Nomad Army Composition?

[fridabina]

WAI. Horse archer tactics are at their most effective against less-mobile enemies like infantry and slower, heavy cavalry. Light cavalry kicking the crap out of them is perfectly logical.

While this may be true it just doesnt feel right when the best strategy is to spam the cheapest available unit (LC) because honestly nothing except a good pikeman retinue or HC beats them. And they have made the tactics so punishing for mixing different unit types that not only are Feudals extremely punished for their levys, but horse archers are nearly never worth it because heavy cavalry does the same job but better and they don't mess up LC tactics.

 

[Eslin]

Tactics were always like that, you just never noticed because the only monotype armies came from culture specific retinues. Now the horse lords comes along and gives everyone thousands upon thousands of free monotype units and the distinction becomes clear - due to the quadruple damage, your average monotype unit will kick the teeth in of any mixed unit not at the very least double its size.

 

[Noxatrox]

Okay wow, thanks guys! I've just been using an army composed entirely of the 25 prestige 225 LC and 25 HA mix along with the 75 gold 250 HA one; exactly what you aren't supposed to do, haha!

I wonder though why they made so many retinues have a mix of LC and HA. Seems like Paradox likes to troll... And, how do I get the 250 HC retinue? I have my capital currently in Itil.

Also, if I'm reading this right, does this mean that I should disband my army? I have a ridiculous amount of gold, so it's not too much of a problem. What should I build in its place then? My current manpower max is 16k. I should also mention that I'm Jewish, so I don't have the Tengri bonus.

 

[majorlupa]

how do I get the 250 HC retinue? I have my capital currently in Itil.

capital_scope = {
            OR = {
                region = world_europe_west
                region = world_europe_south
            }

 

[Bernard95]

Do not ever mix Light cavalry and Horse archers, you can have HC mixed in with LC but LC and HA tactics are so horrible mixed together that it can totally ruin a battle for you. If you really want to use horse archers put them in their own flank, but beware of other nomads as light cavalry flanks will totally destroy HA flanks.

So that's what killed me then. I remember fighting a battle or two with about the same number of troops, flat terrain, and decent commanders and they roll tactics that gave me -300% attack. My army was something like 2000 Light Cav and 800 Horse Archers and maybe like 700 men escaped and the enemy armies were barely scratched.

 

[Eslin]

Okay wow, thanks guys! I've just been using an army composed entirely of the 75 prestige 225 LC and 25 HA mix along with the 75 gold 250 HA one; exactly what you aren't supposed to do, haha!

I wonder though why they made so many retinues have a mix of LC and HA. Seems like Paradox likes to troll... And, how do I get the 250 HC retinue? I have my capital currently in Itil.

Also, if I'm reading this right, does this mean that I should disband my army? I have a ridiculous amount of gold, so it's not too much of a problem. What should I build in its place then? My current manpower max is 16k. I should also mention that I'm Jewish, so I don't have the Tengri bonus.

Move your capital to southern or western europe, build nothing but heavy cavalry. If you can't do that, move it to somewhere with desert and spam camel cavalry - it's mixed, but camels and light cavalry use the same tactic so it's effectively monotype.




Once you realise that being a horde lets you steamroll entire empires with no real effort, I recommend finding a multiplayer game or a single player challenge. Seriously, was there not one point in playtesting where they went 'ok, I've absorbed all my vassal clans and conquered the Abbasids, wasn't even difficult, have we maybe made this too easy?'

 

[Noxatrox]

Move your capital to southern or western europe, build nothing but heavy cavalry. If you can't do that, move it to somewhere with desert and spam camel cavalry - it's mixed, but camels and light cavalry use the same tactic so it's effectively monotype.




Once you realise that being a horde lets you steamroll entire empires with no real effort, I recommend finding a multiplayer game or a single player challenge. Seriously, was there not one point in playtesting where they went 'ok, I've absorbed all my vassal clans and conquered the Abbasids, wasn't even difficult, have we maybe made this too easy?'

Are LC and HA essentially useless then? You wouldn't recommend having an army of a mix of HC and HA? Or maybe one of HC and LC?

 

[Sunspawn]

Are LC and HA essentially useless then? You wouldn't recommend having an army of a mix of HC and HA? Or maybe one of HC and LC?

Pure LC >> mix of any two units.

 

[Noxatrox]

Pure LC >> mix of any two units.

Hmm but the other guy said to do pure HC?

 

[majorlupa]

Hmm but the other guy said to do pure HC?

Sunspawn was probably answering first part of your question.

I would put it like this.
HC > Camels > LC+HC > LC > LC+HA > HA > Elephants

There is this combo of Elephants, LC and HC but I havent tested it. Probably its 'ok'.

 

[Noxatrox]

Okay just one last question, how good is HC + HA then since you left that out of your equation? It is one of the retinues I can purchase. I know now how to get the pure HC retinue but I would rather not move my capital to South or West Europe for roleplay reasons unless the universally available HC + HA retinue is trash.

 

[fridabina]

Okay just one last question, how good is HC + HA then since you left that out of your equation? It is one of the retinues I can purchase. I know now how to get the pure HC retinue but I would rather not move my capital to South or West Europe for roleplay reasons unless the universally available HC + HA retinue is trash.

I would have to guess that they are decent againt feudals/tribals but could see some trouble against much cheaper forces of pure LC that might hurt them enough during skirmish to win. If you manage to survive the skirmish phase you might be able to crush them if enough HC survived. But i wouldnt bet on it.
Also i have not checked recently but i remember that HC/LC have more tactic favoring eachother than HC/HA. I believe all charge tactics that HC uses give a decent boost to LC as well but not that great for HA so i would probably go with the normal HC/LC retinue rather than HC/HA if i had to choose.

 

[Eslin]

Other way around. LC cause raid to fire, fucking over HC, if you have to split it always get HA/HC rather than LC/HC.

 

[doktarr]

Hello paradox people; it's been quite a while. Sorry for the thread necro but this seemed like the right place for this.

Do not ever mix Light cavalry and Horse archers, you can have HC mixed in with LC but LC and HA tactics are so horrible mixed together that it can totally ruin a battle for you. If you really want to use horse archers put them in their own flank, but beware of other nomads as light cavalry flanks will totally destroy HA flanks.

I'm confused by this; am I reading the Combat Tactics page correctly? If I'm reading it right, having more than 65% HA disqualifies you from "Swarm" or "Harass Swarm", leaving only Disorganized Swarm and General Skirmish as available tactics. That would make HAs pretty terrible outside of the Pursue phase.

Assuming you can muster up an Altaic leader of Martial 12 or greater, it seems like the optimal HA flank would have between 50% and 65% HA, with at least 30% light cavalry for the rest. This would give you a good chance at Harass Swarm (good for both HA and LC), the same chance of Swarm (bad for LC, still pretty good for HA), and a small chance of Disorganized Swarm (junk) and general skirmish.

That's not a perfect skirmish breakdown, but the upshot of this build is that when you go to melee you roll "Retreat and Ambush" and get back to skirmish basically every time. That's what you want since HA are junk in melee (and that's also why you probably shouldn't mix HC and HA). You could have as low as 51% HA and still have the same tactics, but the HAs are much more useful than the LC in this build so you'd want to push up closer to 65%.

Oh, and these guys are useless in forest, woods, mountain, jungle, or marsh, and bad against opposing LC. All in all... yeah it's not perfect by any stretch, but I think it's the best you can do with HAs, and it's pretty strong on flatlands against non-LC.

--

Similarly, pure LC armies would roll "Disorganised Harass", which is a pretty bad tactic. If you have access to Camels, then a mix of LC and Camels is great because you can get under 75% for both, and roll Harass in Skirmish and Raid in Melee almost all the time (assuming Martial 12). That's a pretty perfect tactic combo for them; about the only possible upgrade would be to look for a Cruel leader so that you get the "Charging your own Skirmishers" tactic when you charge, but that's kind of a side detail.

--

HC are the one mounted unit that does seem to work fine by itself. it seems like the best trait to look for is a M14+ Defensive/Inspiring leader, as this makes Inspired Defense trigger most of the time in skirmish phase. If you have an Aggressive/Brave/Cavalry leader, try to sprinkle in at least 1% Light Cav to enable Heroic Countercharge, but keep it under 20% LC to prevent Raid from triggering. If you have a leader who has a trait from both Defensive/Inspiring and Aggressive/Brave/Cavalry, then you would want between 1% and 5% LC, so that you can trigger Heroic Countercharge in melee but don't roll Harass instead of Inspired defense in skirmish.

Oh, and if you can get a Frankish, Occitan, Norman, German, or Breton leader, just do that (and run pure HC for the insane Couched Lance Charge tactic. Preferably defensive/inspiring leader so you can go from Inspired Defense to Couched Lance Charge.

--

So, in conclusion, the best nomadic army breakdowns appear to be, starting with the best:

1. Pure HC (with a small percentage of LC if you have certain leader traits)
2. Split of LC and Camels (at least 25% of each) with M12 leader
3. A little under 65% HA with the rest LC; M12 Altaic Leader

Or maybe I'm misunderstanding things since I'm still learning the game. But that looks right to me. So if you have access to HC go that way. If you have access to Camels but not HC use the LC/Camel mix. If you have neither, use the HA/LC mix unless you're fighting in forest, woods, mountain, jungle, or marsh.

 

[CaptainPolyp]

I use the HC+LC (the one with a majority of HC) and never had problem taking down armies twice my number. My best was taking down a 30K levy with 9.5K horde (and to be completely honest, a brave holy warrior commander with double HW bonus). I tried camels recently (after moving my capital in the middle east) and they seem good too. They die a bit more against feudal/iqta armies but it maybe due to the camel building not yet maxed out (contrary to the buildings improving LC and HC)... It has no influence on whether I lose or win the battle (late game nomads is not very challenging, I play in sandbox mode now).

I've heard that HA tend to get destroyed by LC. If it is true, doesn't this make HA a bit weak against other nomads?

 

[Dragatus]

Note that all special troops have a defined "base unit" and will be detected as that unit for purpose of tactic selection. That means that HA and Camel Cavalry will both be detected as Light Cavalry. So an army that's half Light Cavalry and half Camel Cavalry will be detected as 100% Light Cavalry and 50% Camels and will always trigger Disorganized Harass. If you want to avoid it, your only option is to have over 25% Heavy Cavalry.

It gets even worse if you have a mix of HA and HC that has less than 50% HA. That can actually make you trigger Harass tactic which completely neagtes all damage done by HA in skirmish phase.

LC indeed counter HA. If you get a Harass type tactic and the opponent gets a Swarm type tactic all the damage you do gets doubled. LC also outperformed Camel Cavalry in the recent retinue tests I did and that was without the Tengri bonus.

All this leads me to believe it's optimal to have as many HC as you can afford and the rest LC. Go pure LC if you must. Even with Disorganized Harass you still do decent damage, while mixing LC and HA would have a chance to trigger a tactic that completely negates damage done by half your horde.

 

[sigeena]

The best mix for nomad is 3 Heavy Vanguard : 4 Light Cav per flank.

You'll get a total of 450 (25.7%) HC : 1300 (74.3%) LC, Total 1750,

With a Commander of 16, you'll likely trigger Harrass 80% of the time, which is great against most Nomadic armies with HA.

On Melee, you'll likely get Charges.

Have fun trashing Byzantine and Abbassids

 

[sigeena]

Commanders wise, if you're playing with my suggested flank composition, avoid using commanders other than Cav leaders.

Other leaders may trigger tactics other than Harass. Harass is probably the hardest hitting tactic for the flank composition.

 

[doktarr]

Note that all special troops have a defined "base unit" and will be detected as that unit for purpose of tactic selection. That means that HA and Camel Cavalry will both be detected as Light Cavalry. So an army that's half Light Cavalry and half Camel Cavalry will be detected as 100% Light Cavalry and 50% Camels and will always trigger Disorganized Harass. If you want to avoid it, your only option is to have over 25% Heavy Cavalry.

Oh, yuck.

So, yeah, try to make it over 25% Heavy Cav with them. Or just some Light Infantry if you can manage that somehow, because the Heavy Cavalry are kind of wasted if you roll Raid a lot (and with a weight of 9 against an Awesome Charge weight of 3, you will roll it a lot). If you have a M14 Aggressive/Brave/Cavalry leader then you can go for Heroic Countercharges (in which case, more HC is more better).

OK, so revising from above:

1. Pure HC (with a small percentage of LC if you have leader traits that enable Heroic Countercharge)
2. A little over 25% HC with the rest LC/CC (or Light Infantry in place of the HC if you can manage that through vassal armies)
3. A little under 65% HA with the rest LC; M12 Altaic Leader

 

[Eslin]

The best mix for nomad is 3 Heavy Vanguard : 4 Light Cav per flank.

You'll get a total of 450 (25.7%) HC : 1300 (74.3%) LC, Total 1750,

With a Commander of 16, you'll likely trigger Harrass 80% of the time, which is great against most Nomadic armies with HA.

On Melee, you'll likely get Charges.

Have fun trashing Byzantine and Abbassids

Why would you want that? You'll get three times as many Raids as Charges and your unit composition is terrible, pure heavy cavalry is far superior to that. As soon as you can get it, there's no reason not to use pure HC.