Beating Romans with Huns

[Kabill]

In preparation for the final tournament round, I played some hotseat games with the same match-up of Roman vs. Hunnic, first to familiarise myself with the armies but then because I just couldn't get my head around the Huns. Each time I played, the Romans won decisively except for my final round where they still won, just by a narrow margin (something like 57/63). I've now just finished my two actual tournament games, coming away with a win and a loss, and both wins being to the Roman side. So, here's my question: what can you do to have a good shot at victory playing the Huns against the Romans?

The issue I've found is that I don't know how to break the main Roman line. The core Roman infantry units are very strong on the defensive, and superior to the Huns' horse archers when attacking. Advancing on the main line with horse archers and lancers therefore doesn't gain traction: the lancers cannot effectively attack the Roman infantry, while the horse archers can shoot but never inflict enough damage to seriously threaten the Romans. In return, the Romans can persistently push back the Hunnic horse archers, requiring their lancers also to fall back or else be flanked and destroyed and allowing them to rotate out any infantry units which get disrupted.

Where the Huns should have the advantage is on the flank, as they have strong horse-archer units. However, I've found that Roman light troops, supported with a few cavalry units, can win that flank battle consistently, holding the rest of the Hunnic army with their infantry until the flanks are secure. Indeed, I've had the most success with the Huns by scaling down their light choices considerably, freeing up points to build a core line of Warbands, Lancers and Horse Archers which has more punch against the main Roman line. But both times I have used this composition (one hotseat and once in the tournament) I've been able to take the lead as the Huns, before running out of momentum and eventually being defeated. The issue seems to be that the main Hunnic line still cannot match the durability of the Romans, at best making this approach a coin-toss.

Returning to my question then: since there's clearly been some Hunnic victories in the tournament, how have they been achieved? Is Rome sufficient strong against the Huns that you need to rely on mistakes by your opponent who will otherwise win? Or are there some sound strategies for producing at least favourable odds even against a skilled Roman player? (If anyone wants to show me how it's done, I'd be happy to play a game).

[Ludendorf]

I seem to remember it being difficult to stop the Roman cavalry, but the infantry eventually giving way under sustained archer bombardment. Also, if your horse archers can blunt the Roman cavalry enough, you can give them such a bloody nose that they can't influence the rest of the battle effectively. I tended to have my horse archers in two lines; light and heavy horse archers, with lancers behind them on the wings. The idea was that the Romans, be they cavalry or infantry, would have to wade through two lines of horse archers, getting shot at and depleted all the way, only to wind up facing lancers at the back in addition to the now turned-around horse archers.

It had mixed results and I found a lot of the time that the Roman cavalry was hard to stop, but enough concentrated fire could still blunt them while the infantry in the centre are essentially helpless to concerted archer fire. I think the light horse are critical to the Huns, and I also found that they were very, very strong at the start of a battle, but rapidly ran out of steam as the fight wore on. The Huns have to take an advantage early on in the fight, as the momentum will start to slide Rome's way as archers run out of ammunition and skirmishing gives way to the melee that the Roman cavalry are so good at.

It has been some time since I played Huns though.

[Nosy_Rat]

You don't actually need to engage Roman frontline as Huns. Put majority of your horse archers on the flanks and destroy their cavalry with concentrate fire, there's almost no need to engage in melee. Horse archers would evade most of the lancer charges if you keep them one tile away from Romans. Be aware of Roman light horses, though, they can pin down your cavalry before the main charge. After that you can encircle infantry and set up flank charges, while shooting at them with all you have left. To quote Borderlands, "if you shoot them enough, they die".
All of the above applies, of course, only to the tournament setup with Huns vs latest Roman list, with Roman player going infantry-heavy. Romans with all the cavalry they can get are quite different story.
We can play a game, if you wish, maybe I'm wrong, after all.

[Nijis]

My Romans were beaten by Ludendorf's Huns a short while back. This is my recollection as to what happened. I chose artillery and took a hilltop position. Shooting from behind the infantry, the missile units did a fair amount of damage, but eventually the Hunnic arrows started to soften up my line. Rather than lose my cavalry I charged with them, and though they had some success they were eventually isolated and cut up. He used the weak points in my infantry line outflank. and then his cavalry then rampaged through my rear areas.

I also could not resist the temptation to aggressively pursue his fragmented cav with my light troops, which usually resulted in loss of said light troops.

I beat the Huns with Romans in the mirror-game tournament by using a more disciplined artillery-fortress approach but I'm losing the Hun v Rome mirror. I attacked a Roman flank with my main Hunnic forces and sent a few cav to attack his main infantry line. Ironically I think the Hunnic cavalry's hand-to-hand prowess worked against them, at least with that strategy. They do well in the first round, so they're less likely to evade or break off. Bring up a second infantry to attack them, and that appears to prevent them from disengaging at all, and then it's too late.

[GiveWarAchance]

Thank you Nijis for interesting game summaries. Sounds like the Huns & Romans are fairly closed matched as long as the Hun player doesn't mind attacking a prepared Roman position that includes an artillery fire base. I think if the battle is a meeting engagement, the Huns most probably will have an advantage.

I just started playing a sandbox campaign now as Picts versus the evil Romans and I got trashed by them so it's not just the Huns getting beat up.
My army is mostly Pictish spearmen so they fight in line against the evil Roman line but eventually got worn down and break but the Romans were chewed up quite badly too and their % of routers was just behind mine.
The main line battle actually was fairly even for awhile with heavy losses on both sides but the Romans scored a few more of those deadly red # criticals on my hapless Picts.
I had my light cav working the area behind the Romans to assist their fragged units in leaving the map, and my barb archers did some good work but in the end the ruthless Roman melee power won the contest.
Next battle I will fight again with some reinforcement. I like this new feature of being able to continue a campaign even after taking a whooping. My army is smaller now and some units on both sides are at reduced strength so it should be another close fight.

[Kabill]

My Romans were beaten by Ludendorf's Huns a short while back. This is my recollection as to what happened. I chose artillery and took a hilltop position. Shooting from behind the infantry, the missile units did a fair amount of damage, but eventually the Hunnic arrows started to soften up my line. Rather than lose my cavalry I charged with them, and though they had some success they were eventually isolated and cut up. He used the weak points in my infantry line outflank. and then his cavalry then rampaged through my rear areas.

I'm reading this like you had a passive rather than active defense against the Hun's horse archers, which I suspect may have been the problem here. Where I've been fighting the Huns as Romans, I've pressed forwards with my infantry, forcing the horse archers to retreat and either shoot less effectively (because they have to move back into position) or not shoot at all (because they're waiting for you to advance into range, at which point you can hang back because you're keeping them at bay).

This said, I can see how Ludendorf's suggestion of two lines might compensate for this, so long as you leave gaps for the front line to retreat, as the second line can already be in position to attack as the first line retreats. So maybe that would work better.

You don't actually need to engage Roman frontline as Huns. Put majority of your horse archers on the flanks and destroy their cavalry with concentrate fire, there's almost no need to engage in melee. Horse archers would evade most of the lancer charges if you keep them one tile away from Romans. Be aware of Roman light horses, though, they can pin down your cavalry before the main charge. After that you can encircle infantry and set up flank charges, while shooting at them with all you have left. To quote Borderlands, "if you shoot them enough, they die".
All of the above applies, of course, only to the tournament setup with Huns vs latest Roman list, with Roman player going infantry-heavy. Romans with all the cavalry they can get are quite different story.
We can play a game, if you wish, maybe I'm wrong, after all.

The terrain didn't pan out well enough for me to try this (lots of rough on each flank) but this was one of my thoughts going into the tournament game. I tend to put light horse on the flanks, but I'm wondering whether mixing with some heavy horse archers on the flanks would give some extra punch there, as well as trying to approach the Roman line from the flanks rather than the front. I do fee like you need something to threaten the Roman centre though, not necessarily to attack per se but to be there to stop them from responding to the flank attacks. I guess it would be a good use for lancers, who could do some damage against exposed flanks if the Romans try to turn to respond on the wings.

Assuming the offer of a game still stands, would be interested to see how it goes in any case. Might grab some screenshots and post it up when it's done.

[Nijis]

Thank you Nijis for interesting game summaries. Sounds like the Huns & Romans are fairly closed matched as long as the Hun player doesn't mind attacking a prepared Roman position that includes an artillery fire base.

Thanks! I should say though that in the tournament game, my opponent used infantry aggressively and had no artillery. We timed out but he was well on his way to beating me, largely because I put a handful of cavalry in the path of his warbands and they neither withdrew quickly enough nor held out long enough.

I'm reading this like you had a passive rather than active defense against the Hun's horse archers, which I suspect may have been the problem here.

Actually, I felt I wasn't passive enough! By pushing forward, I opened up gaps in my line. I think there probably does come a time in every game when the infantry army must attack, but I was too quick vs Ludendorf. In my tournament game as the Huns I timed my advance better.

[GiveWarAchance]

Nijis do you ever lengthen MP game turn limits? I think 24 is too short and risks cutting short a nice battle like you were having. Maybe turning it up to 30 turns would be better? I think 30 should be the default game length so games can more often end due to routing thresholds being breached instead of timeouts.

[Nijis]

Sorry - we timed out the tournament chess clock in that game, not the turns. I've rarely had a game run over 24 turns, and when it did, it was very much because we'd hit a stalemate. I'm pretty happy with 24 turns, as fatigue and/or darkness did end some battles before the end.

How are the Picts coming along?

[GiveWarAchance]

Nijis, does darkness end the battle before the 24 turns? I had some battles end by darkness but didn't check the turn # at the time.
How does the tournament chess clock work? You have limited real time to do your turns?

About my Picts campaign, I just lost the next battle again (quite badly) and the campaign sent me back two stages. I lost mostly cause the Romans had more companies cause of my heavy losses in the previous battle so I faced 2 versus 1 in each combat so they got an attack bonus. I will try again. I think the Picts have a fair chance to win if done better than I did it. The Pict troops are fairly good considering they are going up against the powerful Romans in a field battle which is unusual for them.

[SpeedyCM]

Once turn limit ends it states that darkness falls.

Tournament clock counts down how long left in that specific round of the tournament, so for 10 day rd it starts at 240 hours and counts down from there.
It then keeps a record of how long each turn sits in your inbox waiting to be played compared to your opponent and for timed out games (games that are still going when the clock hits zero) it adjusts the score based on how long each player took to do their turns. The intention here is to stop players from stalling games when things are going badly for them.

Tournament rules can be found here http://www.slitherine.com/tournaments/r ... terStatus=.

[GiveWarAchance]

thank you Speedy. It sounds like a useful rule.

[rbodleyscott]

Obviously this thread points up various issues re horse archer armies vs infantry armies, although the issue is exacerbated in this particular matchup, because the Huns are too fierce to evade from Limitanei. (Because the matchup is almost even unless additional Roman units join in later).

This is mainly because the code was previously tweaked to make non-light cavalry slightly less likely to evade. (Because people were complaining that light spear cavalry were evading from enemy cavalry even when fairly evenly matched).

Two possibilities spring to mind:

1) Cancel the tweak when cavalry are charged by infantry. (Without the tweak the Huns will in fact evade from Limitanei.)
2) Cancel the tweak if the cavalry are horse archers.

Either would mean that they are less likely to stand and accept close combat if charged by infantry. The first would have the same effect vs infantry and cavalry.

The question is whether it is desirable that armoured horse archers should nearly always evade from enemy cavalry, even if those cavalry are evenly matched. The answer to that would partly depend on whether the enemy cavalry have bows themselves, because obviously it is in the interest of horse archers to get as much shooting in as possible vs enemy non-horse-archer cavalry before allowing themselves to be committed to close combat.

I am thinking aloud here, but would be interested in comments.

[GiveWarAchance]

The question is whether it is desirable that armoured horse archers should nearly always evade from enemy cavalry, even if those cavalry are evenly matched. The answer to that would partly depend on whether the enemy cavalry have bows themselves, because obviously it is in the interest of horse archers to get as much shooting in as possible vs enemy non-horse-archer cavalry before allowing themselves to be committed to close combat.

I am thinking aloud here, but would be interested in comments.

I think horse archer evasion is realistic at least until their 5 units of ammo run out, even though it will frustrate non-ranged melee type armies which is what the Huns were infamous for.
From the little I know about history, the Hunnic horse archers with their powerful bows are what rendered the nearly invincible Roman army obsolete and changed the trend of warfare to include much more cavalry and ranged units.
I think even melee-heavy armies should be sure to include a fair portion of ranged & skirmisher type units to counter horse archers in a reasonable way instead of trying to chase horse archers with heavy infantry.
So basically I vote for making the game as historical as possible instead of watering it down with unrealistic tweaking.

[Ludendorf]

Are there any records of foot soldiers catching and beating armies of hunnic horse archers?

[Delbruck]

Are there any records of foot soldiers catching and beating armies of hunnic horse archers?

I am not aware of any historical account that goes into that level of detail. Even the best histories we have are often a cross between soap opera and propoganda.

[Nijis]

Are there any records of foot soldiers catching and beating armies of hunnic horse archers?

It's not Huns, but the battle of Ruspina seems to indicate that foot soldiers could force cavalry into melee in certain circumstances. "Seems" because of the aforementioned problem with accounts of ancient battles.

Two possibilities spring to mind:

1) Cancel the tweak when cavalry are charged by infantry. (Without the tweak the Huns will in fact evade from Limitanei.)
2) Cancel the tweak if the cavalry are horse archers.

My vote would be for option 1. Maybe make it "significantly numerically superior infantry," because I assume that you'd most want cavalry to evade/break off when you're worried about being ground down by attrition.

[Kabill]

Two possibilities spring to mind:

1) Cancel the tweak when cavalry are charged by infantry. (Without the tweak the Huns will in fact evade from Limitanei.)
2) Cancel the tweak if the cavalry are horse archers.

Personally, I think the second of those options is better. It seems more in keeping with the tactics of horse archery to evade melee unless it is particularly favourable for them, then it is for all cavalry to avoid being attacked by infantry. It's worth noting that when a unit evades, it ends it's move facing away from the attacking unit. For melee cavalry, that basically puts them out of the fight for a turn, while horse archers may (range depending) at least be able to turn and shoot. So if all cavalry were skittish against comparable infantry, I'd be concerned it may be to easy to de facto disable them with relatively weak units.

(I also think that horse archers being more evasive in general is more fitting in terms of tactics, compared with all cavalry being more evasive against infantry, but I've no evidence to support that from an historical perspective).

[Gnaeus]

So basically I vote for making the game as historical as possible instead of watering it down with unrealistic tweaking.

+1

The designer can exercise his judgment on what is likely to be most plausible historically, with a mod to balance the game for multiplayer if necessary. Or vice versa.

[TheGrayMouser]

If this needs be tweeked ( and I’m not sure it does) I’d rather make it so infantry can only “charge “ formed Cavalry 1 grid away. ( so move adjacent 1 turn, charge next turn if the Cavalry sit tight).

Edit: actually I think a better way of expressing the concept as a rule would be it cost all an infantry ap’s to enter the zoc of a non fragged formed Cavalry.