Hey y'all. I've been in the Custom battles trying to find the perfect strategy to beat mostly horse archer builds, and have come up mostly empty handed. The composition of my army is usually 10% cav, 45% inf, 45% archers. If this is a bad mix let me know, but I've been using it against mostly horse archer builds with 10-20% inf to no success. I've even been continuously cranking the amount of horse archers down so that I outnumber them by around 100/70, still no success. I try all the formations, but find that the archers are just not able to put up enough kills in their circle formation, while infantry sit in their square and get absolutely pummeled before the enemy infantry even arrives. Can anybody help a man out.
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How the Hell do I defeat Horse archers
- Thread starter howler4695
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Archers are the way to go normally, they mow down horses and riders alike. Loose formation works well, though quite not enough due to AI aimbot, but still, reduces the losses a bit. Try to keep them facing the direction of the horse archers, so they don't divert fire on the infantry.
If your infantry gets pounded from behind, get them in circle, or shieldwall facing the enemy, if the ennemy infantry is not too threatening.
I guess archers in circle is not a good idea, they'll make a big target and they all won't be able to fire back.
That's generally the way I go vs Kuzaits, works reasonably well if the horse archers aren't running everywhere around, also depend of your archers quality.
Oh and in case you're not aware, never ever send your cavalry against them, they'll get mown in no time
If your infantry gets pounded from behind, get them in circle, or shieldwall facing the enemy, if the ennemy infantry is not too threatening.
I guess archers in circle is not a good idea, they'll make a big target and they all won't be able to fire back.
That's generally the way I go vs Kuzaits, works reasonably well if the horse archers aren't running everywhere around, also depend of your archers quality.
Oh and in case you're not aware, never ever send your cavalry against them, they'll get mown in no time
Most of the time the AI loves to send their ranged skirmishers alone to poke at you, but you can lead your own sizeable force of heavy cavalry to either drive them away, or with enough striking power, to kill them. If you can afford to, and the enemies play passively, you want to field a hard-hitting, durable, cavalry strike force and try to eliminate as many horse archers trying to approach your forces before the melee engagement begins and even more so when melee begins and your forces don't have the option to focus on horse archers. Try to take them by surprise and close distance as fast as possible, and if your troops get killed chasing, don't chase. They typically have worse gear, armour and striking power than your dedicated cavalry, so you should win most engagements and drive them off if you play right, and catch them before they set up. Cavalry, especially if you are cavalry commander, is the most reliable way to shut down horse archers, of you're willing to focus your attention on them, and your archers are dealing with something else.
That is assuming that you want to take initiative during the engagement and push into enemy forces, at which point it's better for cavalry to drive them off or keep them occupied during the main melee, because your archers will be shooting at something else. Archers on horseback almost always shoot worse than archers who are still, so get a sizeable force of archers and you can deter horse archers by outshooting them.
Infantry don't stand a chance. Your two options against horse archers are cavalry if you want to seek, destroy, enable your forces during pitched chaotic melee (where your archers should be focusing on something else) and single them out (it's better if you personally command cavalry as it's a complex task to screen horse archers), or archers if you want to deter and deny them area.
That is assuming that you want to take initiative during the engagement and push into enemy forces, at which point it's better for cavalry to drive them off or keep them occupied during the main melee, because your archers will be shooting at something else. Archers on horseback almost always shoot worse than archers who are still, so get a sizeable force of archers and you can deter horse archers by outshooting them.
Infantry don't stand a chance. Your two options against horse archers are cavalry if you want to seek, destroy, enable your forces during pitched chaotic melee (where your archers should be focusing on something else) and single them out (it's better if you personally command cavalry as it's a complex task to screen horse archers), or archers if you want to deter and deny them area.
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If you are the aggressor in the campaign, just know that while they take a defensive position, the horse archers will always go at you.
What I do is put my cav far off to the left flank, with a defensive ring of archers in square with inf in circle surrounding the archers. When the horse archers begin their cantabrian circle, charge the cav to pincer them and you should be able to eventually win since they wont send reinforcements to aid the horse archers.
What I do is put my cav far off to the left flank, with a defensive ring of archers in square with inf in circle surrounding the archers. When the horse archers begin their cantabrian circle, charge the cav to pincer them and you should be able to eventually win since they wont send reinforcements to aid the horse archers.
How many horse archers? If it's 20 or less just ride up to them and hack them to pieces with a polesword or glaive. If you put you cav on follow me and try to out circle the HAs they will be trying to get your cav and slowing down and it's easy to get aside them and cleave them. You can get like 300 damage a hit and just mow them down since they try to stay in a formation .
If it's like a massive amount..... which so far I always see very mixed forces... I suppose a equal amount of archers would do okay if they're not being distracted by enemy inf or cav.
If it's like a massive amount..... which so far I always see very mixed forces... I suppose a equal amount of archers would do okay if they're not being distracted by enemy inf or cav.
This is great advice, this is the AI HA and cav weakness, they always separate early.
Hey y'all, so I've spent about 2 hours in custom battles, and have found that although in theory @JustinTime49 tactic should work it just wouldn't. The archers in the middle of the formation would rarely fire, leaving their inf barrier to get slaughtered until they eventually fell. I believe this is down to buggy ai, if anyone else can get it to work plz tell me. I have found relative success with getting my archers in a loose formation behind my inf who are in a circle formation in front of them. The enemy HA will start to ball up near the archers and the archers will actually fire at the Khuzaits. While the HA get distracted with the archers, I charge my inf and they take care of the enemy inf. After they're dealt with I charge them back to the ball of horse archers in a shield wall formation and they slaughter the HA. This grants me victories most the time, but they're almost always pyrrhic as my archers become easy pickings. If anyone else is having different experience with the archers in a square formation plz tell, I am playing on e1.1.0 btw.
bantad87
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I only play Sturgians w/ mostly archers and infantry, and I really struggle here as well (of course, we should as well, the legions of Rome struggled with Baktria). There's no easy solution to horse archers, if you don't want to use cavalry yourself, except to weather the storm of arrows until they run out. Stacking a bunch of archers helps though.
Me personally, I use horse archers to defeat horse archers. Then again my three go to factions are Aserai, Khurziat and Imperial, all of which have horse archers. Oh and I would bet Battanian archers could do a number on horse archers because crazy as it sounds, they are the only faction I struggle with when using my horse archers. Hell they are the only faction I struggle with period.
Sturgia on the other hand, feels kind of weak but then again so do the Aserai.
Sturgia on the other hand, feels kind of weak but then again so do the Aserai.
Custom battles are extremely broken and shouldn't be relied on for testing. The unit balance is way off, with horse archer units in those custom battles being tier 4 or 5 units so no matter what they will shred any formation regardless of tactics.
In the campaign it DOES work because the armies are more varied, you don't rely on the archers to shoot most of the time, but rather your cavalry to chase down the HA, which would work so long as your cav force is strong enough.
I run a HA army (Mamluke) so I can tell you what makes me lose the most in the campaign. I don't run many custom battles.
Usually if an opposing army has a good range of mid-tier cavalry they will run interception on my horsearchers. If they are able to effectively tie up all my HA then I can't effectively rain arrows on their infantry core and disorganize them enough to use my cavalry charges to break their line.
Terrain is also huge. Wooded/mountain maps wreck my life. But yeah if you face me on an open plain I'm going to have a massive advantage.
Usually if an opposing army has a good range of mid-tier cavalry they will run interception on my horsearchers. If they are able to effectively tie up all my HA then I can't effectively rain arrows on their infantry core and disorganize them enough to use my cavalry charges to break their line.
Terrain is also huge. Wooded/mountain maps wreck my life. But yeah if you face me on an open plain I'm going to have a massive advantage.
SaxonDash
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Infantry are the prey of horse archers. So at the start of the battle put your infantry in square or circle formation, then engage the horse archers with your cavalry, and with your foot archers. Once the horse archers are tied up and busy dealing with the units best equipped to deal with them, you can reform and advance your infantry.
heard
fermionic_friend
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As someone who frequently runs HAs exclusively, tying them up is the key to defeating them. HA (while in motion) are nowhere near as accurate as regular archers, and make up for it with numbers and agility. Bringing them to a halt by surrounding them with inf/cav is probably the only really effective way to stop them from mass picking you off. This has less to do with them being weak in melee (which is often not even the case) and more with the fact that if you don't bring them to a stop, you have effectively no way to kill them outside of using your own archers.
All of that said, I was just thinking during a battle earlier that horse archers make some of the issues with combat AI and the ineffectiveness of formations, as well as the need for more nuanced shields. Most campaign AI will rarely, if ever, circle up infantry, and even when they do, they have nothing to do except sit their with shields and wait for the HAs to run out of arrows.
I think there are two sets of actions that need to be considered to balance horse archers in the game, neither of which involve adjusting HA stats.
- First, horse archer units need to be more expensive. Much more expensive. Bannerlord has already taken a step in the right direction with requiring you to actually own a horse for each unit you create, but this design choice needs to be expanded upon. Horses should absolutely require food. This could be done by carrying feed around like you do now for your troops, but I would like to see this done in addition to some sort of grazing mechanic, requiring you to spend some time feeding your horses on a regular basis.
In addition, I think there should be a far greater investment required to train horse archers. Mounted archery is very difficult, and while I can't personally attest to this fact, there are any number of people who will tell you just that on the internet. They should be expensive to train as a result, in terms of both money and time. I would also add that the accuracy penalty on horseback should be markedly increased to reflect this.
- Second, I would propose an idea to help infantry troops (both melee and archer) deal with both horse archers and calvary in general. The effectiveness of spears and pikes against calvary is something that has already been discussed elsewhere on the forum, so I won't delve into that specifically, but suffice it to say that not only am I wholeheartedly for these ideas, I think they should be taken a step further. Wooden spikes, pounded into the ground, were an anti-calvary weapon used all around the world at multiple times throughout history to stop calvary charges from destroying infantry. While they would indeed deal massive, almost universally fatal damage to a charging horse, their real use was stopping horses from charging into them in the first place. A horse is not stupid. It is fully aware that if it runs full speed into a wall of spikes, it will die. As a result, a horse would, upon realizing the danger ahead, do it's best to come to a complete stop instantly. You can imagine the affect this had on the horses rider. This effect applies to spears and lances as well. That said, I think the ability for infantry troops to be able to deploy stakes to prevent horse charges would not only massively balance infantry v calvary in general, but would also be an incredibly interesting improvement to battle strategy as a whole.
TheRoxasReplica
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Asaeri malamuke cavalry burn through kuziats HA in custom
As someone who enjoys playing a horse archer let me tell you putting anyone in a square just makes it easier for horse archers, grouped up targets are 100x easier to kill than people spread out.
Best way to kill horse archers is melee cavalry spam, everything else is pretty useless.
SaxonDash
Recruit
Shields work great against arrows
Ciderglove
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Step 1: Get on a horse and use a Voulge with two hands.
Step 2: Get 15 men on horses to follow you.
Step 3: Charge head on into the horse archers as they come up on your flank and stay right on top of them, chopping them to pieces.
Step 2: Get 15 men on horses to follow you.
Step 3: Charge head on into the horse archers as they come up on your flank and stay right on top of them, chopping them to pieces.
Mix of cav and archers. Cav for herding/slowing, archers for killing. Angle your archer line so they face left at the start because you know the HAs will come from there.
