Why do Aserai armies seem broken?

[One_Lunch_Man]

I need some help trying to figure out how the hell im supposed to fight Aserai troops. They invaded me and I can't counter their armies effectively no matter what I try.

They absolutely slaughter my cavalry, both light and heavy, and their cavalry seem to just be able to steamroll my horse archers, and then footsoldiers with no opposition.

I've tried to play defensively, but they never advance on me. They just sit and wait so nothing ever happens. Hell i've even tried delegating command to see what my army does and its an even worse slaughter. The game even seems to unbalance engagements because even if I have more horses than them, the game decides to maybe give me 20 per flank on each large battle at a time, and they get all theirs together, 50 or more per flank and predictably, I get washed.

The only way to win is to double their numbers and flood them with bodies, but its not sustainable at all.

Is there any way to actually stand toe to toe with these guys?

[Action Man]

What does the 'power bar' say about your relative strengths? I believe it factors in troop count/quality, and morale.

If your morale is significantly lower, it's going to be a harder fight for your troops.

What's the troop quality between your forces?

A lot of Aserai units are equipped with throwing weapons, and those can cause significant damage, especially with the relative momentum between the units.

Overall, I haven't experienced more difficulty than fighting other forces, when factoring in the tier of troops and morale of the parties.

[One_Lunch_Man]

Originally posted by Action Man:

What does the 'power bar' say about your relative strengths? I believe it factors in troop count/quality, and morale.

If your morale is significantly lower, it's going to be a harder fight for your troops.

What's the troop quality between your forces?

A lot of Aserai units are equipped with throwing weapons, and those can cause significant damage, especially with the relative momentum between the units.

Overall, I haven't experienced more difficulty than fighting other forces, when factoring in the tier of troops and morale of the parties.

The bar is almost always 3/4 in my favour most of the time. I try to avoid fights where its half or less in my favour. Morale is decent.

As for troop compliments, I'm using mostly Imperial Legionaries or veteran infantrymen, backed up by almost exclusively crossbowmen from imperial and Vlandian sources. Some Battanians mixed in as well.

For cavalry I use imperial cavalry, as well as Khuzait, and exclusively Khuzait mounted archers, which are the least upgraded bunch, so far around tier 2.

My whole army is divided in thirds. third melee, third ranged, and third mounted (split half between melee and ranged)

The Aserai from what I can see are using a lot of high tier cavalry and infantry, but weak archers and horse archers (if any at all). Lots of Mamluk (spelling mb) units.

[The Blind One]

Originally posted by One_Lunch_Man:

The game even seems to unbalance engagements because even if I have more horses than them, the game decides to maybe give me 20 per flank on each large battle at a time, and they get all theirs together, 50 or more per flank and predictably, I get washed.

There's a setting in the options menu that determines which units get placed first in battle. If you want more cavalry you could 'tweak' this mechanic in distributing your forces the way you want it too.

Go to 'Options', then 'Gameplay', and there's a setting for 'Unit Spawn Prioritization'. Read the instructions to see what you want.

You probably want to keep it at default but now realize that the units spawn in determined by the order in the party roster that they appear. So just put all your best cavalry at the top of the roster and they should spawn in first now.

glhf

[MiSFiT77]

To be honest fighting anyone tactically depends on their troop break down v yours. I always feel like the balance shifts when fighting the Aesari. They seem to have really powerful top tier troops, but their lower tier troops are very weak. I think it's important to figure out what it is you most fear about them. For me I fear their cavalry. Yes they have some good Infantry and Archers, but you can usually match those with Battanian Archers and pretty much any decent Infantry units. So I like to take out their cavalry and how I do this depends on which of us has the most cavalry (and it's usually them). If they have more, I will move all my cav to one flank, form one big group of cav and send them wide to either lure the opposing out or more often I just hit them in the flank. Kill a bunch and then run away. If they give chase I have my archers ready. If they don't I just keep repeating until their cav begins to deplete. However. There is a chance that when my cav attack (say the left) their right flank cav will charge my infantry and archers. In that scenario I just put the inf in a shield wall and the archers into an open formation as close to it as possible and brace for impact. But to put it simply I try to chip away at their heavy cav.

If I have more cav (it's rare but it does happen sometimes). Then I attack both their cav flanks simultaneously. Again I'm trying to remove their best cav from the field, even at risk of losing most or nearly all of mine.

Sometimes the Aesari fight by sitting back on a ridge and sending out a large group of horse archers. Best tactic for this is to put half your cav out on the left as bait (pull them back behind your lines, but wide left). Wait for the horse archers to go for these troops and shut the door behind them with your second group of cav. Set up a trap, trap them, kill a few, repeat. Whittle their numbers down.

I feel like the game makes the Aesari wiley and cautious. So it's a game of cat and mouse (don't be the mouse) you need to keep depleting their best troops. Eventually you will start seeing tier 1 Aesari on the field. At that point throw everything at them. But still keep it under control and don't allow your troops to spread out and become isolated. Try to think of a battle with the Aesari as a series of small skirmishes and try to win most of them.

[The Mau Corporation]

Aserai troops rely heavily on javelins, which are powerful one-shotters in large numbers. Battania, vlandia and Sturgia troops are mingled with throwing axes. But Aserai is pretty much all javelin amongst cav and infantry.

Javelins hit real hard, so the losses you are feeling I'm pretty sure is the one-shot javelin. Its different from getting pelted by arrows which can be mitigated with a shield. Javelins just melt most shields.

Ive always found it important to keep them on the backfoot and make them use up limited javelin supply.

[Arkew Von Greffer]

Me i using f6 and never got lot of lost.
Thanks to battanian fian champion

[Karna5]

Originally posted by One_Lunch_Man:

They absolutely slaughter my cavalry, both light and heavy, and their cavalry seem to just be able to steamroll my horse archers, and then footsoldiers with no opposition.

Are you per chance using F1+F3? That will suicide your archer cavalry by making them charge close. Make sure you use F1+F4, and that will allow your heavy cavalry to charge close while having your light ranged cavalry stay at distance.

[FourGreenFields]

Originally posted by One_Lunch_Man:

I've tried to play defensively, but they never advance on me. They just sit and wait so nothing ever happens.

That seems like a perfect situation to me. You can take all the time you want - have your army sit in shield wall or loose formation at long range until they run out of ammo, or get some units (or simply yourself) close to break the cavalry AI and have them charge your infantry and get slaughtered. If they have a dedicated horse-archer formation then that will also suicide.

Or take a good look around for the perfect approach, maybe get your archers in a spot where they can shoot the infantry formation in the back (may need some protection against cavalry though).

I don't remember fighting aserai as anything special, though I didn't fight them that much, and you may also want to note that I limit myself to battanian skirmishers (-> wildlings) and falxmen... which ought to be harder, but people here mentioned javelins, and I think my party might just have more of those. Khuzait were much worse - the horse-archers were beatable, but (unlike melee-cavalry) actually moderately dangerous, and didn't melt under javelin-barrages as easily as melee-infantry.

[nephilimnexus]

Use real world tactics; Napoleonic to be more precise. Crossbowmen and Spearmen, both set to circle or square formations and overlapping each other so that they're effectively standing side-by-side in the same place.

The spearmen will blunt any attempts to charge them with cavalry (from any direction) while the crossbowmen pick them off as they circle. The reason I say crossbowmen over regular archers is that, generally speaking, crossbowmen have better armor and many carry shields, which gives them an advantage when going up against regular archers who tend towards weak armor and never have shields. This matters if the enemy tries to break your formation with their own foot archers (i.e. they will fail). Finally, crossbowmen tend to have better melee weapons than regular archers as well, so when everyone is out of ammo they can still go hand-to-hand well enough that, provided they're still mixed in with more dedicated foot soldiers, they won't get slaughtered when you the end battle with a mass rush of everything you've got.

If you have cavalry of your own, put them in wedge formation and keep them away from enemy cavalry entirely. Instead manually maneuver them across the map to flank wide & get behind enemy foot soldiers, then smash them from the rear when they try to advance. Don't just "fire & forget" with cavalry, because if they get bogged down then the foot soldiers will overwhelm them. Instead let them get their charges in and then order them back to the nearest hilltop or whatever to regroup, then repeat the process.

If you're really hurting and lack missile troops entirely you can still maximize your chances against cavalry using circle or square formations, even moreso if they all have shields to soak enemy arrows until they run out of ammo and are forced to charge. As always, multiple units can be told to position in the exact same spot to bulk the thickness of your troops in order to halt charging horses and rip their riders from their mounts when their speed gets reduced to zero.

[One_Lunch_Man]

Originally posted by The Blind One:

Originally posted by One_Lunch_Man:

The game even seems to unbalance engagements because even if I have more horses than them, the game decides to maybe give me 20 per flank on each large battle at a time, and they get all theirs together, 50 or more per flank and predictably, I get washed.

There's a setting in the options menu that determines which units get placed first in battle. If you want more cavalry you could 'tweak' this mechanic in distributing your forces the way you want it too.

Go to 'Options', then 'Gameplay', and there's a setting for 'Unit Spawn Prioritization'. Read the instructions to see what you want.

You probably want to keep it at default but now realize that the units spawn in determined by the order in the party roster that they appear. So just put all your best cavalry at the top of the roster and they should spawn in first now.

glhf

I never knew that was a thing, I will need to experiment with that. This game is developing a habit of letting me think I've figured it out and then turning that into a harsh lesson. I love it haha

[One_Lunch_Man]

Originally posted by nephilimnexus:

Use real world tactics; Napoleonic to be more precise. Crossbowmen and Spearmen, both set to circle or square formations and overlapping each other so that they're effectively standing side-by-side in the same place.

The spearmen will blunt any attempts to charge them with cavalry (from any direction) while the crossbowmen pick them off as they circle. The reason I say crossbowmen over regular archers is that, generally speaking, crossbowmen have better armor and many carry shields, which gives them an advantage when going up against regular archers who tend towards weak armor and never have shields. This matters if the enemy tries to break your formation with their own foot archers (i.e. they will fail). Finally, crossbowmen tend to have better melee weapons than regular archers as well, so when everyone is out of ammo they can still go hand-to-hand well enough that, provided they're still mixed in with more dedicated foot soldiers, they won't get slaughtered when you the end battle with a mass rush of everything you've got.

If you have cavalry of your own, put them in wedge formation and keep them away from enemy cavalry entirely. Instead manually maneuver them across the map to flank wide & get behind enemy foot soldiers, then smash them from the rear when they try to advance. Don't just "fire & forget" with cavalry, because if they get bogged down then the foot soldiers will overwhelm them. Instead let them get their charges in and then order them back to the nearest hilltop or whatever to regroup, then repeat the process.

If you're really hurting and lack missile troops entirely you can still maximize your chances against cavalry using circle or square formations, even moreso if they all have shields to soak enemy arrows until they run out of ammo and are forced to charge. As always, multiple units can be told to position in the exact same spot to bulk the thickness of your troops in order to halt charging horses and rip their riders from their mounts when their speed gets reduced to zero.

Will definitely give this a try.

[~ Fabulous ~]

Aserai Lords tends to be richer, because they don't yolo everything and they prefer long peace time, allowing their lords to accumulate more wealth, thus their army tends to have better quality troops, you can counter this by hunting their caravans and burn their villages.