Slitherine

I'm pretty new to the game and the series but have not had too much trouble with the epic battles until Towton. I cannot seem to hold on tightly enough for Norfolk to matter. The hill doesn't seem to do very much for me at all whether charging down or forcing them to charge up.

At start I duel the Lancastrian longbows until the main body of their foot advance. Am I missing something in this phase? In the actual battle the York longbowmen poured arrows down on the main body using the wind, but ingame that seems like an invitation for their higher quality units to charge me and knock out the Yorkist archery advantage.

Interested in other views. So please speak up, but I am not new to the game but find this battle impossible as the Yorkists. I know Norfolk is meant to arrive at some point, but have never seen him. After two turns of arrows the Lancastrians just roll forward and despite swapping out archers and crossbows in time so the advancing Lancastrians get real fights when they hit the slope, they are so much better quality they get 40 points so easily. My reading of the battle is that the Yorkists line held the Lancastrians for some time before Norfolk arrived. I have never got the idea the Yorkist army was meant to be low quality. I know the game tries to represent the exhaustion of the Yorkists, but the hit on Yorkist quality is extreme.

julianbarker wrote: ↑Sat Jun 18, 2022 8:04 pm Interested in other views. So please speak up, but I am not new to the game but find this battle impossible as the Yorkists. I know Norfolk is meant to arrive at some point, but have never seen him. After two turns of arrows the Lancastrians just roll forward and despite swapping out archers and crossbows in time so the advancing Lancastrians get real fights when they hit the slope, they are so much better quality they get 40 points so easily. My reading of the battle is that the Yorkists line held the Lancastrians for some time before Norfolk arrived. I have never got the idea the Yorkist army was meant to be low quality. I know the game tries to represent the exhaustion of the Yorkists, but the hit on Yorkist quality is extreme.

I was actually concerned that this scenario was too easy! I played it twice in it's current format during testing, winning 11/42 and 17/44 on Prince level. I don't think there have been any changes to the game since then that has disturbed the balance.

These were my tactics during testing:

Don't move the Yorkist frontline archers forward, just sit at maximum range and fire away. The wind advantage makes their shooting very effective, while the Lancastrian is negligible.

The Lancastrians don't always advance after 2 turns of shooting, the scripting for their advance is a bit more sophisticated than that. I will try not to give the secret away, but just fire straight ahead, don't concentrate fire on one enemy unit.

Move the third and fourth rank units up to reinforce the second rank, and extend the line, but don't block the gaps in the second line, as the archers will need them to retreat through. Maybe swap out the Militia units in the second rank, and replace them with better quality units.

When the Lancastrians advance, turn your archers and then move back through the gaps in the second line. Keep your second line on the slope, it's POA effect will more than offset the drop in Yorkist unit quality. Maybe move some of the left flank units forward to take advantage of the slope. You can cause the AI to hesitate a lot on your left flank, if you position your Currours out there to threaten their flank.

When the archers get back to the main line, position them so that they can continue to shoot from safe positions. They still get the advantage of the wind, unless they are shooting back towards their own baseline.

Let the Lancastrians charge your line, you can then take advantage of any mistakes the AI makes, and get in your own flank attacks. Use your unengaged units to cover any breakthroughs or make any local counterattacks as necessary. Extending your line helps here, as you can outflank the Lancastrian advance quite easily, as it tends to bunch up in the centre.

Just played it again on Prince level today, I didn't try too hard, and my luck was very bad, and I ended up narrowly losing 60%/57%. So I am happy with the difficulty at Prince level, but maybe it should be a bit easier on the lower levels. So for the next update, I will make it a bit easier at Duke level and below (ie; more points to spend, and less of a quality drop for the Yorkists).

BTW, Norfolk's arrival is random, in my battle today his command started to arrive on turn 14.


cheers

Paul

I have just got the this DLC and I have tried out this scenario twice on Duke level. It seems very unbalanced to me. In the first game I was massacred after making some early mistakes. The Duke of Norfolk's contingent started to arrive as I was being finished off. I abandoned the second game on about Turn 10 with 4 disrupted and 4 fragmented units in my battleline with only one Lancastrian unit disrupted.

The size of the armies at Duke level are 15124 to 25605 in the Lancastrians favour. This is a huge disparity. Also, various Yorkist units are either "demoralised" or "disheartened". I don't understand this, or what impact it has on those soldiers, although it obviously isn't good.

The Duke of Norfolk's contingent (I haven't managed to see all of it yet) appears to come out of the 14thC inasmuch as mounted knights seem to be at the core of it. These seems odd as it would, in reality, have been constituted of men-at-arms, billmen and longbowmen. Also, the Duke of Norfolk was on his deathbed at the time and was not at the battle. Walter Blount and Robert Horne were the commanders of this contingent according to some sources I have read.

stockwellpete wrote: ↑Thu Jul 07, 2022 8:13 am I have just got the this DLC and I have tried out this scenario twice on Duke level. It seems very unbalanced to me. In the first game I was massacred after making some early mistakes. The Duke of Norfolk's contingent started to arrive as I was being finished off. I abandoned the second game on about Turn 10 with 4 disrupted and 4 fragmented units in my battleline with only one Lancastrian unit disrupted.

The size of the armies at Duke level are 15124 to 25605 in the Lancastrians favour. This is a huge disparity. Also, various Yorkist units are either "demoralised" or "disheartened". I don't understand this, or what impact it has on those soldiers, although it obviously isn't good.

The Duke of Norfolk's contingent (I haven't managed to see all of it yet) appears to come out of the 14thC inasmuch as mounted knights seem to be at the core of it. These seems odd as it would, in reality, have been constituted of men-at-arms, billmen and longbowmen. Also, the Duke of Norfolk was on his deathbed at the time and was not at the battle. Walter Blount and Robert Horne were the commanders of this contingent according to some sources I have read.

After the result that I reported in my last post, I decided to play the scenario again, as I had enjoyed it so much. This time I won 53/61 (on Prince), despite having no luck at all.

I don't see the disparity in numbers being far from reality. Once all of Norfolk's command arrives the two armies are very close in total numbers.

The reduction in Yorkist unit quality was needed for balance, I was winning far too easily with the standard unit quality.

Norfolk's command is men-at-arms, billmen and longbowmen. The first group is the men-at-arms, the second and third groups billmen and longbowmen. Due to the arrival point of the reinforcements, it was necessary to have the men-at-arms mounted, otherwise they would have no chance of getting into action. That also seemed justified to me from a historical point of view; presumably these men would have been hurrying to get to the battlefield, why would they bother to waste time by dismounting?

Thanks for pointing out about Norfolk's incapacity, I wasn't aware of that.

For the next update I have already reduced the Yorkist quality drop and increased the number of units for the levels below Prince.