Regiment Strategies: footmen

[TacticalW]

I have found out this perfect plan to upgrade your units and "keep" them upgrading.

You have to first have a set of heroes and equip them with decent stuff. When you do that buy yourself as many peasants and footmen as possible and than set off to kill bands of 10 bandits for the first bit. Keep your infantry in a strategic position, like if theres a river and the enemy has a ton of cavalry. The cavalry will be swiss cheese if you attack with your footmen there. If you can guide your units to the top of a hill and arch the people trying to get up. You have the advantage. Another one is trying to pick off some on your own (telling troops to stay) and when it gets unbearable you start retreating and command the troops to charge.

The best way of bieng able to really make a 1337 war party is with this strategy. Also as you have more room only use it for more hero units.

Here is my strategy

Hero#1
Hero#2
Hero#3
Vaiger Guard
Vaiger Infantry
Vaiger Veteran
Vaiger Footmen

The good thing about footmen is that they are good for tactical formations and so you can position them without them running everywhere.

Just do this and you are sure to have a whole army of Vaiger Guards after a while.

Also note that Vaiger Guards are pretty much impossible to kill once you have 4+ of them. Of course this is only if they have others supporting them. You get the point, as long as you help your units out and weaken the troop load of the enemy first. The 1337 army of yours will be even 1337ER.

 

[lancer63]

Good Idea as long as you don't run into Swadian Xbowmen, Steppe bandits or thos annoying black Khergits. An exclusiely inf. army is toast without ranged units. Remember that Guards and sergeants, small tanks as they may be, are great defenders against other infantry and the black hunters but send them to chase a fast enemy and you lose them.
How do I know that? Because I already tried it and had my arse handed to me by horse archers north of Tulga.

Cheers.

 

[TacticalW]

We'll an the Dark Knights "do" give me a lot of trouble, but the other cavalry units are easy to take out if I do it right.

When I face Dark Knights I usually sustain 5+ casualties, this is rather low in perspective, but thats a lot of hard worked for Guards, Infantry and anything lower.

I am thinking of equiping my heroes with xbows, but after I saw that comic about a hero with a bow... we'll I had second thoughts

Anyways, it works we'll as long as you don't have the enemy clumped together.

 

[Ingolifs]

I would suggest mixing up your guards with knights and horsemen.

Why?

Because once you order them to dismount, they're pretty much the same as guards, but they also speed up the party speed slightly.

 

[Cataphract]

I would suggest mixing up your guards with knights and horsemen.

Why?

Because once you order them to dismount, they're pretty much the same as guards, but they also speed up the party speed slightly.

Yup, this is why i very rarely have melee infantry. Cavalry can be used as dragoons which are just about equal to the heavy infantry.

 

[Daimyo]

Or a whole army of sharpshooters.
You will kill everything that comes in sight before they can even say *bah what a silly army o... gurgle*.

Wich is a fairly long sentence, because at long range xbowmen seem to miss a lot.

 

[DaLagga]

Except that archers suck in this game because of the AI right now. And 1 guy with shield > 20 marksmen (at least it forces them to all pull out their melee weapons). Also, one easy (and almost exploitive) way of leveling a large force is to put some points into training, then just rest at a tavern for a few days. I did find it alot more enjoyable to have an army of nothing but footsoldiers, but lancer is right, they get owned by horse archers.

 

[Severi]

No they dont suck. They carry a light armor thus they are very fast in melee and I think when you speak of one guy, u are talking about yourself.

 

[barbaros]

Except that archers suck in this game because of the AI right now. And 1 guy with shield > 20 marksmen (at least it forces them to all pull out their melee weapons)

So true. This is why I used the unofficial editor to remove the melee weapons of vaegir archers and marksman (I use them a lot). After this small change, now they are much more effective and behaving like real archers. If you give "charge" command they approach the enemy and start firing as soon as they are in range and they even spread (slowly) in a line to find a clear line of fire for themselves. Real massacre in open terrain!!

 

[Laurence of Arabia]

Even without that my marksmen can kill anyhting before it reaches us (save 1 or tow dark knights breaking through)

 

[lancer63]

In my experience terrain has a lot to do with troop efectiveness. For instance, charge a predominantly ranged force on fairly flat terrain and half your troops are vulture canned meat before you reach your goal. considering they're mounted. Have infantry do the same maneuver and when you regain conciousness you'll have a lot of fresh empty slots to fill with more fodder. Remember the charge of the light brigade?

On the other hand, broken terrain is perfect for ambushing ranged units and cavalry with minimal loss of your infantry. On water I dismount unless I want to lose my mount.

I say a balanced force has a better chance of surviving any situation in any kind of terrain than a specialized one. But I agree with people who prefer cav to infantry, specially using the Mag. 7 mod wher you have to rationalize the use of even more limited troop slots than in the regular game.

 

[Severi]

And 1 guy with shield > 20 marksmen

Vaegir veteran is the highest level of infantry what you can encounter(they have sometimes horses) I dont remember what was the swadian version of this but have you seen the quality of their shields? Not even close to reinforced steel shield. 20 marksmen shootin at that man would result to overkill.

Of course using archers mean that you should use hold this position.
Enemy always attacks.

Best combination is mix of footmen and archers.

 

[DaLagga]

I really can't see where you guys get this stuff. I have a group of 40+ marksmen and they don't do crap. The reason i said 1 guy with a shield is greater than 20 marksmen is because out of those 20 only about 8-10 can actually fire since they block each other, if you're lucky. Now consider that around 1/3 -1/2 of all those arrows will miss at medium range and that's not much firepower. Now consider how little damage an arrow does vs a shield and you see my point. And bringing infantry into the mix to defend the archers only means that even fewer archers are able to fire (without more complex troop commands), since you now have infantry blocking their line of sight. All i can figure is that either i'm doing something wrong (which i doubt since there isn't any skill in having archers hold position on open plains and fire), or many people are grosely exagerating the efficiency of archers. Maybe i'll make a video or two depending on the feedback i get.

 

[TacticalW]

::addition::

When you increase your leadership more and open up more slots, use it to start making ranged unit units. For these since there isn't much space just defend them in each battle personally and wait until "every" single one of them is ready to upgrade.

But, yeah. Ranged units do help "lighten up" the opposition before they get there. I would suggest them mosty just for that purpose and to attack horse units.

One thing I realised is that I think Black Knights are somehow more affective on ground that on horses

If you have an army capability capacity of 40 than make 5-10 of them archers.

 

[ManOfHonor]

Except that archers suck in this game because of the AI right now. And 1 guy with shield > 20 marksmen (at least it forces them to all pull out their melee weapons)

So true. This is why I used the unofficial editor to remove the melee weapons of vaegir archers and marksman (I use them a lot). After this small change, now they are much more effective and behaving like real archers. If you give "charge" command they approach the enemy and start firing as soon as they are in range and they even spread (slowly) in a line to find a clear line of fire for themselves. Real massacre in open terrain!!

hmmmmm.....

could this editor replace every NPC weapon in the game with pebbles?

'Oh look! a horde of dark knights! charge my pebble knights charge!'
*ManOfHonor ofcourse rides in front*

over the last hill... the enemy is in sight!

You recieve 1 damage

'thats all? HAHAHAHA!'

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ManOfHonor knocked unconscious by Dark Rider

 

[Ingolifs]

So you have 35 health?

 

[Narcissus]

So you have 35 health?

Oh wow ... did you actually count them?

 

[Ingolifs]

yup.

 

[holybandit]

Lol, talk about to much time on your hands.

I personally use marksmen as main infantry, and im training a group of 5 sister swords.

I dont see whats wrong with them. Besides the fact there is no archer cammands in this game and they block themselves from firing, other then that they kickass and are good at mellee also.

 

[ManOfHonor]

oh.... thats after i had a normal battle with 300 kilobillion dark knights