Is there any particularly good way to fight Jotunheim's Moose Riders? [CBM 1.94]

[jBrereton]

Sorry for the wordy title, but aye, as the thread title suggests, I've been having huge amounts of trouble killing off these troublesome units.

Stacks of hitpoints, a very solid mêlée attack, and two shortbows conspire to make them a pretty deadly threat, all things considered.

I've noticed that their morale is only about average, but with their reasonable protection, I'm not having all that much luck with the typical spells I'd use to ruin archers (blade wind, etc.), and building up the kind of mass panic/terror etc. force is certainly easier said than done

Any tips? (playing MA Ulm in single-player if this is particularly important information)

[parone]

how about magma erruption? i've found that spell(when spammed by about 8-10 smiths) can really put a hurtin' on troop based armies.

another idea would be armor of achilles/iron blizzard. blade wind is no good vs well armored troops. but might work if you can destroy their armor.

of course, you have the black steel. you can just go fanatasim/blessing of iron and go right at em. add in weapons of steel and or strength of giants to really cut through em

[Amhazair]

How about just about anything you'd use against anything else? I just don't see what threat they pose to you.

If he's using them as archers (which is what I gather from your post) he's paying 30g for two bows with very poor precision. Spending the same gold on indy archers would give him 50% more firepower with better precision. (And almost the same amount of total hp with comparable armor, don't know where you get the "reasonable" protection comment from unless you're comparing them to lion tribes.)

And if he's using them in melee they have horrible protection & defence and are size 4, so they'll get creamed by anything at all.

The one thing they DO have going for them is that they do indeed have to decent melee attacks, so if a number of them is attacked by a few stragglers breaking through the frontline as often happens with archers they'll deal with them quickly. But if that's the best thing you can say about a unit, well...

[jBrereton]

Yeah turns out the problem was Not Enough Indie Archer Firepower. Those Sappers are pretty alright at a lot of things, but not so hot at killing archers with the mere aid of a little weak earth Evo.

Cheers for the tips, by the way.

[Psycho chick]

I suggest use your black steel shield solider and evo 3 iron carts and magma eruption. When you rearch evo 6, they are just deer meat under your iron blizzard.

[Samhain]

Forget the shields. Spam him with the black plate infantry sporting flails. Doubling the number of attacks is much more valuable than a shield in this case (and most others) for a unit that already has Prot 21, IMHO. Forget Evo too until after you first get (if I recall) Cons 1 for Legions of Steel and Ench 3 for Strength of Giants. Against that, moose archers should not even pose a noticeable speed bump.

Unless you are getting hammered by magical summons, I'd hold off on the Evo and first get Thuam 2 for Bonds of Fire (for taking care of elephants and other tramplers) and site searching spells and then get Conj 3 for Summon Earth Power. You'll need that E boost before going to Evo 6 for Magma Eruption anyway. And, every Priest Smith recruited for Iron Darts/Blizzard is an opportunity lost for an F/E/S random.

[jBrereton]

Aye well I typically get flail-equipped infantry as a 'general purpose' unit, although if I'm building up for something, I'll typically get a few of the morningstar and shield guys too as a frontline to take the inevitable archery/javelin etc. barrage. Tend to save the Black Steel for commanders and bodyguards of crucial mages, mind, just because of the resource cost, which even Prod 3 + some growth can't really cover.

On Iron Darts/Blizz - yeah, fine, you're losing the chance of an Air/Astral/extra Fire plus additional Earth smith, but by the time you're going to have an S Master Smith, anyone with any kind of serious Astral casting is liable to be able to completely destroy a 1S mage.

I typically alternate Priest Smiths and Master Smiths from the cap early on, if nothing else for the utility of having a lab and temple builder, extra blesser, iron-fears-not-A-Thing caster, and so on. With Ulm's pretty vast and stable Earth income, it's pretty small beer to empower your prophet with E if they get a spare turn, and a Lord Guardian able to Divine Bless, Smite early on and then transition into Darts/Blizz a few months down the line is a handy thing.

[Smeghead]

"Is there any particularly good way to fight Jotunheim's Moose Riders?"

Yes.
Kill them all, then feed your troops moose stew.

[krpeters]

If you were playing anything other than Ulm, I'd recommend you use archers of your own. You can field more/cheaper and make his rout. But playing ulm, you'd have to rely on indies which could be difficult.

Pikemen repel might work to your advantage. They're also resource cheaper than most other Ulmish troops, easier to mass.

[jBrereton]

Yep fix was a teeming mass of Lion Tribe Archers.

No real point in going for Pikemen for the specific purpose of taking on Moose Riders, given that Pikemen are collosally worse than flail-equipped infantry at fighting almost everything for the sake of a couple of Resources.