Combinations

[whitehorses]

Are the best armies against the Nasties of AoW - Legions, Elephants & Pikes - combined arms?
e.g Longbowmen/Artillery & Knights, Skirmishers & Quality Spearmen, Light Chariots & Heavy Foot?
So that where one may be weak against something 'orrible, you have something that can counter that weakness?

This rather put the kybosh on 1-trick ponies, but that's the point of history though - Armies that had all their power concentrated in one area tended to get found out sooner or later - the Light Horse hordes of Eastern Europe & the East, the Hoplites of Greece, the Knights of Feudal Europe, the Lowland Pikemen, etc.

Is AoW able to reflect this well?



Cheers,
Jer

[hammy]

One dimensional armies can struggle against the wrong opponent. I wouldn't for example like to use Low Countries pikemen against an Seljuk Turk. On the other hand some of the more limited armies like hoplite Greek might actually work quite well against ahistorical foes.

I am aiming to test out Seljuk against holites if I can find any takers next week.

Hammy

[lawrenceg]

I think the original question was:

Are combined-arms armies effective against one-dimensional armies ?

In my limited experience (4 games) my combined arms Scots Irish were effective against fairly one dimensional hoplites (with some psiloi, Thracians and light horse) and Scots Highland/Isles (no mounted, little or no light foot). Both the players were as inexperienced as me in these games.

I doubt they would have been effective against Turks, Legions, or quality longbowmen. They might have been OK against pikes if these had no support troops with them.

Lawrence Greaves

[whitehorses]

One dimensional armies can struggle against the wrong opponent. I wouldn't for example like to use Low Countries pikemen against an Seljuk Turk. On the other hand some of the more limited armies like hoplite Greek might actually work quite well against ahistorical foes.

I am aiming to test out Seljuk against holites if I can find any takers next week.

Hammy

How versatile & flexible is a Mongol/Golden Horde Army?
On paper, it looks dead good with bow-armed Light Cavalry & Lance-armed Heavy Cavalry - but how good is it in practice?

Or is an army with decent foot AND Mounted a better option?


Cheers,
Jer

[rbodleyscott]

How versatile & flexible is a Mongol/Golden Horde Army?

Very effective.

I have recently played 5 games with an Ilkhanid Mongol army - entirely mounted apart from one 4 base battle group of light foot archers.

I won 4 out of 5 of the games. The only one I lost was the only one in which I did not make an off-table flank march and got swept off the battlefield by a combined arms army that (because of the prevailing terrain) I could not outflank.

Combined arms armies may be more flexible, but entirely mounted armies are effective and fun.

[caliban66]

I think these are one of the things that must be very difficult to set. Historical armies did not have good chances or at least against every opponent. I think that it??s more important to make armies work as they really did rather to balance them too much. I think hoplite armies will act in a very real way, but guess they will have real problems with some kind of cavalry-based armies. I don??t expect them to fight hand to hand with mongols, for example.

[killerhobbit]

How versatile & flexible is a Mongol/Golden Horde Army?
On paper, it looks dead good with bow-armed Light Cavalry & Lance-armed Heavy Cavalry - but how good is it in practice?

It is always strange when infantry armies fight against a mobile mounted army.
Either the table is to small for the evading Mongols or it is just a mounted partisan style of warfare.
Players tend to forget that battles have good reason when happening. Either the infantry armies is doing a siege, or it is trying to march to a mongol city to conquer and destroy it, they might defend a mountain pass to slow down enemy march, or they just try to get to a fortified city of their own side.


Mounted armies had their problems too, but normally not on the battlefield.
Mongols had huge problems when laying siege. Once they tried to change the flow of a river to swamp a chinese city.
Result was their own camp was swamped and illnesses broke out.
In addition mounted armies have to leave the battlefield in the afternoon
because a mounted armies will loose when they are caught by a night raid from an infantry army.
Because of this they normally have their baggage train and camp far away from the battlefield.

Maybe victory conditions should count wounded mongol as dead if the battle ends without winner.
or the mounted army has to kill a special number of enemy element. Otherwise the infantry army managed to escape to a nearby fortress etc.