[Oversway]

This is what I usually do to go after knight or calvary provinces earlier on in the game:

The army
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A group of militia or otherwise cheapo troops (one of the few times I buy them). I put these near the front of the tactics box. Have them attack closest or hold and attack, doesn't matter.

A group of good line troops. Slow, high armor, decent morale.

Crossbowman set to fire calvary (or fire closest, it usually doesn't matter since mounted independant troops are almost always at the front due to high movement). You can count on 1 or 2 volleys

The concept
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The militia are there to absorb the lance attacks and maybe slow the calvary down a little. They'll pretty much get mowed down and you can have a good laugh. You want just the right amount - the best is when the calvary kill all of them, because its annoying to have them retreat all over your provinces.

Your line troops are there to hold the calvary in place while your xbows hurt them with . The more the better. Having a priest with sermon of courage or fanatacism helps here. If you have some spare battlemages with armor piercing/armor negating spells (stellar lights is a good one with evoc 1), or poison or fear spells, it can only help.

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Again this is more for early game. You can do a lot more nasty things to calvary once you get some high powered magic going, or assassins, or whatnot. But I find that calvary provinces are usually high gold and that can really help early on.

Also, there are many ways to augment this. Sometimes I try to set it up so some weak prot but heavy hitters (like barbarians) attack the calvary after they hit the line. I'd say it the barbs help about 50% of the time. Although even when it does work, the barbarians are just useless fodder. Better to have more line troops if possible.


I'd be interested if others do things differently.