How to beat Tercios?

[Stefan]

Hello everyone, how do you properly deal with early and late Tercios? In regards to the former, the unit is so large that i find it takes quite a lot of damage and since the range of infantry units is not great to begin with, the Tercio will start melee combat quite quickly reducing the time I have to whittle it down before engaging on favourable terms.

Later Tercios I have less trouble with as they seem to basically be larger, more inefficient pike and shot formations.

Any advice would be appreciated, thanks.

[SnuggleBunny]

See:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/377520/discussions/search/?q=tercio&gidforum=535152511352870444&include_deleted=1&p=1

Basically, combined musketry and artillery for extra morale checks, and forcing them to engage on unfavorable ground or be shot to pieces. It's important to note that they are very points inefficient in skirmish/random map MP battles. Many of the historical scenarios have you facing a far larger army in terms of points, so you are fighting more tercios than you generally would be in a random map battle.

[Kyso4ek]

If you put a cavalry unit in front of a tercio. Said tercio will be locked against this cavalry unit because the game has priority charge target rules. Better check on these. Basically the tercio will be unable to turn away from said cavalry unit and it will have three possibilities:
shoot without rotation, charge or fall back with a morale check.

So the tercio would have to shoot a cavalry unit dealing only moderate damage or it will have to charge. Said cavalry unit will then proceed to fall back after the initial impact phase and you will not get locked in close combat because cavalry can fall back like that against the infantry. its even better when the cavalry is superior(more durability and less chance to panic after impact) or even more so if it has heavy lance which will activate if the keil/tercio charges first. If it has a heavy lance then the keil will have no advantage on impact.

So you can effectively lock a keil/tercio unit with a cavalry unit. and while this happens you want to either deal with the rest of their army or focus powerful shooting preferably arquebus (and guns if you can) on the tercio. A couple of turns will whittle it down below 75% strength and it will start receiving morale check penalties. But most of the time i think it is more effective to focus on something else. Just lock the tercio/keil with a cav unit and do the rest because it takes too much time and effort to reduce the keil/tercio if even it is possible at all (need strong shooting preferably arquebus units which have advantage against infantry).

You can oppose a tercio with cav +1 arquebus unit if you want to stay economical and have some chance of success in the long run.

[Stefan]

Great thanks for the advice guys, I seem to be having a lot more success now.