How to beat Streltsky + Springals

[Dupond]

Can you help me? Onagers are down by springals and even a full french army of french knights cant beat the streltsky, do you know some army composition that can beat the russian one at post imperial?

[Eric]

that was the ultimate composition that i was going to do, russian have the best springald, and the best handcannoner, so dunno how to beat it lol, maybe harrass more in the early game so his late economy is worse

[Bakeneko]

Adding a few culverins to guard the onagers, and spaming light cavalry as a more cost effective counter to streltsky might work. The main problem IMO is that Rus springalds with the high armory upgrade outrange culverins.

[Cacomistle]

Probably just try to overwhelm with mass horsemen? They do bonus vs ranged and don't rely on armor that would be basically ignored by streltsy, and they're mobile so you could raid. Plus french don't have great gold generation and do have horsemen that can cost 35% less with 35% more hp instead of 20 so theirs are probably best in game in imp. I'd imagine a pike switch would be tough but streltsy are expensive and I don't think rus would want lots of barracks, so you can probably do a lot of damage before a switch.

Depending on the game state and map you could even try base trading. Streltsy and springalds kill buildings slow.

You also have culverins. Culvs behind castles could snipe his siege and streltsy are a bit slow and squishy to dive without losses.

[Dupond]

If they have a critical mass of Streltsky, horseman wont do, but maybe with light horse yes, i will try next time.

[Cacomistle]

Originally posted by Dupond:

If they have a critical mass of Streltsky, horseman wont do, but maybe with light horse yes, i will try next time.

If you have like 20 stables constantly replenishing, which I think is affordable if your stables are near keeps, I think you'd eventually overrun. You wouldn't win 1 fight.

[Dupond]

Originally posted by Cacomistle:

Originally posted by Dupond:

If they have a critical mass of Streltsky, horseman wont do, but maybe with light horse yes, i will try next time.

If you have like 20 stables constantly replenishing, which I think is affordable if your stables are near keeps, I think you'd eventually overrun. You wouldn't win 1 fight.

I mean, if I have 20 stables producing knights, it means he has 40 barracks producting streltsky at equal level

[Cacomistle]

Originally posted by Dupond:

Originally posted by Cacomistle:

If you have like 20 stables constantly replenishing, which I think is affordable if your stables are near keeps, I think you'd eventually overrun. You wouldn't win 1 fight.

I mean, if I have 20 stables producing knights, it means he has 40 barracks producting streltsky at equal level

No.

First of all they come out of an archery range, not a barracks.

Second of all, they're more expensive, by a lot, and they cost gold while horsemen don't. Rus can't get enough gold for mass streltsy unless they either get all the gold mines or they trade, and those are both quite generally quite raidable. They don't have stone walls so they can't stone wall you out of the their trade, and while their pallisades are higher hp you can force him to come over or maybe just bring a royal cannon. If they're able to set up trade, set up pallisade walls and maybe a keep to protect trade, and then push you straight down the middle, you just kind of played into their hands.

But aside from the gold cost, streltsy are 180 resources. Horsemen are 120. French can get 35% cheaper units from their keep influence bonus, so if he's capable of setting up all that gold I'm assuming you're capable of setting up a lot of these stables around keeps, in which case your horsemen cost a bit under 80 resources. Therefore, if you're producing 20 units at a time, he's producing 10. Technically they're less than half as expensive, but I think rus have better late game eco cause of bounty so we'll call it about half.

I'm not sure why equal level means he's producing double your production with a unit that's twice the cost. That's not an equal level, that's him being 4x as good as you.

[Emperor Fooble]

Chinese counter it easily with their longer range bombards and handcannons, while fire lancers and grenadiers can obliterate the bunched up gunners, French unique crossbows can easily go toe-to-toe with Streltsky and English longbowman vastly outrange them, Delhi elephants can tank long enough for trash units to get amongst/in range of the gunners to start putting damage in, Mongols have the mobility that they never really need to fight a slow and short ranged deathball.

But ignoring civ specific counters; that sort of deathball unit has zero mobility. The second it moves, it loses a huge amount of DPS, so if you send raids into his economy and/or constantly circle horses around his formation but out of range he will have real trouble responding or being a mobile threat, the springals are the real problem. Destroy enough of those and you can move in with mangos/bees and clean him up.

Also Streltsky are quite bad against trash units en masse, they are short ranged and there is no overkill mechanics so they tend to all fire at the same handful of targets. So masses of archers and/or horsemen are actually very effective.
Just attack move the horsemen and archers while you micro your knights to charge in and out and you can clean up the ball quite quickly.
Crossbowmen, even the non French version are also an excellent choice as they outrange the Strelts and deal solid damage so if you have a meatshield they can be a cheap counter.

Also when it comes to fighting ranged compositions like this, build a couple of rams to send out front, they soak up a lot of damage.

Easier said than done, I know, but this composition is only really scary if you try to fight it on it's own terms.

[Cacomistle]

Originally posted by Emperor Fooble:

Chinese counter it easily with their longer range bombards and handcannons, while fire lancers and grenadiers can obliterate the bunched up gunners, French unique crossbows can easily go toe-to-toe with Streltsky and English longbowman vastly outrange them, Delhi elephants can tank long enough for trash units to get amongst/in range of the gunners to start putting damage in, Mongols have the mobility that they never really need to fight a slow and short ranged deathball.

But ignoring civ specific counters; that sort of deathball unit has zero mobility. The second it moves, it loses a huge amount of DPS, so if you send raids into his economy and/or constantly circle horses around his formation but out of range he will have real trouble responding or being a mobile threat, the springals are the real problem. Destroy enough of those and you can move in with mangos/bees and clean him up.

Also Streltsky are quite bad against trash units en masse, they are short ranged and there is no overkill mechanics so they tend to all fire at the same handful of targets. So masses of archers and/or horsemen are actually very effective.
Just attack move the horsemen and archers while you micro your knights to charge in and out and you can clean up the ball quite quickly.
Crossbowmen, even the non French version are also an excellent choice as they outrange the Strelts and deal solid damage so if you have a meatshield they can be a cheap counter.

Also when it comes to fighting ranged compositions like this, build a couple of rams to send out front, they soak up a lot of damage.

Easier said than done, I know, but this composition is only really scary if you try to fight it on it's own terms.

Agree with this post, other than the rams thing. Rams have 15 pierce armor if I remember correct, hand cannoneers have 50 damage (after the university tech but presumably they'd get that), and like you said they overkill anyways so soaking 30 or so shots isn't that impressive for a 3 pop unit. I also don't think units target rams when you a move if something else is in range, so he'd likely end up shooting your units anyways.

[Eric]

Streltsky are 90 90 while knight are 140 60, how they are more expensive?

[Cacomistle]

Originally posted by Amph:

Streltsky are 90 90 while knight are 140 60, how they are more expensive?

Horsemen, not knights horsemen. The light cav. Knights don't do anything to streltsy that horsemen don't (horsemen get a bonus vs ranged so their damage isn't too far behind, knights are not that far ahead in hp, and the massive armor which knights have doesn't help when the enemy does 50 damage). The light cav.

Knights would get their ass handed to them by mass streltsy unless you just raid them to death.

Even still, knights are cheaper if you use the franks keep influence bonus with the extra 10% cost reduction tech. Not that they're an effective counter.