cRPG
Off Topic => Historical Discussion => Topic started by: Havoco on December 21, 2012, 09:08:24 am
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So, I was wondering what tactics horse archers used in fighting each other. Both in a 1v1 and multiple horse archers on each side. I can't seem to find anything about it searching. Links would be helpful.
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Get on their right side so they can't shoot you back. next level
edit: lmao i thought this was cRPG horse archery not IRL. I imagine whichever army had more looms won there too
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When you have a similar army you should always keep some ideas for backstabbings or so in your backhead. So for example using the dust your horses throw up to give the enemy false information about the situation on the battlefield.
But in general, as horse archers are some kind of skirmishers and refuse to go into melee as long as they can, it should be possible to seperate some smaller groups from the army and finish them bit by bit. I think this is the strategic way to smaller a horse archer army if you have got the same speed and so on.
On the tactical layer (speaking about small groups), like Smoothrich already mentioned, it might be clever to be in the rear or on the right side of your enemy.
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Their whole deployment in battles was based on their ability to be highly maneuverable as light cavalry and high distance fighters so that they preferably didn't engage in close melee fights.
As I have read they made a blitz attack on heavy troops of the cavalry and infantry and then they ran away mostly leading the enemies into an ambush of their own melee troops when they followed them thinking that they retreated and losing their formation.
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Their whole deployment in battles was based on their ability to be highly maneuverable as light cavalry and high distance fighters so that they preferably didn't engage in close melee fights.
As I have read they made a blitz attack on heavy troops of the cavalry and infantry and then they ran away mostly leading the enemies into an ambush of their own melee troops when they followed them thinking that they retreated and losing their formation.
This is what they do in the Big Battle in Mongol. Watch that movie, it gives you some clear ideas of Horse ARchers.
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Good example of Horse Archers, though at Roman times: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Carrhae
Oh wait, must read the thread title, romans of course didnt have horse archers but only infantry and light cav. :D
(they had, not in that battle tho I mean)
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Not sure how often HA vs HA armies fought each other but this is why armies don't specialize. If you could hit them in the flank or ambush them with heavy cav, horse archers get destroyed. Or use foot archers against them.
Look at the crusader ambush of 4000 or so horse archers with 700 heavy cav during one of the crusades. They routed them and killed about 1k of their forces with almost no losses. Course that only happened once afaik. Horse archers have the advantage over heavy cav in every other situation unless they're ambushed or trapped with no mobility.
Look at what happened with the byzantine army when they recklessly attacked a turkish horse archer army with their heavy cav without foot archer support. They got wrecked and the byzantine empire lost a very important province. They never really recovered from that loss.
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Parthian's had tons of civil wars and they were big on horse archers so I imagine it happened a lot there.
Not HA vs HA but a small Parthian army utterly destroyed a large Roman army led by Crassus. Parthia had 1000 Cataphracts and 9000 horse archers against a Roman army of 40000 and they killed 20000 Roman's and captured a further 10000 largely due to their ability to constantly resupply their horse archers from the baggage train, the final 10000 escaped back to Armenia. It is supposedly considered one of the Roman's heaviest defeats and Crassus died shortly after when he was killed in a parley.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Carrhae
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Real talk they served as light cav units which were recon + raiding supply areas like fresh water or caravans, plus constant skirmishing with enemy armies before battles would be joined.
Typically in a pitched battle both army's cavalry will engage each other first on the flanks, more often then not the side who's cav survived intact will go on to horse bump/couch/headshot/troll the enemy infantry which would often lead to an instant collapse in morale and their routing.
Bow cav would be part of these engagements and would typically engage each other, keep in mind in cav vs cav fights even thrower or bow cav would often just start punching and grappling the shit out of each other, get dismounted, then stab each other to death, things would be insanely hectic and this was often the most important part of a battle (which cav players had more balls). After enemy cav is dealt with, bow cav just surround the enemy formation and shoot from every direction.
Mongols were famous for using feigned retreats and other deceptive, mobile tactics with their armies that were primarily bow cav. Armies that were all mounted like this primarily had lancer and bow cav working in tandem, like the Battle of Carrhae someone linked.
Basically bow cav would often engage enemy cav who would pursue, and bow cav would retreat while shooting over their backs. Then lance cav would outflank the pursuing cavalry, and wreck them.
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Parthian's had tons of civil wars and they were big on horse archers so I imagine it happened a lot there.
Not HA vs HA but a small Parthian army utterly destroyed a large Roman army led by Crassus. Parthia had 1000 Cataphracts and 9000 horse archers against a Roman army of 40000 and they killed 20000 Roman's and captured a further 10000 largely due to their ability to constantly resupply their horse archers from the baggage train, the final 10000 escaped back to Armenia. It is supposedly considered one of the Roman's heaviest defeats and Crassus died shortly after when he was killed in a parley.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Carrhae
True. I imagine that would occur.
That's a wonderful way of showing how heavy cav and horse archers worked well against rome's heavy infantry. They'd close up when the horse archers were shooting at them then they were ripe pickings for the heavy cav. When they scattered a bit from the heavy cav, the heavy cav retreated and the horse archers opened fire. Just a beautiful tactic.
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Turks vs Mongols? :D If you re luckier, you won i think...
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True. I imagine that would occur.
That's a wonderful way of showing how heavy cav and horse archers worked well against rome's heavy infantry. They'd close up when the horse archers were shooting at them then they were ripe pickings for the heavy cav. When they scattered a bit from the heavy cav, the heavy cav retreated and the horse archers opened fire. Just a beautiful tactic.
Roman cav were always getting owned. Hannibal's Numidian light cavalry (basically Arabian Warhorses in cRPG) were famous for being javelin throwing bad assed dudes in light gear, and Rome's cav at the time were heavy shock cavalry for charging designed to support their heavy infantry (aka chasing down routed barbarians and killing them with backstabs like pro cRPG cav). At Trebia and Cannae, having twice the amounts of cavalry on the wings, who were bow + javelin + sword on fast horses against big blobs of shit heavy Roman cav, they decisively routed Rome's cav and were the keys to fully destroying the Roman infantry when they looped back to close the encirclement/kill the routers.
Rome's eventual tactics for dealing with this, when Scipio Africanus took over and brought the fight to Spain and Africa himself? Have more Numidian cav than Hannibal :evil:
Accounts of these battles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cannae especially) when reading a book about the Punic Wars is where I heard about how violent the cav vs cav engagements could be. People (usually Celtic and Hispanic "barbarians") would literally jump off their horses and grapple/tackle Romans to pull them to the ground and stab them in the face. Roman heavy cav would be picked apart by charges then quickly dispersing and killing their horses with ranged, or just intentionally tying up the wing until the other wing was routed so they could link up with their barbarian buddies and 2 vs 1 what remained.
Morale must drop fast when you have guys ripping you off horseback and killing your friends with pro javelin throws.
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Which is why it was hellishly annoying that Roman cav was almost the best in RTW. Parthian cataphracts are hellishly strong in that game though.
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Which is why it was hellishly annoying that Roman cav was almost the best in RTW. Parthian cataphracts are hellishly strong in that game though.
They won many battles for Rome and fit perfectly into Roman doctrine, but why they lost in a lot of those famous battles is debatable. They were highly trained, but in most of Rome's major defeats they usually were just heavily outnumbered, cavalry wise. They depended on heavy infantry almost 100 percent, and only when you saw people innovating how to exploit that (chiefly Hannibal) was when they lost.
They began addressing this by getting auxiliary cavalry forces across Spain and North Africa after the Second Punic War to compliment their heavy cav with lighter forces and increase the amount of cavalry overall. A hundred years later after the Marian reforms, wealthy citizen Roman cavalry (much like knights in medieval Europe) were almost entirely replaced by forces from controlled territory outside Italy or lent to them by allied kings.
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Turks vs Mongols? :D If you re luckier, you won i think...
Picture this: both the Turks and the Mongols send out scout parties of about 100 cavalry, dominantly horse archers. Two opposing scout parties find each other. Now they see both are made up of mostly horse archers, what would they do? Would they just sit there and fire at each other, try to outmaneuver each other, engage in melee, or would they just ignore each other?
I'd also imagine that It could end up like a WW1 dogfight
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I'd also imagine that It could end up like a WW1 dogfight
Yeah, pretty much, just on land.