Man, these skirmishers are hard!!!!

[duncan]

One of the main difference between Spartan and CoW for me, at least in the battle mode...I find really tough to deal with skirmishers and even peasants with hand-to-hand troops. Even the lower rank skirmisher decimate my militia spearmen (not sure about the name, I have the spanish version of the game) before they arrive to combat. An 8-skirmish troops army can easily defeat a mixed army (militia spearmen, auxilia and some skirmishers). And the peasants can beat easily the militia in rough terrain...and the early chariots are crrrrrrrap against almost everything!!!!!!!! Chariots of War? Skirmishers of War!!!!!!!!!!! I'm enjoying the game a lot but I have to adapt my fighting style quickly!!!!!!

What do you prefer? Those weaker skirmishers from "Spartan" or the CoW ones? I find more enjoyable the CoW ones. The Spartan ones did not hurt that much...

[IainMcNeil]

Chariots are lethal if you can keep them moving. If they get bogged down they will get cut to pieces. This usually means not leading the charge with them, but instead using them to cut down disorganised infantry. The tactics are definitely differnt to Spartan

[honvedseg]

I made a simple mod to the squads.txt file to reduce the effectiveness of skirmishers in the early parts of the game. Using a text editor (Wordpad will work), reduce the ammo to 5 for javelinmen and around 10 for the bowmen. This is probably a lot more historically accurate, since the typical javelin load was usually either two or three, and 5 allows for the possibility that they may have had additional javelins carried with the supplies. With only two or three shots, they would be only marginally effective at best, which might be historically accurate, but then they'd be way overpriced.

Even 5 javelins per man can still demolish a unit of peasant levy, or severely punish light infantry, but skirmishers will no longer dominate the early stages of the game. The other advantage to this is that they will run out of ammo shortly after your own melee troops get thoroughly entangled with the enemy, so it reduces "friendly fire" casualties.

The only other way to beat skirmishers in the early stages of the game is to send one unit of "cannon-fodder" a little ways ahead of the main attack, to soak up some of the enemy's ammo, so the rest can close without getting torn up too badly. Spread your other troops out as much as possible. Bunching them (especially one right behind the other) gives the enemy a lot more targets to hit with each volley.

[penguinism]

My favorite tactic is the troop follow by skirmishers(troops acting as a screen). Seem to work all the time even later on in the game. When facing Chariots I simply replace the normal troops with spearmen.

[zharrgonn]

Its a rock/paper/scissors situation. To counter skirmisher effectiveness in the early game you need some chariots to charge them. Not advance, charge. If you don't have chariots then attack in columns. Your lead units will get shot to hell but the following units will get them into hand to hand where you should be able to outlast them. I have found militia spearmen effective against them.

Another tactic to use, borrowed from sea warefare, is crossing their T. Form a column on one side of the battle field away from them and charge. At some point your troops will turn to face them and move into contact and the battle lines will resemble a T with your troops forming the crossbar which will give them local superiority of numbers for a while, hopefully long enough for them to defeat a couple of his units before the rest can join in the fray.

[guineawolf]

for me,you guys need to learn one thing,war got casualties.You need to sacrifice 1 or 2 of your squads to draw the "attention of enemy arrows and javelins,at the same time the main army holds(hold long) behind.This tactics are very useful when your leading 1st or 2nd squads face enemy infantry,enemy arrows and javelins will hit their own troops,that is how the friendly fire appears.When your main army comes up,enemy archers or skirmishers already out of arrows and javelins(or nearly out of them),and most of the enemy infantry oredi facing heavy casualties,that thanks to their archers.At this time you just need to spoke out the same speech as the Edward Longshank in the "BRAVE HEART".Send up the rest,your army just need to clean the field.

when you send the leading 1st or 2nd squads,remember to send put the most useless squads in that army(khepetj,levy,militia spearmen),let those stronger melee units stays,coz in the rest of that battle,you just need to do melee combat.

or you can use egyptian,the egyptian teheru spearmen got the fastest mobility in the battlefield.(teheru spearmen and medjay skirmisher are the fastest INFANTRY in battlefield.

or use your numbers to solve that problem,that won't be work at the later game....(for imposible dificulty)

[Amob_M_S]

If you can't beat em, join em.

In my Dilmuni game, when I got into a huge war with the enormous Hittites and a bogged down, high-casualty, back-and-forth campaign in egypt, I was using mixed armies of 4 Swordsmen, 2 Gish-giger Battle Carts, and 2 Sabrum Qualatum. These did well against smaller nations, but against the two enemy superpowers they were only about 50%. I was even losing in Syria to the Hittites at one point.

Then I changed tactics. The highest form of archers became available, and they were deadly efficient, so I just started marching armies of eight size-3 archers around and beat the game in no time. It created an impossibly cool rain-of-arrows effect, one of my favorite "holy shit that's cool" moments in gaming history.