I fought a pretty cool battle yesterday against the Aserai that might be worth describing as I thought was the most "tactical" battle I have played so far, and basically the most fun I have seen so far.
Numbers were pretty even 500v500 more or less.
Terrain was a very sharp valley in the middle of two mountain chains, so you had to fight in a relatively small patch. On my left there was a small hill within the valley protected by some rocks that you could not climb on the right and the mountain we were talking about on the left, so this hill could only be attacked on the front and on the back.
I placed all my infantry (~300) on the front of the hill using a shieldwall, archers (~120) behind on a line and cavalry (mix of cav and HA, ~80) a bit behind archers, just in case.
Aserai moved forward and attacked my shield wall with their troops, it was an even battle were 60-80 guys died on each side, a bit more on their side, that is when the fun begin.
Aserai backed and started camping a mountain slope were my archers did not reach them and started harassing with their horse archers (or mamelukes or whatever) my infantry. As my archers were not working properly (I think the hill did not allow them to shoot over my inf, I think this was a bit bugged), I had to go out with my cav to harass their cavalry/HA.
They immediately backed and went were their archers and inf were camping, I asked my regular cavalry to stay behind and went with my HA to harass their inf. once they started suffering loses, they moved forward again.
I asked all my cav to move back behind my army on the hill.
Interestingly, they did not attack straight away but used their archers first to wear my inf down, and then sent their cav to my inf (bad move I guess...). I still waited as I thought the hill gave me an advantage and was not worth going into the open field.
When they notice their cav was being killed, they retreated again to the slope, so I used my cav/HA to bring them out again, similar to what I did before.
They moved forward again, camped their archers in front of me, but this time, they attacked with the infantry to my shield wall. As I was fighting, I wasn't paying a lot of attention to the rest of their troops, but suddenly I noticed they had used half of their inf to attack me from behind, so I had to use half of my inf to go back and defend the back of the hill I was defending and restructure my front inf as many holes were there as half of my guys retreated.
Before the back of the hill was blocked by the two infantry lines, I moved my cav and HA away further to the back, out from the hill and once both infantry units were clashing, used that cav to attack their back. Because Aserai had lost most of their cav, even if they tried to counter my charge, they had fewer horses and were not able to stop my cav charge that helped clear that part of the map.
I used my second infantry once they finished on the bacl unit to circle around the Aserai unit that was attacking my front and attacked the back of those with my inf while my cav harassed their archers, thus, finishing the battle.
After-battle looked like we lost ~420-440 guys of the 500 (so 60-80 left) and they lost all their army.
It was a super cool experience, it lasted for 17 minutes and was a turning point as I captured 6 lord from Aserai and wiped their main army. I think one of the main things that made it last for so long, is that Aserai had been in peace for very long and had higher tier units (more defensive skills/armour) similar to what I had, which made the battle slower and more tactical I think.
Would love to see battles be more like this. I don't think there was anything superspecial, and both tactics were very basic, but it was kind of cool to have some fighting periods, re-assesing period/partial retreat, harassment, fighting again, some flanking, outflanking, etc. - To be honest, no idea if this can be implemented as you would need an intelligent AI, and I guess that is difficult to produce, but just wanted to flag the huge potential battles have.
Having said that, I found some things that would need to be fixed/though:
Numbers were pretty even 500v500 more or less.
Terrain was a very sharp valley in the middle of two mountain chains, so you had to fight in a relatively small patch. On my left there was a small hill within the valley protected by some rocks that you could not climb on the right and the mountain we were talking about on the left, so this hill could only be attacked on the front and on the back.
I placed all my infantry (~300) on the front of the hill using a shieldwall, archers (~120) behind on a line and cavalry (mix of cav and HA, ~80) a bit behind archers, just in case.
Aserai moved forward and attacked my shield wall with their troops, it was an even battle were 60-80 guys died on each side, a bit more on their side, that is when the fun begin.
Aserai backed and started camping a mountain slope were my archers did not reach them and started harassing with their horse archers (or mamelukes or whatever) my infantry. As my archers were not working properly (I think the hill did not allow them to shoot over my inf, I think this was a bit bugged), I had to go out with my cav to harass their cavalry/HA.
They immediately backed and went were their archers and inf were camping, I asked my regular cavalry to stay behind and went with my HA to harass their inf. once they started suffering loses, they moved forward again.
I asked all my cav to move back behind my army on the hill.
Interestingly, they did not attack straight away but used their archers first to wear my inf down, and then sent their cav to my inf (bad move I guess...). I still waited as I thought the hill gave me an advantage and was not worth going into the open field.
When they notice their cav was being killed, they retreated again to the slope, so I used my cav/HA to bring them out again, similar to what I did before.
They moved forward again, camped their archers in front of me, but this time, they attacked with the infantry to my shield wall. As I was fighting, I wasn't paying a lot of attention to the rest of their troops, but suddenly I noticed they had used half of their inf to attack me from behind, so I had to use half of my inf to go back and defend the back of the hill I was defending and restructure my front inf as many holes were there as half of my guys retreated.
Before the back of the hill was blocked by the two infantry lines, I moved my cav and HA away further to the back, out from the hill and once both infantry units were clashing, used that cav to attack their back. Because Aserai had lost most of their cav, even if they tried to counter my charge, they had fewer horses and were not able to stop my cav charge that helped clear that part of the map.
I used my second infantry once they finished on the bacl unit to circle around the Aserai unit that was attacking my front and attacked the back of those with my inf while my cav harassed their archers, thus, finishing the battle.
After-battle looked like we lost ~420-440 guys of the 500 (so 60-80 left) and they lost all their army.
It was a super cool experience, it lasted for 17 minutes and was a turning point as I captured 6 lord from Aserai and wiped their main army. I think one of the main things that made it last for so long, is that Aserai had been in peace for very long and had higher tier units (more defensive skills/armour) similar to what I had, which made the battle slower and more tactical I think.
Would love to see battles be more like this. I don't think there was anything superspecial, and both tactics were very basic, but it was kind of cool to have some fighting periods, re-assesing period/partial retreat, harassment, fighting again, some flanking, outflanking, etc. - To be honest, no idea if this can be implemented as you would need an intelligent AI, and I guess that is difficult to produce, but just wanted to flag the huge potential battles have.
Having said that, I found some things that would need to be fixed/though:
- Archers were not able to shoot above infantry heads properly
- Because we were ina tight place, archers used a tigher formation, and even if using the loose formation, they were not able to shoot if they were behind another archer, so basically I only had a few archers shooting properly
- I was defending, but it is not clear what happens if both armies chose to sit and defend once you get into the battle. If the aggressor choses to defend as well, can a battle last forever? - Maybe it is a feature, I guess that as long as you have archer superiority you can always force a defender to attack you which doesn't seem unrealistic
- Finally (will open a new thread on this), I think battles would benefit if during the loading page before a battle we had an overview of the map, maybe if you defend it is a given and if you attack depends on your scouting/leadership skills?
- I found this would be most helpful in bridge battles were you don't really know where the bridge is, but in this particular battle, knowing where the main hills were, would have been great, while the AI knows everything straight away and can benefit from those, we struggle and have to scout around, which, if like in my case, you start on foot, is particularly difficult (had to steal a horse for the harassing process described above)
I'm still at the level of capturing my own first castle today
