Men In Black on Very Hard

[perry]

So... how to manage it??

I usually manage to kill the MIBs, but then I am utterly weakened and fail to kill his Heavy Infs..

I have played through the Roman Campaign several times on Very Hard, and I manage to beat all the other scenario on this difficulty setting, save this one...


My army:
LEGATE LVL9
SKIRM LVL 6
AUXILIAE LVL 5
AUXILIAE LVL 4
VELITE LVL 2
SCOUT LVL 6

[honvedseg]

I generally upgrade my Scouts to Aux Cav as soon as funds allow. Scouts and Nobles really don't quite have the durability to face some of the tougher opponents as the campaign progresses. As for the Men in Black, I usually charge them with a unit of Aux Cav to inflict a few quick trample casualties, with a pair of Aux Infantry units side-by-side backing them up to complete the job. I've had some success putting a militia unit or two wide on each flank and back a bit, so they converge on those opposing Spearmen from flank or rear about the time the Spearmen join the big furball in the middle. Either that, of use the weaker units to hold them away until your Aux in the middle finish spitting out the bones of the MIB and their far less-capable support in the middle.

[perry]

I generally upgrade my Scouts to Aux Cav as soon as funds allow. Scouts and Nobles really don't quite have the durability to face some of the tougher opponents as the campaign progresses. As for the Men in Black, I usually charge them with a unit of Aux Cav to inflict a few quick trample casualties, with a pair of Aux Infantry units side-by-side backing them up to complete the job.

OK, thats nice advice, but I don't get it.

My unit list looks like this :

LEGATE LVL9 = 0 D
SKIRM LVL 6 = 100 D
AUXILIAE LVL 5 = 300 D
AUXILIAE LVL 4 = 300 D
VELITE LVL 2 = 200 D
SCOUT LVL 6 = 150 D

That gives a grand total of 1050 D to spend, if I've gotten the maths together correctly.

A unit of Aux Cav costs 500 D.
That means I can only have 1 unit of AuxInf (300D) to support the Cav..?
Or have I missed something here ..? (I'm uncertain wheter I might have some equipment on these above guys.. gotta check..)

[honvedseg]

Maybe I upgraded the cav after this battle rather than before, but I definitely used a cav unit in the middle, backed by a pair of Aux Infantry (which I KNOW I had, since they were the first "permanent" units I bought), with either two militia or a milita and a peasant unit, one on each flank as "side armor" for my Auxes. If you added any weapons or armor, that rules out this combination.

I never add equipment until I've got at least 2 Aux Inf and an Aux Cav unit, and rarely add any until after fielding a second cav and a heavy unit. The better initial stats of the higher-quality units are worth far more than the cost of the gear, and the sooner you can purchase and start accumulating XP with those units, the more powerful they'll get over the course of the game. You can always "trade in" a unit for full value, as long as you haven't added equipment, so I'll recruit a "temporary" weaker unit until I've got enough funds to replace it with a "permanent" one.

It took me a couple of tries to get through this one on the VH difficulty setting, but it wasn't the toughest battle in my opinion. The charging cav unit got crushed with severe losses, and both of the weak flanking units broke and ran, but the two Aux Infantry were still very much in the fight when the opposing force turned and fled.