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Charging with horse archers isn't even the most effective. You want to hold position until the enemy infantry get into melee range and then either charger or just run to the otherside of the map and hold position again
I'm just saying imagine if he attacked using all his horses and circled an entire army. Even 10000 horse archers would have been insane. Bet it would have felt like a mini earthquake.
Gameplay tip for horse archer forces: giving your HA a charge order isn’t what you wanna do because if they run out of ammo they’ll charge in and die. What you need to do is give a follow order and run lead your men in a circle around the enemy until you notice ammunition is low. Then, either coordinate a charge OR retreat fully and reengage the force with full ammo! Rinse and repeat until your enemies are defeated. I’ve taken on marked 6 times the size of mine with this strategy.
better yet just hit f1 and then f4 to advance your troops. archers will fall back when enemy comes closer and horse archers just run around shooting arrows until they run out.
The advance troop command is unreliable. To minimize casualties it’s best to just have the men follow you directly. You can refill ammo by retreating from battle. To do this either hold tab and click retreat while in battle or run outside of the battle limits for 10 seconds. You will be brought back to the prebattle screen and can reengage as many times as you’d like as long as you’re healthy.
Here is a tip. When you are in a field battle, hold your archers in one place and let them fire until the enemy starts to get close. this means that they dont get reduced accuracy from moving, but because they are mounted you can tell them to charge and run rings once the enemy gets within striking distance. Usually though, a force of ~80 mid to upper tier horse archers can have half their army routing before they get to you, and run rings around the other half
Horse archers are significantly more effective if you split them into two groups. Delegate the first group to "sergeant's command." Then wait a few seconds, and do the same for the second group. Whatever they're circling will attempt to face them with their shields. If you've got two groups then you can't face both groups with shields so one group will be shooting their backs/sides.
i-ts better late than never- arrows that they throw are made a line that tells the enemy that "if you pass these arrows we'll beat the shit out of you" its an old tactic that mongolians and turks used
taking castles with horse archers, you breech first wall and then instead of charging into the castle, you setup firing position on chokepoin. As enemy will start comming, you will kill them before they can hurt you (because they are mostly low tier infantry).
I use horse archers more static in the firs moments of the battle. Just hold the ground so their shots are much more accurate and devastating. After enemy closes the gap I usually order them to follow me to the righ flank and after thst give order to charge. I find it more effective against infantry focused armies with this tactic.
C H Crossbowmen don’t outshoot archers at the moment. Shield wall circle + archers should work but in same numbers horse archers tend to still win. Placing your cavalry at your left flank to engage them might also be a good choice.
Khan's Guard also makes for VERY STRONG melee units because they use the 2H Glaive, a shock AoE melee weapon. The swings can dmg multiple enemies at a time. You could definitely siege castles with them and win against everything.
Yeah, I raised an army of 123 khuzait horse archer and heavy horse archers and killed a 1240 strong aserai army. I charged, retreated, attacked again etc killing 400/round losing 33 men in total (23 were just wounded) Stunning victory. I was playing on easy difficulty but still, 123 vs 1240, and I lost 13 units and another 20 wounded. And they lost 1240 soldiers. They are too OP lol, guess thats why the mongols managed to conquer 22% of the world.
@@imswanronson3558 no thats a horrible tactic as leaving manually takes time to get to the border and your troops will die before you reach the edge of the map. The better way is to Press tab and click the retreat button its actually the leave button as it doesnt cost any troops/. So press tab>click retreat> attack again.
Turks at that point, were better at metallurgy than nomads of antiquity and were very keen on lancers and various other types of cavalry too. But yeah, generally, you're right. Unlike Ottomans who tried to style themselves as Romans and tried to adapt their unit types a bit, Seljuks were mostly classic Turkic horse archery armies. But the height of nomad warriors were the Mongols.
on equal terms? Khan guards. The khan guards will run out of arrows quicker, then charge in. While the fians, with their heavy melee weapon built, their armor is mid-tier at best. Neither their weapon nor their armor will help them face a speed multiplier-boosted khuzait glaives. I actually simulated this once. In 10 trials, I think the fians only won... once. Standing archers in general rely on number of arrows released over a certain period of time. Fian shoots farther and have better arrows, but shoots slower. In most general cases, this is okay, but an army of khan guards can't really be classified as "general" kek. The master archers fared better. But ofc, they'll die quicker once it goes into melee.
I do believe, open field, the Fian champions would win, especially with few troupe involved. My reasoning is, while Khan's gards armor is slightly stronger, Fian champion got a really good ranger armor too, and their bow is really better in anyway (except the rate of fire which is slightly less, but still absurdly high for a bow this size). Also Fian Champion got god tier accuracy, unlike the Khan gard that sacrifice a bit of accuracy for being highly mobile on a horse back. So, range seems to be at the adventage of the Fians. and while a Gard should defeat a Fian in melee (especially considering the horse charge and weapon reach) I don't think Fian would allow the gards many chance to come this close. On larger battle, on advatage the Gards have over the Fian, is that they can more easely mess up the Fian's IA. In bannerlord, archer seems to prioritize shooting whoever is the closest to them. Which mean, Gards fire will be pretty effectiv on the still pretty dense "loose formation" of the Fians, while the fian have to target all over and arround them, and there fire will be far less effective, due to them "overkilling" a lot of targets. (Basically, they are so accurate, they will waste a lot of shots because of target acquisition, while the Gards, with their lower accuracy can just fore in the bunch and will almost certainly hit someone...) That s just my opinion though... But I may confess myself biased toward Battania...
I'm currently doing a khuzait play through and I just won a 14 versus 78 battle where I had just horse archers. I had 5 bucalareii and the other 9 were tribal nomads. I went up against all infantry, it was the minor faction leader who used oath keepers. They were mixed tier infantry but had about 10 maxed out oath keepers and I pulled it off only losing 1 horse archer.
It's not that hard to get Khan's Guard once your leadership is high enough to rank up bandit units that you've recruited from prisoners. They can be ranked up from the tier 1 and 2 steppe bandit units, so a few hideouts will get you quite a lot (use tournament arrows/bolts to wound them and get more prisoners).
Instead of letting them charge in woods or when the terrain is against you, it's better to lead then to an advantage like a hill and then lead them to another spot as the enemy closes. Rinse and repeat.
I'd assume so, from what ive played. My advice for crossbows would be to put them in your garrison(s). They're superior on walls. That's sadly it. Fians for lyfe.
Using advance over charge keeps the entire unit together to give you better spreads against enemy formations, a couple archers chasing a few isolated enemies is ineffective and wastes ammo
I had an army of 80 Khan's Guard in campaign before switching to the beta. :D I did have them backed up by about 30 Heavy Horse Archers and about 50 Heavy Lancers. Army was able to fight at 2 to 1 odds with nearly no casualties.
my main tactic for horse archers is the 'follow me' command and just circle around them a few times, retreat far away onto an elevated spot and then form a line and snipe the advancing units and if im severely out numbered ill just hit and retreat so i can restock on arrows and rinse and repeat
Imagine you feel that ground starts shaking and the noises comes closer to you and the last thing you see is that thousands of mounted archers charge at your castle,village,place,kingdom,💀
My current army consists of 120 Legionaries, 120 Fian Champions, 60 Cataphracts and 60 Khans Guards. I've taken on multiple 800-1000 man armies with 0 losses, it's so broken but so much fun lmao
The khans are dope. My cavalry & horse archers really show their presence out in the field. I basically modeled my story after Atila. Started off as a mercenary for the empire then took over sturgia for myself. Now I'm debating on if i should take the khuzaits or ally them & take over the empiric territories they're at war with. Suggestions?
A large heavy horse archer with a core of decent spears and archers is one of the best counters I've seen against the empire's legions, they cant keep up with the horse acrchers and the regular archers hit from a distance with the spearmen coming in for clean up duty
Some tips using horse archers: 1. Take comfort knowing that it's the most powerful unit type on any flat terrain, but remember they struggle in difficult terrain because the potato horseman AI can be permanently stuck on trees, rocks, enemies, and friendlies. 2. Horse archers can be used exactly like archers - have them stay still and they will have good accuracy and good angles from their horses. Khan's Guards have 280 in bow - they don't exactly match the Fian Champions but they are still pretty damn good. 3. Khan's Guards are somewhat poorly armored and their athletics is... 25... So they are not the most useful in some cases. Still gotta love them though, cool as all heck. 4. The Imperial Bucellari are the best-armored horse archers with 130 one-handed, 130 bow, 120 riding AND 130 athletics. These guys are so versatile and just plain op that they can contest the #1 most powerful horse archers in my opinion. They do have a huge downside of very poorly armored horses though.
Khan's Guard has 280 bow, therefore much more accurate and faster RoF than Bucellari. As for armor, they have the equivalent to heavy inf armor, not exactly weak. They also carry Glaives, so in melee they are deadly in groups due to the AoE nature of that 2H weapon. In fact, they are OP and the only balance is its difficult to obtain many of them in-game. One weakness for Bucellari are their horse being unarmored, KG has the same armored horse as lancers!
Yak losing KGs in Sieges break my heart... Their armor is the best armor of Khuzait but it’s still a little underwhelming when compared to imperial or vlandian armor. Bucellari have the same body armor as the Elite Cataphract, just hilarious. It’s nearly 1 million a piece for a player to buy, if one can find it on sale at all. They are more useful in sieges and slightly more expendable.
To be fair, the imperial army you took out if your Khan Guards had a lot of recruits and other low tiers units. If you had faced a similar number of Imperial Elite Cataphract or Battanian Fians, it might have been much closer. But I agree that horses archers are really powerful and hard to fight against.
The key is to not let them move and shoot. Move them out of range while holding fire and get them on a hill top then loose arrows when stationary, they can be just as accurate as foot archer. I usually use horse archer to distract enemy main line while my foot archer shoot them down.
I've found the best way is to put the cav archers into column formation and have them follow you, then proceed to ride circles around the enemy force. Its worked amazingly for me so far and looks freaking awesome!
Tactics note: It’s often better to sit in loose formation and let the enemy come to you. Their early cavalry charge can be dealt with easily, then the slower infantry blobs. If you’re at risk of being engaged, use the “Follow me” order and just circle right, run to a new elevated position and wait for the enemy to once again marshal forward to get you; all the while being slaughtered by accurate volleys of arrow fire. Rinse and repeat until the enemy breaks. I was able to destroy a 1,000 man army with a hundred horse archers that way.
Best tactic to play with HA. Build an army with 3/4 of horses archers and 1/4 horse man, at the begining line horse archers and wait for the enemy to charge on you, when they are near your troops scream EVERYONE! and then F6 let the sargents take the lead. If you only atack with archers the enemy shields will allways look at them, horse man will penetrate infantry and the enemy infantry will try to strike them and follow them giving theyre backs to your fantastic machineguns... this is the tactic i use, never had any HA out of ammo... carefull with terrain an near vilages.
While the circling mechanic is awesome in wide open areas against pure infantry what I find is best against mixed armies on wooded or uneven maps is to just use them like infantry archers in formation, but ones that can quickly run to the other side of the map and set up formation again. Just leave them in a formation until the enemy infantry gets close enough to hit and then run away and remake a formation. This keeps you kiting enemy cavalry around so you never have to fight them at the same time as infantry and risk some men dying. If you can't get the enemy to run into your formation just run up with your companions and take long range potshots at their army, or snipe their leader and eventually they will charge. If you run out of arrows just use the retreat button and reengage with full ammo. Rinse and repeat and you can kill 1000 unit armies with 100 and lose close to 0 units. Best units in the game in my opinion.
I am playing kuzhait in my campain and because i really like mongol way of warfare i go for full cav with like 60% horse archer and rest schok cav It work really well on open field i can crush army three to four time my size however when the battlefield is a forest it become really hard and i am not even trying in siege
When sieging with Archers, line up just in range and fore volleys at the wall defenses until it's thinned. Then when their ranged defenses are depleted, enter the the castle. Line up on the walls and fire down onto the remaining Infantry.
I am in southern empire but in battle vs aserai I recruited their horse archers. Omg so powerful. Their range is incredible I always seem them shooting arrows at the enemy when I can't even see them and they will whittle down troops before my foot archers can attack them. But I'm playing on very easy mode. Most importantly all tier units have the same upkeep. Which makes 100% cavalry army super cheap and strong. In total war games cavalry have smaller troop sizes and cost significantly more. So they are much less powerful. Plus total war spearmen have shield walls. In Mount and blade the ai infantry are always scattering.
a simple charge is suboptimal in my opinion. if you really want to get maximum utility of them, take an advantageous position, wait while the enemy is getting close, but not too clos, while your horse archers are shooting them, then reposition them, take care not to run into the enemy, repeat until you win.
9:30 . They lose because you dont use cav correctly. Putting them on a wild charge and then not giving them orders breaks them up and over time they end up attacking in small numbers making it easier for them to get killed. You need to consistently pull them together and do whole unit charges.
I'm pretty much stomping armies with up to 800 units with my 200 Cavalary Army. I can only recommend a 50/50 mix of Heavy Cataphracts and Heavy Horse Archers, the archers will do tons of dmg and pick off any fleeing unit while the cataphracts keep them busy. + they are really good in sieges because they can still take a beating.
Somewhere I saw a clip of WWI Russian Cossacks cavalry, watching 10000+ cavalry charging sabers drawn is just amazing. Now imagine those 10000 armed with composite bows as well... Makes me want to hide my gold and flee to the woods!
Cavalry is the best when you're mercenary, no need for defensive siege, they're fast, your campaign movement will be great too, to be honest i always combine khuzait heavy horse archer with elite imperial cataphract, let the HA soften the enemy in column formation while following your movement, save the cataphract somewhere safe, after the HA run out of ammo, move your cataphract in skein formation, do the same with your HA, and charge from opposite direction works, this worked for me in total war and this game, except the HA charge tho, this only possible because HA in this game are op in melee, and if you're vassal just make sure to bring combined army with your fellow vassal, let them be your shield meat, and profit
I think early bow cav fares better if you set them to follow and make quick stops for them to fire with double taps back/forward. Not that it takes much effort to upgrade past them, but also helps after if you have two groups of archers to flank with.
horse archers can do a lot of dispatching if you have them follow you and just hold them in position when they can get shots at a clump of them. Especially if the rest of your army is charging in, the advantage of horse archers over archers is you get shots from more effective angles that the archers can't reach, and the AI doesn't really take advantage of that at all. And khan's guard do great in sieges! I think this strat can actually be optimal on the campaign map, just don't plan on your horse archers being able to kill more than 3 men each with their limited ammo.
I am now curious just how effective crossbowmen only army is - they often have good armor and they have shields for extra safe and effective melee. Specifically I'm interested in more "common" tier 5 ones like Imperial Sergant Crosbowmen and Vladian Sharpshooters, both of which is relatively easy to get.
Control your horse archers, leave the standing archers and infantries and cavalries to do whatever they want to do in the formation you setup them into. That's always the golden rule.
I had the displeasure to have a fight in open plains against the Khuzaits. They were outnumbered. They had like 200 while we (southern empire) we had 600. They won. They had so much cavalry, we couldn't do much and 50 of them survived. I tried the same battler twice. Fist I did the massive circle with archers in the middle . It worked good, but they just crashed in the middle breaking the circle multiple times until the infantry they had came in while at the same time the Horse archers were picking them off. The second attempt, wich I almost won, was to creat two separate units. Infantry was in a massive squard (if they try to charge in, they get trapped) and a cirlce of Archers. It worked at little better.
Yeah I know archery is busted and broken beyond belief which is the biggest issue. Then you put that on a horse and it's op, bows do piercing damage which makes since until your realise they coded it so piercing damage ignores almost all armor, so a single now shot can take 1/3 to half maybe more of your hp even when heavily armoured. They need to rebalance. Ex- cheapest vow in the game does 45 piercing damage, and the best armour in the game will block maybe 10-20 points of damage doing 35-25 damage from a shitty bow vs the best armour in the game it's silly. 1/4 to a 1/3 of your health gone from a hunter bow wth that should be mid teir crossbow damage.
@@t.o.g.thatoneguy5130 Apparently, according to a modder, the problem is that arrow deal blunt damage, wich ignores great part of the armour, hence you can be as armoured you want, 3 arrows take you down... so he changed it to cutting arrows. The mod basically makes arrows supper deadly to peasents, but is an annoyance to armoured units.
@@JoeMartinez18 blunt and Pierce ignore armour, try swinging at a heavily armoured Lord then stab him (using a sword) you'll see the damage difference go from 4 with a swing to nearly sometimes even 35 with a thrust (thrust do piercing damage), I get what they're going for with stabbing to get between the armor, but they put that same damage type on a bow as if every arrow gets between the armour, I think its goofy, not to mention that some short bows (that can be used on horseback) are almost as strong as war Bows which is ridiculous, I know it's early access but they just got a lot of rebalancing to do. I love that horse archers are finally usable now (unlike warband), but archery in general needs to be looked at. And by far the biggest issue is how the AI deal with horse archers if they fix that I think it would fix almost every problem with horse archers besides the way arrow damage works. (The biggest thing the mod author did was change bow damage from piercing to cutting)
@@JoeMartinez18 I don't know if that's the correct answer per se is a change the damage type, but something definitely needs to be done because (in my own experience) betania and the khuzaits take over everything almost every play through
@@t.o.g.thatoneguy5130 Yeah.... In my playthrough though somehting odd Happened. Now the Batanians are getting wrecked by The western empire and the Vlandians, while Aserai conquered Razih back in my last playthrough, though Khuzaits took Onora (One of Rhagaeas citie) and just Argoron while I just conquered Ryval and that castle west of it.
Now i'm wondering how a Legionaire only army would perform, would be nice to see as an attempt to "revieve a roman - like empire". I could imagine it being very terrain specific in terms of effectivity.
Yo this happened in real life that’s the awesome thing about bannerlord xD literally *Crassus* lol but yeah imagine being an infantry man and the horsemen have you pinned circling constantly shooting seemingly. Meanwhile they are cycling both; mounted archers/arrows and horses every couple hrs to keep enemy fatigued/pinned and keep the mobile armies advantageous vigor/energy and attrition advantage from the skirmish/es.
If one of my troops happens to block the ladder like in 10:36 he immediatly gets executed with a swift headshot. Would put a meme with crying Wesley Snipes with a gun but I am unable
I think it would be better to just park your archers in a loose line in front of the castle and just pick the walls clean from the ground. Seems like you lose most of them trying to climb the ladders.
that's the problem, during siege horse archers some how act like they are infantries and refuse to fire their arrows and instead choose to climb ladders and chop heads. Either that's a bug or it's a feature.
One trick is using a battering ram, ooen booth gates. Then keep your archers infront of the gates. The AI assumes you storm in so they send all troops to charge. Meaning they run off the walls through the narrow gate in yozr arrows
I literally did a playthrough like this lol.. easiest shit ever. Make two groups: A small group with ur elite Horsearchers that alwas attack as early as possible. The big group is spread as widely as possible and they attack about 20 seconds later. The first group will spread the enemy around and make their formations break up.. the second group destroys everything. Easy win against anybody.
Genghis khan had trouble with sieges until he got chinese engineers, but he was dominant on land battles just like displayed in this video, i can only imagine this is how they actually would do it!
Only problem with this strat is that creating a horse archer force beyond level 2 Khuzait HA (Khuzait Raiders) requires war horses. Each war horse costs around 500 gold so it will take 5000 gold to upgrade 10 horse archers and 50000 gold to get an army of a hundred of them. If you have enough gold tho, you can decimate forces twice or even three times your party size.
I've been using mostly archers with a bit of horse archers and some spears. Any cav the enemy sends either get mowed down by the archers or mauled by the spears. Then when the infantry are in range I have my cav follow me around the enemy which confuses them and gives my archers plenty of time to massacre them.
It's my final Mount and Blade II: Bannerlord giveaway and ITS A BIG ONE! So here's your last chance to win, Enter here- gleam.io/TwO85/biggest-mount-and-blade-ii-bannerlord-giveaway
These are awesome vids. I was highly interested in these kind of strategies. I'm glad to see someone testing them. And, testing them thoroughly. :D
@TheGoldenBandit Raid bandit camps or hire steppe recruits.
@TheGoldenBandit Kill steppe bandits, buy them, etc.
Charging with horse archers isn't even the most effective. You want to hold position until the enemy infantry get into melee range and then either charger or just run to the otherside of the map and hold position again
resonant watch this from 9:00 :
th-cam.com/video/rn85RHrShrI/w-d-xo.html
2:23 "They can't get a single hit on me"
Gets immediatly hit in the face with a rock
The "ugh" kills me
I died when that happened XD
rock hurt, No matter how strong your armor are.
would of been more hilarious if it was a jav in the neck
It was a chest hit
Resonant: “500 horse archers is an unrealistic amount.”
Genghis Khan: Allow me to introduce myself.
Crassus peeing himself
@@NoahKaneisme That poor fool.
@Abu Troll al cockroachistan every soldier also had atleast 2 horses
@@NoahKaneisme lol yeah
I wonder how history would have changed if he didn't fuck up so royally in Parthia.
@@imswanronson3558
Lol, pun intended?
It's said that Genghis Khan had around 80,000-100,000 mounted horse archers whom each owned 3-4 horses.... Imagine that!
Their map movement speed and carry capacity must have been crazy.
@@GameLeaderR you win! Ahahah
@@GameLeaderR except the herd modifier
@stupid person except those men had wives, sons, fathers, mothers etc... so the herd penalty wouldn’t apply and they’d get footmen on horses buffs xD
I'm just saying imagine if he attacked using all his horses and circled an entire army. Even 10000 horse archers would have been insane. Bet it would have felt like a mini earthquake.
you should try an army of 500 looters, stones for days
koldaris YEEEEES he is gonna need alot of morale tho
500 looters build a giant wall of stones and retreat while you’re in awe of their engineering capabilities.
That's OP
I'll try it I'm a stoner
Gameplay tip for horse archer forces: giving your HA a charge order isn’t what you wanna do because if they run out of ammo they’ll charge in and die. What you need to do is give a follow order and run lead your men in a circle around the enemy until you notice ammunition is low. Then, either coordinate a charge OR retreat fully and reengage the force with full ammo! Rinse and repeat until your enemies are defeated. I’ve taken on marked 6 times the size of mine with this strategy.
THE HORDE
better yet just hit f1 and then f4 to advance your troops. archers will fall back when enemy comes closer and horse archers just run around shooting arrows until they run out.
How do you get ammo refill?
@@aznfattass Did you ever test it? stop spreading fake news it is so bad tactic to use advance in any case any troop
The advance troop command is unreliable. To minimize casualties it’s best to just have the men follow you directly.
You can refill ammo by retreating from battle. To do this either hold tab and click retreat while in battle or run outside of the battle limits for 10 seconds. You will be brought back to the prebattle screen and can reengage as many times as you’d like as long as you’re healthy.
even if its not optimal in every scenario that view to a massive HA army running over the plains is worth it
The hit and run you can do with a full cav army is great not a single army can catch up with you
"They can't get a single hit on me"
M E L E
**thousand hits**
*Last Words*
Here is a tip. When you are in a field battle, hold your archers in one place and let them fire until the enemy starts to get close. this means that they dont get reduced accuracy from moving, but because they are mounted you can tell them to charge and run rings once the enemy gets within striking distance. Usually though, a force of ~80 mid to upper tier horse archers can have half their army routing before they get to you, and run rings around the other half
yeah, that moment when the enemies are fleeing and they turn their backs to your archers
Horse archers are significantly more effective if you split them into two groups.
Delegate the first group to "sergeant's command." Then wait a few seconds, and do the same for the second group.
Whatever they're circling will attempt to face them with their shields. If you've got two groups then you can't face both groups with shields so one group will be shooting their backs/sides.
I appreciate you starting with the basics! Really fun to see the progression. Keep it up man!
4:49 I think they're checking if the enemy is in range like irl
big if true
@@semamet That's how committed to detail they are!
i-ts better late than never- arrows that they throw are made a line that tells the enemy that "if you pass these arrows we'll beat the shit out of you" its an old tactic that mongolians and turks used
That's also how ships used to measure how much compensation they'd need to hit their shots.
I used to do it ti check range in Total War.
taking castles with horse archers, you breech first wall and then instead of charging into the castle, you setup firing position on chokepoin. As enemy will start comming, you will kill them before they can hurt you (because they are mostly low tier infantry).
I use horse archers more static in the firs moments of the battle. Just hold the ground so their shots are much more accurate and devastating. After enemy closes the gap I usually order them to follow me to the righ flank and after thst give order to charge. I find it more effective against infantry focused armies with this tactic.
How do you counter horse archers?
Do crossbow/foot archers effectively stop them?
C H foot archers can outshoot horse archers. Use shielded infantry to protect your archers and you shouldn’t have too much of a problem.
C H Crossbowmen don’t outshoot archers at the moment. Shield wall circle + archers should work but in same numbers horse archers tend to still win. Placing your cavalry at your left flank to engage them might also be a good choice.
an effective counter would be heavy cav at the left flank to charge them and silence
@@GewalfofWivia don't know how smart the ai is but circles can easily be pierced by cav
Khan's Guard also makes for VERY STRONG melee units because they use the 2H Glaive, a shock AoE melee weapon. The swings can dmg multiple enemies at a time. You could definitely siege castles with them and win against everything.
Even the low level horse archers are really strong. You actually feel bad for the enemy as they dont stand a chance
Yeah, I raised an army of 123 khuzait horse archer and heavy horse archers and killed a 1240 strong aserai army.
I charged, retreated, attacked again etc killing 400/round losing 33 men in total (23 were just wounded)
Stunning victory.
I was playing on easy difficulty but still, 123 vs 1240, and I lost 13 units and another 20 wounded. And they lost 1240 soldiers.
They are too OP lol, guess thats why the mongols managed to conquer 22% of the world.
@@DennisHeikki Yeah, before Muskets, they are the best armies in medieval ages.
@@hoyinching9313 Genghis Khan 2 times bigger than Alexander and 4 times bigger than the Romans :(
@Abu Troll al cockroachistan This is why Horse Archers are dominating like over 4000s years. It just works.
When the arrows get empty, you leave the battle and directly attack again.
You clever son of a bitch, I'm trying this now.
@@imswanronson3558 no thats a horrible tactic as leaving manually takes time to get to the border and your troops will die before you reach the edge of the map. The better way is to Press tab and click the retreat button its actually the leave button as it doesnt cost any troops/. So press tab>click retreat> attack again.
Kanav Kohli no penalty?
Wilfred De Lang I dont think so. I did it all the time with looters to farm my bow skill.
@@Kammerliteratur Probably you dont have a penalty when fighting a weaker enemy, so they dont want to fight you
This is what Byzantine Empire experienced after Manzikert
Turks at that point, were better at metallurgy than nomads of antiquity and were very keen on lancers and various other types of cavalry too.
But yeah, generally, you're right. Unlike Ottomans who tried to style themselves as Romans and tried to adapt their unit types a bit, Seljuks were mostly classic Turkic horse archery armies. But the height of nomad warriors were the Mongols.
*Roman empire but yea cuz byz isn't a thing
Mazikert was Iranian fighting style not Mongol or Turkish and Seljuks are Iranians
@@alimoradi8454 Delusionalism......
@@alimoradi8454 Lol
So Khan's Guard vs Fian Champions, who would win?
@@JS-cf2li open field ofc
on equal terms? Khan guards. The khan guards will run out of arrows quicker, then charge in. While the fians, with their heavy melee weapon built, their armor is mid-tier at best. Neither their weapon nor their armor will help them face a speed multiplier-boosted khuzait glaives.
I actually simulated this once. In 10 trials, I think the fians only won... once. Standing archers in general rely on number of arrows released over a certain period of time. Fian shoots farther and have better arrows, but shoots slower. In most general cases, this is okay, but an army of khan guards can't really be classified as "general" kek.
The master archers fared better. But ofc, they'll die quicker once it goes into melee.
@@reveriesend4668 How did you simulated it?
I do believe, open field, the Fian champions would win, especially with few troupe involved.
My reasoning is, while Khan's gards armor is slightly stronger, Fian champion got a really good ranger armor too, and their bow is really better in anyway (except the rate of fire which is slightly less, but still absurdly high for a bow this size). Also Fian Champion got god tier accuracy, unlike the Khan gard that sacrifice a bit of accuracy for being highly mobile on a horse back.
So, range seems to be at the adventage of the Fians. and while a Gard should defeat a Fian in melee (especially considering the horse charge and weapon reach) I don't think Fian would allow the gards many chance to come this close.
On larger battle, on advatage the Gards have over the Fian, is that they can more easely mess up the Fian's IA. In bannerlord, archer seems to prioritize shooting whoever is the closest to them. Which mean, Gards fire will be pretty effectiv on the still pretty dense "loose formation" of the Fians, while the fian have to target all over and arround them, and there fire will be far less effective, due to them "overkilling" a lot of targets. (Basically, they are so accurate, they will waste a lot of shots because of target acquisition, while the Gards, with their lower accuracy can just fore in the bunch and will almost certainly hit someone...)
That s just my opinion though... But I may confess myself biased toward Battania...
@@TeteBruleeFR you need to test it not just have an opinion based on your belief
I'm currently doing a khuzait play through and I just won a 14 versus 78 battle where I had just horse archers. I had 5 bucalareii and the other 9 were tribal nomads. I went up against all infantry, it was the minor faction leader who used oath keepers. They were mixed tier infantry but had about 10 maxed out oath keepers and I pulled it off only losing 1 horse archer.
It's not that hard to get Khan's Guard once your leadership is high enough to rank up bandit units that you've recruited from prisoners. They can be ranked up from the tier 1 and 2 steppe bandit units, so a few hideouts will get you quite a lot (use tournament arrows/bolts to wound them and get more prisoners).
Instead of letting them charge in woods or when the terrain is against you, it's better to lead then to an advantage like a hill and then lead them to another spot as the enemy closes. Rinse and repeat.
Do crossbowmen next. I’ve tried using them and they just seem so inferior to archers, I’d like to know if my hunch is correct.
I'd assume so, from what ive played. My advice for crossbows would be to put them in your garrison(s). They're superior on walls. That's sadly it. Fians for lyfe.
crossbowmen are really slow and they dont have much better armor/fighting ability when it comes to melee
The main advantage of cossbowmen is their high tiers having shields, making them a hybrid ranged/infantry. That's the best use I've found out of them.
The vlandian ones are pretty good
Most of the crossbowmen are bugged and have higher bow skill than crossbow skill. Use the mod that fixes unit stats.
Using advance over charge keeps the entire unit together to give you better spreads against enemy formations, a couple archers chasing a few isolated enemies is ineffective and wastes ammo
I had an army of 80 Khan's Guard in campaign before switching to the beta. :D I did have them backed up by about 30 Heavy Horse Archers and about 50 Heavy Lancers. Army was able to fight at 2 to 1 odds with nearly no casualties.
my main tactic for horse archers is the 'follow me' command and just circle around them a few times, retreat far away onto an elevated spot and then form a line and snipe the advancing units and if im severely out numbered ill just hit and retreat so i can restock on arrows and rinse and repeat
Imagine you feel that ground starts shaking and the noises comes closer to you and the last thing you see is that thousands of mounted archers charge at your castle,village,place,kingdom,💀
I wouldve went in the opposite direction😂😂😂😂😂
Genghis Khan at 13:30:
*IT'S ALMOST HARVESTING SEASON*
8:47 i see you, why did you try to kill that poor horse?
I noticed horse archers would hop on any nearby horse on the battlefield then joins the cantabrian circle again, really cool to watch.
Yeah AI is really nice, they pick up arrows and re-mount horses.
10:33
Man on right ladder: Wait wait wait, why i'm going first??????!!!!
Acrophobia is a serious issue.
I actually did that once xD
I'm doing a Khuzait horse archer playthrough at the moment and I swear I'm having some of the most fun I've ever had while gaming.
13:35 This is what Turks' preys felt for hundreds of years on the battlefield.
My current army consists of 120 Legionaries, 120 Fian Champions, 60 Cataphracts and 60 Khans Guards. I've taken on multiple 800-1000 man armies with 0 losses, it's so broken but so much fun lmao
Little trick with horse archers, you can retreat twice to refill your arrows
The khans are dope. My cavalry & horse archers really show their presence out in the field. I basically modeled my story after Atila. Started off as a mercenary for the empire then took over sturgia for myself. Now I'm debating on if i should take the khuzaits or ally them & take over the empiric territories they're at war with. Suggestions?
It's great to see that you enjoy making these videos, Thank you Resonant!
13:16 The Huns have arrived and the Roman Empire left the chat.
I get that reference, but they are based on mongols tho.
Hun turks
@@bobbybob5231 Khuzaits and Khergits are based on a Turko Mongol Mix
@@Gokokano huns are mongols
A large heavy horse archer with a core of decent spears and archers is one of the best counters I've seen against the empire's legions, they cant keep up with the horse acrchers and the regular archers hit from a distance with the spearmen coming in for clean up duty
Some tips using horse archers:
1. Take comfort knowing that it's the most powerful unit type on any flat terrain, but remember they struggle in difficult terrain because the potato horseman AI can be permanently stuck on trees, rocks, enemies, and friendlies.
2. Horse archers can be used exactly like archers - have them stay still and they will have good accuracy and good angles from their horses. Khan's Guards have 280 in bow - they don't exactly match the Fian Champions but they are still pretty damn good.
3. Khan's Guards are somewhat poorly armored and their athletics is... 25... So they are not the most useful in some cases. Still gotta love them though, cool as all heck.
4. The Imperial Bucellari are the best-armored horse archers with 130 one-handed, 130 bow, 120 riding AND 130 athletics. These guys are so versatile and just plain op that they can contest the #1 most powerful horse archers in my opinion. They do have a huge downside of very poorly armored horses though.
Khan's Guard has 280 bow, therefore much more accurate and faster RoF than Bucellari. As for armor, they have the equivalent to heavy inf armor, not exactly weak. They also carry Glaives, so in melee they are deadly in groups due to the AoE nature of that 2H weapon. In fact, they are OP and the only balance is its difficult to obtain many of them in-game. One weakness for Bucellari are their horse being unarmored, KG has the same armored horse as lancers!
Yak losing KGs in Sieges break my heart... Their armor is the best armor of Khuzait but it’s still a little underwhelming when compared to imperial or vlandian armor. Bucellari have the same body armor as the Elite Cataphract, just hilarious. It’s nearly 1 million a piece for a player to buy, if one can find it on sale at all. They are more useful in sieges and slightly more expendable.
really glad about the 'most replayed' feature
To be fair, the imperial army you took out if your Khan Guards had a lot of recruits and other low tiers units. If you had faced a similar number of Imperial Elite Cataphract or Battanian Fians, it might have been much closer. But I agree that horses archers are really powerful and hard to fight against.
The key is to not let them move and shoot. Move them out of range while holding fire and get them on a hill top then loose arrows when stationary, they can be just as accurate as foot archer. I usually use horse archer to distract enemy main line while my foot archer shoot them down.
I've found the best way is to put the cav archers into column formation and have them follow you, then proceed to ride circles around the enemy force. Its worked amazingly for me so far and looks freaking awesome!
Tactics note: It’s often better to sit in loose formation and let the enemy come to you. Their early cavalry charge can be dealt with easily, then the slower infantry blobs. If you’re at risk of being engaged, use the “Follow me” order and just circle right, run to a new elevated position and wait for the enemy to once again marshal forward to get you; all the while being slaughtered by accurate volleys of arrow fire. Rinse and repeat until the enemy breaks.
I was able to destroy a 1,000 man army with a hundred horse archers that way.
"F1 + F3" Sun Tzu :D
That big wave at the end, it like they're saying bye
Best tactic to play with HA.
Build an army with 3/4 of horses archers and 1/4 horse man, at the begining line horse archers and wait for the enemy to charge on you, when they are near your troops scream EVERYONE! and then F6 let the sargents take the lead. If you only atack with archers the enemy shields will allways look at them, horse man will penetrate infantry and the enemy infantry will try to strike them and follow them giving theyre backs to your fantastic machineguns... this is the tactic i use, never had any HA out of ammo... carefull with terrain an near vilages.
Love horse archers, but getting war horses is a pain. I wish there was a workshop that bred horses so you could invest. Needs to be a thing asap.
You can get it if you have a village as far as I'm aware.
@@subutaynoyan5372 don't you just get taxes from fiefs?
I got a lot of imperial chargers in empire's army loot. Any bandit that use horses also often bring some war horses with them
@@mcmarkmarkson7115 Well, that really depends on how prosperous your fief is
I love horse archers, not only because of the combat, but also chasing enemies and raiding.
While the circling mechanic is awesome in wide open areas against pure infantry what I find is best against mixed armies on wooded or uneven maps is to just use them like infantry archers in formation, but ones that can quickly run to the other side of the map and set up formation again. Just leave them in a formation until the enemy infantry gets close enough to hit and then run away and remake a formation. This keeps you kiting enemy cavalry around so you never have to fight them at the same time as infantry and risk some men dying. If you can't get the enemy to run into your formation just run up with your companions and take long range potshots at their army, or snipe their leader and eventually they will charge. If you run out of arrows just use the retreat button and reengage with full ammo. Rinse and repeat and you can kill 1000 unit armies with 100 and lose close to 0 units. Best units in the game in my opinion.
About the terrain. As you are completely horse archers you are gonna be a fast army and you can almost always choose the battle field.
I am playing kuzhait in my campain and because i really like mongol way of warfare i go for full cav with like 60% horse archer and rest schok cav
It work really well on open field i can crush army three to four time my size however when the battlefield is a forest it become really hard and i am not even trying in siege
Realistic and historic too!
If you get a forest map just retreat and click the attack button again until the game gives you the map you want
Turkic turkish and mongol khuzait Represent this nations
I found that the more commands you give horse archers do and that saying charge at the start is the best strat
When sieging with Archers, line up just in range and fore volleys at the wall defenses until it's thinned. Then when their ranged defenses are depleted, enter the the castle. Line up on the walls and fire down onto the remaining Infantry.
13:12 -> Khan's Guards start here and last only the last 3 minutes...
I like what you did there with those infantry, the hit and run technique, used by the Parthians against Crassus in Carrhae
If you have a horse archer only army and your men run out of ammo, just retreat and attack them again
5:04 That is one hell of a fall for the snow to scatter that up high
I am in southern empire but in battle vs aserai I recruited their horse archers. Omg so powerful. Their range is incredible I always seem them shooting arrows at the enemy when I can't even see them and they will whittle down troops before my foot archers can attack them. But I'm playing on very easy mode. Most importantly all tier units have the same upkeep. Which makes 100% cavalry army super cheap and strong. In total war games cavalry have smaller troop sizes and cost significantly more. So they are much less powerful. Plus total war spearmen have shield walls. In Mount and blade the ai infantry are always scattering.
12:00
"You didnt saw anything, I didnt saw anything"
didn't see
Hastati, Princepes, and Triarii are remnants of the Roman army pre-Marian reforms. Both of which preceded the Roman empire.
a simple charge is suboptimal in my opinion. if you really want to get maximum utility of them, take an advantageous position, wait while the enemy is getting close, but not too clos, while your horse archers are shooting them, then reposition them, take care not to run into the enemy, repeat until you win.
9:30 . They lose because you dont use cav correctly. Putting them on a wild charge and then not giving them orders breaks them up and over time they end up attacking in small numbers making it easier for them to get killed. You need to consistently pull them together and do whole unit charges.
"they can't get a single hit on me"
*Instantly gets hit*
I'm pretty much stomping armies with up to 800 units with my 200 Cavalary Army.
I can only recommend a 50/50 mix of Heavy Cataphracts and Heavy Horse Archers, the archers will do tons of dmg and pick off any fleeing unit while the cataphracts keep them busy.
+ they are really good in sieges because they can still take a beating.
Somewhere I saw a clip of WWI Russian Cossacks cavalry, watching 10000+ cavalry charging sabers drawn is just amazing. Now imagine those 10000 armed with composite bows as well... Makes me want to hide my gold and flee to the woods!
Cavalry is the best when you're mercenary, no need for defensive siege, they're fast, your campaign movement will be great too, to be honest i always combine khuzait heavy horse archer with elite imperial cataphract, let the HA soften the enemy in column formation while following your movement, save the cataphract somewhere safe, after the HA run out of ammo, move your cataphract in skein formation, do the same with your HA, and charge from opposite direction works, this worked for me in total war and this game, except the HA charge tho, this only possible because HA in this game are op in melee, and if you're vassal just make sure to bring combined army with your fellow vassal, let them be your shield meat, and profit
I think early bow cav fares better if you set them to follow and make quick stops for them to fire with double taps back/forward. Not that it takes much effort to upgrade past them, but also helps after if you have two groups of archers to flank with.
horse archers can do a lot of dispatching if you have them follow you and just hold them in position when they can get shots at a clump of them. Especially if the rest of your army is charging in, the advantage of horse archers over archers is you get shots from more effective angles that the archers can't reach, and the AI doesn't really take advantage of that at all. And khan's guard do great in sieges! I think this strat can actually be optimal on the campaign map, just don't plan on your horse archers being able to kill more than 3 men each with their limited ammo.
I am now curious just how effective crossbowmen only army is - they often have good armor and they have shields for extra safe and effective melee.
Specifically I'm interested in more "common" tier 5 ones like Imperial Sergant Crosbowmen and Vladian Sharpshooters, both of which is relatively easy to get.
Pillagius me too
For sieges I let them use all of their ammo till they run out. Usually by then the defenders are softened up for an successful attack
Control your horse archers, leave the standing archers and infantries and cavalries to do whatever they want to do in the formation you setup them into. That's always the golden rule.
I had the displeasure to have a fight in open plains against the Khuzaits. They were outnumbered. They had like 200 while we (southern empire) we had 600. They won. They had so much cavalry, we couldn't do much and 50 of them survived.
I tried the same battler twice. Fist I did the massive circle with archers in the middle . It worked good, but they just crashed in the middle breaking the circle multiple times until the infantry they had came in while at the same time the Horse archers were picking them off.
The second attempt, wich I almost won, was to creat two separate units. Infantry was in a massive squard (if they try to charge in, they get trapped) and a cirlce of Archers. It worked at little better.
Yeah I know archery is busted and broken beyond belief which is the biggest issue. Then you put that on a horse and it's op, bows do piercing damage which makes since until your realise they coded it so piercing damage ignores almost all armor, so a single now shot can take 1/3 to half maybe more of your hp even when heavily armoured. They need to rebalance. Ex- cheapest vow in the game does 45 piercing damage, and the best armour in the game will block maybe 10-20 points of damage doing 35-25 damage from a shitty bow vs the best armour in the game it's silly. 1/4 to a 1/3 of your health gone from a hunter bow wth that should be mid teir crossbow damage.
@@t.o.g.thatoneguy5130 Apparently, according to a modder, the problem is that arrow deal blunt damage, wich ignores great part of the armour, hence you can be as armoured you want, 3 arrows take you down... so he changed it to cutting arrows.
The mod basically makes arrows supper deadly to peasents, but is an annoyance to armoured units.
@@JoeMartinez18 blunt and Pierce ignore armour, try swinging at a heavily armoured Lord then stab him (using a sword) you'll see the damage difference go from 4 with a swing to nearly sometimes even 35 with a thrust (thrust do piercing damage), I get what they're going for with stabbing to get between the armor, but they put that same damage type on a bow as if every arrow gets between the armour, I think its goofy, not to mention that some short bows (that can be used on horseback) are almost as strong as war Bows which is ridiculous, I know it's early access but they just got a lot of rebalancing to do. I love that horse archers are finally usable now (unlike warband), but archery in general needs to be looked at. And by far the biggest issue is how the AI deal with horse archers if they fix that I think it would fix almost every problem with horse archers besides the way arrow damage works. (The biggest thing the mod author did was change bow damage from piercing to cutting)
@@JoeMartinez18 I don't know if that's the correct answer per se is a change the damage type, but something definitely needs to be done because (in my own experience) betania and the khuzaits take over everything almost every play through
@@t.o.g.thatoneguy5130 Yeah.... In my playthrough though somehting odd Happened. Now the Batanians are getting wrecked by The western empire and the Vlandians, while Aserai conquered Razih back in my last playthrough, though Khuzaits took Onora (One of Rhagaeas citie) and just Argoron while I just conquered Ryval and that castle west of it.
Now i'm wondering how a Legionaire only army would perform, would be nice to see as an attempt to "revieve a roman - like empire". I could imagine it being very terrain specific in terms of effectivity.
managed to get about 30 hastati as prisoners and recruit them later on
the triarii look sick and are pretty damn good infantry
For the siege just line up under the wall and bait out the enemy to peek your archers, then the city is yours
Excellent narration. Felt like I was watching a football match haha.
you should do 500 of the top crossbow troops. Those are probably better than bows in high numbers due to higher flying projectile speed and range.
Yo this happened in real life that’s the awesome thing about bannerlord xD literally *Crassus* lol but yeah imagine being an infantry man and the horsemen have you pinned circling constantly shooting seemingly.
Meanwhile they are cycling both; mounted archers/arrows and horses every couple hrs to keep enemy fatigued/pinned and keep the mobile armies advantageous vigor/energy and attrition advantage from the skirmish/es.
The optimum way to play horse archers is to just think of them like faster archers. Form a line and move it only if the enemy get close
Yeah the whole point is not having a real line for enemy to attack
could you make a battle test between 500 Fiann champion vs 500 Khan 's guard? I'm sure your video will have a lot of views.
Amazing commentary! Very funny to watch! Well done.
If one of my troops happens to block the ladder like in 10:36 he immediatly gets executed with a swift headshot. Would put a meme with crying Wesley Snipes with a gun but I am unable
do 1000 farmers next
do you mean peasants or is there a actual class called farmers that i dont know of
Lake Rat Wreckers are badass. Would love to see a lake rat army!
13:13 what u came for
I think it would be better to just park your archers in a loose line in front of the castle and just pick the walls clean from the ground. Seems like you lose most of them trying to climb the ladders.
that's the problem, during siege horse archers some how act like they are infantries and refuse to fire their arrows and instead choose to climb ladders and chop heads. Either that's a bug or it's a feature.
One trick is using a battering ram, ooen booth gates. Then keep your archers infront of the gates.
The AI assumes you storm in so they send all troops to charge. Meaning they run off the walls through the narrow gate in yozr arrows
dude just let the horse archers army follow you and go around a circle on the attackers this is how to win any battle
I've found that any more than 30 horse archers get in each others way when you have a rough map.
I literally did a playthrough like this lol.. easiest shit ever. Make two groups: A small group with ur elite Horsearchers that alwas attack as early as possible. The big group is spread as widely as possible and they attack about 20 seconds later. The first group will spread the enemy around and make their formations break up.. the second group destroys everything. Easy win against anybody.
I wish I had a computer I'd love to get this game
Welcome to Mount & Arrow : Banner Lord
"...as you can see they cant get a single hit on me"
*is casually hit by a rock while saying the sentence
Genghis khan had trouble with sieges until he got chinese engineers, but he was dominant on land battles just like displayed in this video, i can only imagine this is how they actually would do it!
Only problem with this strat is that creating a horse archer force beyond level 2 Khuzait HA (Khuzait Raiders) requires war horses. Each war horse costs around 500 gold so it will take 5000 gold to upgrade 10 horse archers and 50000 gold to get an army of a hundred of them.
If you have enough gold tho, you can decimate forces twice or even three times your party size.
It's actuslly a good way to balance out the advantage of khuzaits in early game
13: 45 -> Rare footage of battle of Kalka River circa 1223 , colorized.
A full army of only horse arches makes mount and blade way to easy
I've been using mostly archers with a bit of horse archers and some spears. Any cav the enemy sends either get mowed down by the archers or mauled by the spears. Then when the infantry are in range I have my cav follow me around the enemy which confuses them and gives my archers plenty of time to massacre them.
We need some peasants the great hardworking people lets hervest
We are of the same house lol. Calradia fears the golden snake atop a black banner. Always my choice, or a golden lion.