior against them... If you don't, your army will get crushed.

I think you should just forget the I1 units and the cavalry at the beginning of the fight, and concentrate on your infantry and yourself. If you're strong and well equipped, you can make it.

But I wouldn't want to be you when you'll be in front of 5 Vaetheling...

 

[anoddhermit]

Farmers actually level up to fairly decent crossbow mercenary units. Their tier 2 use light crossbows that are better than the tier 3 rhodok hunting crossbow. Though their skill is fairly low. The tier 3s and 4 are decent as well.

Whether you can level them up before this siege IDK though(I imagine at the time I post this it's over anyway) - depends on your training.

Personally, I'd find some bandits that have lots of prisoners, wipe them out and swap out your weakest units for the best rescued prisoners. 

 

[Michiko]

Being a crazy tactician like I am, I'd personally ride out and fight them outside the castle instead of waiting for them to complete the ladders. If you can whittle their numbers down enough, it could make the actual siege easier later. In fact, they might even just call the whole thing off. There was one situation when I did this where most of the lords had 0/1 troops, but they pressed on anyway with a total of 200+ troops against my army of about 80 tier 4-5 troops and 120+ (lower tier) troops in the castle. I won easily.

 

[Zaakjes]

Being a crazy tactician like I am, I'd personally ride out and fight them outside the castle instead of waiting for them to complete the ladders. If you can whittle their numbers down enough, it could make the actual siege easier later. In fact, they might even just call the whole thing off. There was one situation when I did this where most of the lords had 0/1 troops, but they pressed on anyway with a total of 200+ troops against my army of about 80 tier 4-5 troops and 120+ (lower tier) troops in the castle. I won easily.

Yes, that's what I had been thinking too, so it's what I did and I finally won it too. Dhirim is still mine .

What I did was calling for allied troops so I had a decent army to work with. I actually forgot that you could do that too.. haha. I have made alot of friends previously because I often go to enemy castles and town to rescue prisoners. Now they returned the favor by following me into the fights. We suffered alot of loss though. One mistake I made was that I made the line of infantry too thin. The enemy cavalry just pushed through it and started attacking the archers. I didn't think there would be cavalry on the enemy side anyway, because my enemy is nord. It seemed that they had several foreign lords in the army. Anyway, I was lucky to have both heavy cavalry (memuls, hashamy) and horse archers (iqta'dar, amazons) so the enemy didn't really know what to do... stand close or spread out. I positioned the infantry right on their spawning place, so the battles went pretty quickly too. :p

 

[Michiko]

A strong infantry line wins wars!

Good to know you were able to hold Dhirim lol. For me, it has got to be the most strategic of all towns in the game. Great especially for finances and for launching a military campaign from, but tough as heck to defend especially if the nearby castles have already been taken.

 

[Zaakjes]

Haha, in fact the closest allied castle is Reindi. It's the only connection to allied territory. I may be on a place easy to reach from anywhere, but I'm also an easy target haha. I'm trying to make a garrison of about 350-400 men. I don't have other castles anyway.

 

[Michiko]

Any castles you can take with what you've got right now? One thing I like about older games is that there always sees to be these poorly-defended castles from switching hands so often.

 

[Zaakjes]

I cannot afford too much men. Another castle means alot more loans so I rather have other lords doinbg that at the moment.

 

[azxcvbnm321]

The manhunters are you best bet.  Calvary is very durable unless they get caught in a mass of enemy troops.  Their speed makes them hard to hit with archers and they surprise enemies on all sides.  When engaging, you'll notice that a lot of enemy hits are to the horse so they're not taking all those shots.  In the open battlefield, there's nothing better than cavalry.

Manhunters are very easy to upgrade, even if you don't have lots of training ability in your party.  They also give you prisoner management bonuses and use blunt weapons giving you lots of prisoners that you can sell for money.  These should be the main force of your army in the early to middle stages before you can train up to tier 4 cavalry and above.  They'll always be useful regardless anyway, the only factor being that you can't get enough as easily as sending out a recruiter for 50 recruits. 

A defensive siege is great if you can find a place with only one ladder or a bottleneck somewhere.  Otherwise you'll be overwhelmed quickly.  In Floris, fighting on the open battlefield is the best option for destroying enemy armies.

By the way, the mercs are generally very expensive for what they bring, they're pretty weak overall, but when you can't train up, then you might have no other fast option to get troops.