A guide to missile units - Part 2

Behold a new article! Here I conclude the discussion about missile units. Let's break down and analyse how the introductory concepts in the first article truly come to life: efficiency is one of the roads to victory, and this is no less true for ranged units.

Early game

Also known as "when to decide the pace of the battle". This is the time when most arrow exchanges take place, and also the moment when you probe how your opponent thinks and reacts.

Deployment. First of all, you need to anticipate what you will be facing even when you're still in the deployment phase and you're placing your ranged units. Which faction my opponent is playing with? What are the terrain features? How can I take advantage of my range / ammo / numbers / accuracy?

A correct deployment of missiles can give you an edge over your opponent, since the less you run your men around, the more effective your ranged units are. A unit is most vulnerable to missiles when moving or running, and if your ranged troops are taking casualties when moving they cannot even shoot back in retaliation.
When playing with lots of missile units, as in steppe battles, this can be the difference between dominating or losing the skirmish phase. You need to have a plan, and anticipate what you must do to achieve your goals: think ahead and plan accordingly, nothing is more important.

"You're good, you're very good! But you must always, always be thinking two or three moves ahead: your brother is a master at it." Professor James Moriarty to Sigerson Holmes, "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother"

Keep also in mind that running your men is a source of fatigue. "What can a soldier do who charges when out of breath?" Missile units are no exception: their general performance, especially their speed, can be significantly hindered: not the greatest source of fun when your archers get caught in melee by cavalrymen lusting for blood.

Formation. What have we learnt from the introductory concept of beaten zone? I don't want to have my men packed up in the beaten zone of my opponent's ranged units. There is a simple solution for long-ranged missile duels: use long and thin formation of loosely formed archers, and don't position missile or light troops too closely one to each other. This minimises the amount of men inside the beaten zone, and therefore the casualties. In one of gamegeek2's commentary videos on YouTube this is clearly evident: the power of the formation gives his Toxotai Kretikoi a clear edge in the missile fight against multiple archer units in big squares.

However, since nothing comes for free in life, there is a clear drawback when using this tactic: manoeuvrability. Long lines of loose formation infantry are clumsy and wheel slowly, which is a problem if you have no map control and when playing in Huge scale.

The main reason why everyone likes using square formations for cavalry rather than having shallow lines is because they are a lot easier to manoeuvre. Horse archers are very mobile, but come in low numbers. There are small "tricks" to achieve a proper micromanagement of their formation, for example placing them in column formation while running on flanks or from one flank to the other. Such expedients pay off really well: according to the beaten zone table, the column is better when receiving flanking fire, so that you can minimize your casualties.

However, even if loose formation is such a powerful tool to get an advantage, close formation can play a role as well. When massing fire on one single target, several units in close formation can be devastating.

Targeting. Choosing the right target for your missile units is another point to be aware of.

Macilrille wrote a guide to archery which contains some good advice.

Now, the Vanilla advisor would repeat 100+ times that you could weaken the enemy centre with missiles and then push through with a charge. I never found or find this to work. What I do instead is to prioritise my targets, what you want to take out with archers is the low-armour-high–lethality units of your enemy. These will often be enemy archers and slingers (especially HAs) that are covered from your cavalry, or elite units with little armour such as Falxmen, Galatian Wild Men, Gallic Swordsmen and German Slagonez and Wargozez. Especially you want to target “Scare” units such as Wargozez, Gaesetae, etc.

If none of these are around or your cavalry can ride down enemy slingers and archers with no interference from nasty pointy things, what you want to target is enemy infantry and cavalry that you can actually harm. Never waste shots on heavily armoured enemies except in the circumstances I describe below where you want to push their morale over the Breaking Threshold. Medium phalanxes and hoplites are targets, but others are better, you will form an idea by trying. I cannot recall the specific order in which I take down enemies except on the battlefield and it changes with the situation.

Note that I barred some parts of the quotation: they are not relevant in multiplayer, since he is referring to fire arrows which have been removed in online games. Also, instead of unarmoured men you should prioritise the targeting of unshielded men: shield is much more important than armour for missile protection, since its protection value is doubled against missile fire. As you can see in this replay, for example, shooting Kluddargos (which have 11 armour but no shield) is a good idea because of the damage you can dish out in short order.

However, another advice that Macilrille gives in the same guide is clear and gets straight to the point: "shooting at heavily armoured opponents if other targets are present is a waste and should be punished accordingly by a more difficult battle."

Midgame

During midgame the most important thing that usually happens is the ensuing of the melee. The two lines collide and men start pushing, killing and dying. This is when short-ranged missile fire (aka javelins) truly shine.

There are two big differences between arrows and javelins, apart from range. There are a lot more arrows than javelins, but javelins have a significantly higher attack. This means that each javelin volley is much more important than an arrow volley: javelins must be conserved so that they can wipe out entire units at the right moment. This is true also for arrows, of course, but with the less abundant javelins each volley is relevant.

Also, there's something that's not really evident at first glance. In the EDU (export_descr_units.txt, found in EB/Data), the txt file where the stats of all the units in the game are written down, javelins are grouped in a different class than arrows (or sling bullets). In fact, while arrows are "missile", javelins are "thrown": javelins are basically considered by the game as thrown spears. This doesn't seem a big deal, until you remember that shields double their protection value against "missile" weapon type. WOW. Javelin fire does not give shield value doubling to the unit the javelins are shot at! This is something worth remembering: even if big shield units (Roman infantry, Hoplitai…) are impervious to javelins from the front due to their already high shield value, when soldiers with small shield (3 or less) receive a javelin volley in the face they die much more easily than if they get hit by arrows.

Some factions (Sweboz, Getai) have exceptionally good javelin infantry (high attack, high accuracy, lots of javelins); some factions (Romani, Lusotannan) have access to large number of ap javelins (pila, soliferra) extremely dangerous to armoured foes. Play according to your faction strengths.

Some Germanic warriors from 1st Century BC to 1st Century AD. Note the iron-pointed spears, called "frameae" (singular "framea"). Those spears are one of the reasons why Germanic cavalry in EB is so effective.

Of course, when talking about javelins, frontal fire is not that relevant. We're in midgame, armies are sufficiently close to each other and flanking manoeuvres are taking place. As I said before, flanking enemy formations and singling out targets with massed javelin volleys are astonishingly effective ways to cause routs or even chainrouts.

Flanking is easier with javelin cavalry, as they are much more mobile; massing is easier with infantry, because they're more numerous and a lot cheaper. It is also important to remember that flanking your opponent, if not properly done, leaves your units unprotected and vulnerable; in this sense javelin cavalry has an edge over infantry, because its speed allows to quickly unleash a volley or two and then charge to break a wavering unit, while also easily escaping from any retaliation your enemy could prepare.

Unit scale plays a role as well: as I explained in the article concerning differences between Large and Huge, the increase from Large scale to Huge scale increases the killing power of javelin-armed units, especially the ones with lower accuracy. So bear in mind that sometimes more javelins are more important than more accurate javelins.

Lategame

In the lategame missile units somehow lose importance, for the depletion either of the ammunitions or the manpower in the units themselves: one key factor for being effective is unleashing a large amount of projectiles, and this cannot happen when a unit is depleted. However, if you notice some of your melee units still have javelins, it might be worth to expend them in the back of engaged enemies instead of charging immediately. Why? Melee units have generally a high javelin attack; in the lategame units are usually exhausted; exhausted units have fragile morale. All these elements factored together give a much higher probability of insta-routing the targeted unit.

However, you must also choose wisely which unit to target, since the bigger scarcity of ammunitions imposes a greater care. It's much more important to rout a heavy unit, or a unit that is pinning a lot of your men preventing them to engage in other sectors, than a random unit close to your javelineers.

I think that's all for today. I hope the conclusion of this guide dedicated to missile units gave you some good points to think about. As usual, if you have comments or suggestions please let me know, so I can improve it even further.

Cheers!