Slitherine

I have been playing Pike and Shot for a couple months now. Started with Italian Wars and then War of the Roses. Had some great games against the AI. Some armies are a little stronger than others but usually there is a strength or weakness in each army which can exploited for a win. And now, I am playing Tercio to Salvo, 2nd half of the 1500's. Currently I am trying to beat the 1560-1569 Spanish using the 1568-1577 Dutch. After 4 games, I have yet to win to a game. It is the toughest historical matchup I have tried. The Spanish have all those high morale units, good light troops and cavalry. I compared the two armies to determine what advantages the Dutch might have. Their only advantage is in Reiters. Reiters are good troops and have their place on the field but are not dominant troops and suffer from average morale. I don't see going heavy on reiters giving the Dutch the necessary advantage to compensate for the Spanish strengths. So I am about to pass on this matchup. Maybe try it again sometime in the future and hope for some good terrain advantages. Toughest historical matchup I have run into so far.

So what are some of the other tough historical matchups you have run into so far?

Haven't played a lot lately. Maybe the
Durch are better for some terrain type vs Spanish.

Trying to beat the Early Swiss (Elite Determined Foot pike kiels) is incredibly difficult for any army. The only army I've found that has a reasonable chance is Russian, but its hard work as you have to play a game of movement so you can have cavalry and light horse shooting from several sides and cavalry charging in the rear.

I managed to beat the Spanish with the Dutch in 1590, but by then I had Kuirassiers (sp?) and Maurician infantry. Even so it wasn't easy - I lost the first four battles. Probably that was just a learning curve, but I think it also helped to whittle the biggest tercios down from 2000 or so troops to 1400 over several battles.

In general, I find it much more challenging to play a missile-based army fighting enemies with big melee-focused units. Again, even if I win, there's usually a learning curve of three or four lost battles in the early campaign.

Extra Nations adds a lot of great match-ups. The Swiss are tough. I took the Burgundians up against them in the late 1400s. It felt like a dogfight with primitive heat-seeking missiles, trying to maneuver a cavalry unit to shoot one up the keil's tailpipe.

Ottomans vs Hungarians in the early 1500s is also tough. Both their armored lancers and their pike formations are hard to counter.

The swiss are very hard to beat. What I 've tried is to have lights skirmish them as much as possible while trying to win the Cav fight. Artillery helps. It is a bit risky to try to shoot them with Pike and shots, since their determined foot keils are FAST and will impact you before you can shoot them much, if at all. Hug rough ground or forests as much as possible.

Spanish Tercios are tough, but usually you should win by efficiency, since they pay a premium to concentrate so many men and firepower in one strong unit. I also found it reasonable to write off any of your infantry that is engaged by them, and concentrate on shooting other tercios not yet in melee range. Unless of course you get a rear charge (on later tercios). So while your infantry is slowly dying, have your extra infantry go combine with another group of two to make 3 units shooting at one tercio. Usually this will disorder and therefore neutralize them handily. After beating off a portion of the tercios the original tercios should have routed your unit, and now you can pile on it with 3 units firing on it as well to disorder it too.

Ottomans have pretty fragile infantry and too few of them. I say pretty fragile because you can expect impact capable units to disorder Janissaries on impact, but disordered swordsmen still have good staying power. The polish winged hussars or extraordinarily hard to defeat since they can and will catch your cavalry, then swing to rout your infantry. Turks have no pikes:(. The computer can be baited into charging light cav, but unlikely humans will fall for it.

Swedish Salvo foot isn't that scary from what I have seen, just have pike and shots shoot it out while remaining stationary.

I dont know about historical matchups but as a rule of thumb you auto-lose if you play mass cavalry army against a mass crossbow army. Ottomans, Transylvanya, earlier Russia vs Sweden is auto lose more often then not.

Tercios V Swedish Salvo Foot

I've taken the Ottomans again, this time fighting the Austrians around 1550-1560. I'm following advice I've found elsewhere on the forum and trying to put my Janissaries in rough terrain or forest. It works much better - so long as the Austrians come to me, which they have so far.

played a move this morning where three of my Catholic Kurassiers, all 1000 of them, supported by a 1700 man Early Tercio could not dent a Swedish Determined Horse Regiment of 150 odd Cavalrymen.
Maybe the next move will prove different?