What is a good army makeup if my nation can make heavy infantry, horse archers and cavalry? A good mix of all 3? Any thoughts would be appreciated! 
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What is a good army makeup if my nation can make heavy infantry, horse archers and cavalry? A good mix of all 3? Any thoughts would be appreciated!
heavy infantry and cavalry are all you need.
it is fine to mix the basic soldiers as well.
Or you could go horse crazy. I get tremendous results with 2 parts cavalry, 3 parts horse archers.
The Good: Your armies fly all over the map and have good inherent bonuses against most of the soldier types you'll fight. Rapid and strong response to barbarian hordes and risings.
The Questionable: Expensive compared with foot armies (I still find the bang for buck makes them eminently affordable).
The Bad: The only annoying thing I encounter with mounted armies is that they have no ability to assault enemy cities. They can still siege a city into surrender, even rather quickly if you move in with overwhelming numbers and a good commander, and they fight well against enemies trying to break a siege, but you will still need extra patience when wrapping up a big war.
My general tactic with mounted armies against strong opponents (and this presumes I have at least four or five provinces and ideally a border with a stockade or better) is to play defense at first, let them weaken themselves a bit through attrition and assaults. Try to attack before you lose a province, but it's not a disaster if you lose one or two in the beginning. Move in with your best commander, throw back the enemy, and beat that retreating enemy to its destination. Chase that army until it's annihilated. Wash, rinse, repeat until you feel the enemy's manpower has shrunk enough that you can suppress their armies with just one or two of your mounted armies. Send the rest of your mounted armies to siege. It may even be expedient if you break your sieging armies into armies with the minimum soldiers necessary to besiege enemy provinces (in other words, you can carry on more sieges at the same time).
If you lose a province or more in the beginning of this tactic and need every last mounted unit to fight your opponent, simply raise a few cheapo infantry militia units and park them on your captured provinces. You don't even need to give these militia forces a commander. As long as their armies are just big enough to siege the province, you'll usually take it back pretty fast.
The Good: Your armies fly all over the map and have good inherent bonuses against most of the soldier types you'll fight. Rapid and strong response to barbarian hordes and risings.
The Questionable: Expensive compared with foot armies (I still find the bang for buck makes them eminently affordable).
The Bad: The only annoying thing I encounter with mounted armies is that they have no ability to assault enemy cities. They can still siege a city into surrender, even rather quickly if you move in with overwhelming numbers and a good commander, and they fight well against enemies trying to break a siege, but you will still need extra patience when wrapping up a big war.
My general tactic with mounted armies against strong opponents (and this presumes I have at least four or five provinces and ideally a border with a stockade or better) is to play defense at first, let them weaken themselves a bit through attrition and assaults. Try to attack before you lose a province, but it's not a disaster if you lose one or two in the beginning. Move in with your best commander, throw back the enemy, and beat that retreating enemy to its destination. Chase that army until it's annihilated. Wash, rinse, repeat until you feel the enemy's manpower has shrunk enough that you can suppress their armies with just one or two of your mounted armies. Send the rest of your mounted armies to siege. It may even be expedient if you break your sieging armies into armies with the minimum soldiers necessary to besiege enemy provinces (in other words, you can carry on more sieges at the same time).
If you lose a province or more in the beginning of this tactic and need every last mounted unit to fight your opponent, simply raise a few cheapo infantry militia units and park them on your captured provinces. You don't even need to give these militia forces a commander. As long as their armies are just big enough to siege the province, you'll usually take it back pretty fast.
Have not tried that "all cav" approach. If you are not playing one of the pastoralist tribals (are Mongols or their ancestors in this game?) it strikes me as a little bit ahistorical for the mediterranean or European societies represented to build all cav, or even majority cav forces.
As far as in-game dynamics my observations: avoid building light infantry. It may seem like a good idea to build them as a short-term solution, but it ain't. If you cannot build enough heavy infantry to "do the job" then you need to wait till your economy is strong enough to do it.
Once you can build cav, always try to have at least 2 cav in each army (one to flank on both sides). I'm guessing the combat engine is similar to EU and in that, having at least 2 gives that benefit.
I like to have a 2 or 5 to 1 ratio of Infantry to Archers. So an ideal army for me (played only as Rome) would be something like:
Small or Early Force
4000 Heavy Infantry
1000 Archers
Later Small Force
5000 HvInf
2000 Cav
1000 Archers
Medium force
7000 HvInf
4000 Cav
3000 Arch
Large Force
11000 HI
4000 Cav
5000 Archers
This question got me to looking at some of the data available on Wikipedia on numbers in some ancient battles. This is not necessarily representative, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is. Maybe this will get one of these knowledgeable guys to speak up and teach us a bit
So I just typed up the numbers of infantry and cavalry for five different Punic War battles (Zama; Cannae; Trebia; Tortosa; Cissa). Just happened to be the ones I found quickly and for which all the data were listed on Wiki (which may not be correct).
For these five battles, grouping the Carthaginian and Roman sides into one sample, the means were as follows
total strength 40905
infantry 35600
cavalry 5300
That works out to be a "typical" (mean) infantry to cavaly ratio of 8.47, though as you can see from the image there was a considerable range of variation in the ratio of Inf : Cav (Min of 3.78 for Romans at Zama all the way up to 15 for the Carthaginians at Zama). The portion of the image on the left is from quick Systat T-test of the Won and Lost outcome groups. It doesn't quite get to the .05 level of significance, but I bet with more battles in the sample it very well might.
Winners are more likely to have had a smaller ratio of Infantry to Cavalry.
I wonder if historians ever do analyses like this, or do they not actually learn any statistics?
As far as in-game dynamics my observations: avoid building light infantry. It may seem like a good idea to build them as a short-term solution, but it ain't. If you cannot build enough heavy infantry to "do the job" then you need to wait till your economy is strong enough to do it.
Once you can build cav, always try to have at least 2 cav in each army (one to flank on both sides). I'm guessing the combat engine is similar to EU and in that, having at least 2 gives that benefit.
I like to have a 2 or 5 to 1 ratio of Infantry to Archers. So an ideal army for me (played only as Rome) would be something like:
Small or Early Force
4000 Heavy Infantry
1000 Archers
Later Small Force
5000 HvInf
2000 Cav
1000 Archers
Medium force
7000 HvInf
4000 Cav
3000 Arch
Large Force
11000 HI
4000 Cav
5000 Archers
This question got me to looking at some of the data available on Wikipedia on numbers in some ancient battles. This is not necessarily representative, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is. Maybe this will get one of these knowledgeable guys to speak up and teach us a bit
So I just typed up the numbers of infantry and cavalry for five different Punic War battles (Zama; Cannae; Trebia; Tortosa; Cissa). Just happened to be the ones I found quickly and for which all the data were listed on Wiki (which may not be correct).
For these five battles, grouping the Carthaginian and Roman sides into one sample, the means were as follows
total strength 40905
infantry 35600
cavalry 5300
That works out to be a "typical" (mean) infantry to cavaly ratio of 8.47, though as you can see from the image there was a considerable range of variation in the ratio of Inf : Cav (Min of 3.78 for Romans at Zama all the way up to 15 for the Carthaginians at Zama). The portion of the image on the left is from quick Systat T-test of the Won and Lost outcome groups. It doesn't quite get to the .05 level of significance, but I bet with more battles in the sample it very well might.
Winners are more likely to have had a smaller ratio of Infantry to Cavalry.
I wonder if historians ever do analyses like this, or do they not actually learn any statistics?
Interesting. I am playing as the Ryoxolai so mass horse armies would work well. So when you say 2 parts cav, 3 parts horse archers do you have a bunch of little armies of 5000? Also I wonder if it would work to have a few attacking armies of horsemen and then a slow moving siege army that follow behind made up of heavy infantry and militia.
I have used the offensive horse armies followed by the slower siege armies. It can be a very effective strategy.
Army compositions are as follows:
Horse armies--6 horse with 4 horse archers OR 7 horse with 3 horse archers
I've had success with both
Siege armies--4 heavy inf with 2 archers
On a side note I like to run Legions too.....
Each Legion has 4 heavy infantry with 2 archers and 1 cavalry.
I've found that this is a great composition. I use lots of these little armies, and it's kind of neat that it is based on the makeup of how actual Roman Legions were setup (about 6000 infantry and 600 cavalry).
Army compositions are as follows:
Horse armies--6 horse with 4 horse archers OR 7 horse with 3 horse archers
I've had success with both
Siege armies--4 heavy inf with 2 archers
On a side note I like to run Legions too.....
Each Legion has 4 heavy infantry with 2 archers and 1 cavalry.
I've found that this is a great composition. I use lots of these little armies, and it's kind of neat that it is based on the makeup of how actual Roman Legions were setup (about 6000 infantry and 600 cavalry).
Oh, one more thing....
If I am just playing to play, and just playing normal I run stacks/legions of 10.
5000 heavy infantry with 3000 archers with 2000 cavalry.
If I am just playing to play, and just playing normal I run stacks/legions of 10.
5000 heavy infantry with 3000 archers with 2000 cavalry.
Yeah, it's ahistoric in most cases, but "The Gaulish Horde" is tons of fun
Perhaps culture groups should've had unique unit types, which would've probably restricted horse archers to the Parthians and steppe peoples (and chariots for the Britons would've been nice ), but it seems they went for a little simplicity on that front.As for 2:3 cav to horse archers, I usually bunch them into units of 10 (4 cav, 6 arch) and break them up when desirable, like during the siege phase of the strategy.
Frankly, I don't *know* if 2:3 is an ideal ratio. When I cooked it up, I'd just noticed that horse archers get built-in bonuses or parity against all other troop types save cavalry (and maybe elephants? Though I hardly ever fight them, so they didn't factor into my plotting). Therefore, I go slightly heavier on the horse archers, and the cavalry is there partly to compensate for the horse archers' achilles heel.
Using foot armies as the follow up for you horse blitz is, I think, a generally more efficient tactic as long as you're not David facing Goliath. For instance, if you play a Gaulish tribe, Rome usually becomes a major early threat. Even if you've unified Gaul, Rome still outguns you in manpower by a ton, leaving you the daunting challenge of cutting down several megastacks with your relatively small army. In this case, you'll probably want every horse you can build.
In single play practically any non-LI army works just fine. In MP it gets more complicated, as your opponents will not be using LI...
For MP I like to build legions 30 regiments strong with 14 HI, 12 Archers, 4 cavalry (and use half legions in SP with 7 HI, 6 archers and 2 cavalry). I also use small pure cavalry legions (8-12 regiments) who run down enemies retreating from battles (preferably sitting in a fleet; when you win a battle and see where the enemy retreats, quickly unload the cavalry to the province they are retreating to, and you get an insta destruction win as you get to defend against the routed enemy before they have time to regain morale).
Archers are the killers in this game, HI are tough as nails. Cavalry to the flanks.
Against pure cavalry armies (who are more expensive, and thus likely won't be as big) their center will be ripped apart by your archers, while they can hardly dent the HI. On flanks your cavalry will be hard pressed (becase the enemy will likely be able to outflank them), but they only have to survive long enough to see the enemy rout because of the losses in the center. When the enemy breaks, use your small cavalry legion to destroy the enemy totally.
Remember that Rome is not WW1. Your goal is not to hold the whole front. Destroy one enemy army at a time (preferably with high experience troops who are loyal to their commander) until the enemy manpower pool runs dry. Deal with your uppity commander (liberal bribes are what you should be looking at to keep that commander with a bunch of super-experienced and loyal regiments, bribe bribe until you have his loyalty high enough to boot him until next war ).
For MP I like to build legions 30 regiments strong with 14 HI, 12 Archers, 4 cavalry (and use half legions in SP with 7 HI, 6 archers and 2 cavalry). I also use small pure cavalry legions (8-12 regiments) who run down enemies retreating from battles (preferably sitting in a fleet; when you win a battle and see where the enemy retreats, quickly unload the cavalry to the province they are retreating to, and you get an insta destruction win as you get to defend against the routed enemy before they have time to regain morale).
Archers are the killers in this game, HI are tough as nails. Cavalry to the flanks.
Against pure cavalry armies (who are more expensive, and thus likely won't be as big) their center will be ripped apart by your archers, while they can hardly dent the HI. On flanks your cavalry will be hard pressed (becase the enemy will likely be able to outflank them), but they only have to survive long enough to see the enemy rout because of the losses in the center. When the enemy breaks, use your small cavalry legion to destroy the enemy totally.
Remember that Rome is not WW1. Your goal is not to hold the whole front. Destroy one enemy army at a time (preferably with high experience troops who are loyal to their commander) until the enemy manpower pool runs dry. Deal with your uppity commander (liberal bribes are what you should be looking at to keep that commander with a bunch of super-experienced and loyal regiments, bribe bribe until you have his loyalty high enough to boot him until next war
).
good posts guys!
i am trying the horse army with the siege army that follows. works great so far. if you win a battle you usually beat the enemy to the province they are retreating too. hehe. you could picture it too. a broken army, running from defeat, only to be ambushed again by the relentless horsemen!:rofl:
i am trying the horse army with the siege army that follows. works great so far. if you win a battle you usually beat the enemy to the province they are retreating too. hehe. you could picture it too. a broken army, running from defeat, only to be ambushed again by the relentless horsemen!
:rofl:
Does the mobility rating for the cav and horse archers come into play during a battle? or is it just for campaign map speed?
My typical army of a size of 20k, were 2000 is cavalry, 1000 are ranged on horse, 4000 are ranged on foot, 9000 heavy infantry and 4000 light infantry. This is probably a roleplay stack, but so far it works quite well