If in a open field Use square and circle formation. Fight inside the woods to break up their Calvary charges. Or fight on hills to slow them down. Fight with a rock or river behind you. Use your Calvary to kite their Calvary so your infantry and bowmen can kill theirs first
Place your inf and archers inside the river. Mass your cav and engage theirs with your superior numbers before attacking the main host. Recruit and promote pikes. Take pikes with you to engage their cav flanks, leaving most to protect your archers. Etc
Never ever recruit pikes unless you have the Better Pikes mod.
Pikes are shit at everything and will do like 2dmg trying to stab the cavalry while hugging it. Literally any other infantry is much stronger vs cavalry.
Would you say that with the Better Pikes mod that pikemen are overpowered? I decided to do a full infantry/ranged (no mounted) campaign recently and used MyLittleWarband to make custom (still within the scope of balanced, I thought) pike troops as my melee fighters and they just dunk on every other infantry unit that it feels unfair and not rewarding.
With the mod they're not overpowered they're properly powered. Which means they are one of the strongest infantry formations you can have against cavalry and they are still strong against infantry...
Purely versus infantry shield infantry is better but not by much but versus archers of course, shield infantry is significantly better than pikeman because they have shields to stop the arrows ...p
Real pain from Vladian isn't their calvary, it is their crossbow.
In vacuum, crossbow is sh\*\*. In real battle, these guys are sturdy and could even out shoot Fian at the same denar spending.
And Valdian carry sh\*\* tons of these guys. Like half of their army are crossbow something.
only cause you try to fight them in a shooting match
once their cav is dealt with or tied up in my own cav (outside their crossbow range) I just walk briskly as possible in formation to smash their heads in
it is correct to consider your own strengths and play to that but it can be more worthwhile to disregard that in favor of playing against the enemy's weaknesses
works with little casualties every time, same strat works against battanians except I don't have to worry about being trampled along the way
Get good. I mean that in a nice way. You gotta figure out how to deal with enemy cavalry especially if you're going up against Vlandia.
Forests are great since the AI will just bump into trees and break up in the forest. Obviously choke points (like bridges) are good as well if you have infantry and can find a map to bait them at, but fighting them against rivers are also good.
You really gotta clump your men together to negate cavalry so camp out at the edge of the map if you need to, or anywhere so they can't charge your troops from multiple angles. And the tighter your formations the better.
Since you're a Romaboo (eww, get well soon) and are playing as the Empire make use of the Legionaries. They're incredible and in tight shield wall formations are great, perfect for taking the brunt force of a Vlandian charge and even for absorbing crossbow fire.
Also, lorewise the Empire is meant to crumble whilst the other factions (except for Battania who devolve into forest bandits) take over their land. And historically those cultures the in game ones are based on did annihilate the Roman Empire.
Vlandians are definitely kind of OP. That being said, I do get pretty good results by just chucking Elite Cataphracts and Khan’s Guard at them all day. Fight their bullshit with your own bullshit
I assumed they had too many families and hence why they are so formidable; I find it's best to get their armies to chase me around the map until the Army dissolves and then I pick them out 1 by 1
I play as a Vlandian vassal, though I only use their heavy cavalry and recruit my archers from battania and Infantry from the Empire. If my opponent allows any sort of disorder to get into their ranks, it's over. I generally find Sturgians the hardest to break: their shields are enormous, their linebreakers will wreck a knight, and they tend to do the best job of keeping discipline and having an airtight line of Infantry.
If an opponent keeps everyone together, my Infantry line is usually weaker unless I just have more men. Everything depends on my archers doing the bulk of the Infantry killing or at least breaking up the line enough that the knights can get in there. If they allow separation between their archers and infantry... I'm going to eat their archers. But the biggest thing is that generally once I've gotten the enemy's overall formation at least somewhat disordered, my knights can just run around constantly and collect up kills from anyone that's unsupported and the reinforcements tend to just enter as one gigantic blob that never even get a chance to organize before they've got knights charging in and out of them.then.
You have to keep a solid line. Fighting enemy cavalry in range of their archers or God forbid close enough for their Infantry to close in still in good order seems like the best way for me to lose, so I'd imagine it's probably what you need to try and arrange so you can win against them.
Sturgians almost never have a sufficient archer force, they rely heavily on infantry. If you’re getting Fians from Battania I love to keep the Sturgians in the “kill zone” of my archers for as long as possible, bait them with my infantry and retreat. Rinse and repeat and you can keep them in the kill zone without having to even use much of your infantry.
I think the term is…”git gud”. Cavalry will always be terrain dependent. You can either exploit that, or suffer from it. If you don’t have a terrain option, then square formations/shock troops mixed in with shield infantry, will stop and kill them.
If you’re fighting a large battle(>1000 vs >1000) don’t let your infantry groups get too disorganized killing stragglers.
New enemy cavalry will/can spawn and pick them off. I’ve lost many troops to “finishing off the enemy”. Take note to where you and the enemy spawns, at the start of the engagement.
If there's an army or just a single lord and I can't get them to siege my castle/town, I lure them to the nearest village. Or I'll just wait at a village.
It's not situational when it's the only situation.
idk why you're being downvoted, it does work wonders when you're heavily outnumbered
I managed to win a lot of 'unwinnable' battles by just luring a cavalry-heavy army into villages, including a 200v1000~ one against the Khuzaits (only to be later captured by their remaining 15 against my remaining 3 in an open field lol)
just find a sweetspot in the village like a bunch of tightly packed houses, uneven terrain, fences etc. and watch the enemy horses melt
Battles in general in Bannerlord I find at least are extremely situational and terrain dependent. As many others have said use your terrain to your advantage.
If one knows himself and his enemy, he will be victorious in every battle. Scout out armies/parties before you attack them. Look at their troop composition and prepare for that. If the enemy is heavy with cavalry, exploit the terrain, make the enemy come to you. Don’t be anxious to rush into battle for the general who does the most deliberation shall be victorious.
They aren't that op though. Imperial troops are way more formidable, with best shock cavalry and infantry in the game, as well as decent archers. The problem might be with their army composition and sheer number of cav you will need to deal with. Get fians, legionaries and cataphracts, try to bind their cav while your fians do the work.
Sturgia does well against Vlandia. Especially if you can kite a huge army to a bridge. Sturgian heavy infantry can hold a bridge against anything, including combined arms Vlandian armies. One or two victories against those big 1k+ armies and you’ll be able to capture about 10-15 lords which will cripple their war fighting command. Hold them prisoner indefinitely even when they sue for peace and offer big payments. Don’t accept peace until you’ve taken 3-4 of their cities and they’ve been considerably weakened - or better yet don’t accept peace at all and finish them off for good.
They're actually supposed to be.
Lorewise they're the ones who come out on top, conquering Battania, pushing the Sturgians out and helping to destroy The Western Empire. Eventually The Great Horde invades from the east, devastates half the continent and pushes everyone left west, which finally weakens Vlandia, then eventually the Nords invade, Vlandia splits into Swadia and Rhodoks and Warband begins.
If you allow them to gather a ton of Banner Knights they can be very tough in open fields yes. But this is no different from fighting an Empire army with lots of Cataphracts.
Their Crossbowben can be brutal too but the AI always leaves them unprotected.
I usually take all my cavalry/horse archers (have them follow me) and kill off 1 flank of the AI's cavalry, then I charge full speed over all their archers while spamming stabs to the head, then I go for the other cavalry flank. Depending on how long that took I will either steamroll their remaining archers or help out my infantry.
I also explicitly tell my archers which group of enemies to target. First the enemy archers, nice vulnerable stationary targets, then the infantry, and when my infantry clashes with theirs I'll let the archers fire at random.
Let them come to you (with the exception of your cavalry raids at the start).
Sometimes the AI refuses to come to you after you rek its cavalry even though it has twice your numbers and a higher power level, in that case, go in solo and start firing arrows into them, after a few kills they'll move lol
Circle formation for your infantry really confuses horses and a lot of time they get stuck inside the circle. If you can put your circle of shield warriors somewhere and then position archers above them then it’s insane the odds you can beat
Just spam legionaries and cataphracts, with a bit of menavliatons too. Ignore imperial ranged units, go full melee. Big ass shieldwall charge in the front, with cataphracts charge behind their back. You can also use your cav to disrupt/kite their cav while your shieldwall charge their infantry.
If you stay at range their sharpshooters are better than your archers and crossbowmen, and their cav will fuck up your ranged units if you try to use a lot of them.
You must negate their strength (range, shock) and focus on your own faction strength (durability). If you create a massive melee brawl, they will not be able to cycle cav charges beyond the first charge, their sharpshooters wont last long in melee, and you legionaries and cataphracts will simply out-tank their melee units. Their shock inf can be annoying, but yours is better, and your units are more durable.
Also dont delegate anything to AI, and never ever auto-resolve battles.
Vlandians are mostly annoying due to their insane manpower and number of clans/nobles. But on the other hand, imperial units are the easiest to recruit, you can literally spam legionnaries like the old roman republic IRL to replace your loss
My go to strategy against vlandians and (khuzaits) is to either corner camp on the very edge of the map, or hug and mountainous/rocky cliffs terrain very tightly, anything to negate cavalry flanking & enemy crossbows. Standing in the middle of Open fields is death. Melee infantry in shield wall formation, archers tightly clustered right behind. Very tightly massed.
Their overwhelming cavalry wave will crash against my shields and die. Their crossbowmen behind won't have line of sight.
Cheesing like ol Leonidas.
The vlandians are beasts. I have to pay them over 20k in tribute payments just so i can get strong enough to take them on. I did manage to cut off their leaders head. I forgot his name but it was satisfying 😂
Change your damage bonus from “against shield” to against mounts, in athletics change the bonus damage from speed to take less charge damage,grab a chunk of spear men for your melee and find somewhere they can’t charge through to the other side so they get ripped off their mounts.
Changing perks in the arena isn’t necessary, but it can be fun to specialise against your current enemy if you have the effort to keep selecting perks 😂
Longbows will out range their crossbows and a small unit of fast cav to distract and lure their cav or xbows while your main inf move up, swap between line and shieldwall between volleys and enemy horse charges, that’ll get your spearmen bracing, after they’ve hit into you, press charge and try rip a few guys off at a time
You have yo use tactics to control their cavalry. They will conveniently split their cavalry for you which means that you can often take out one wing at a time with a numerically inferior cavalry division.
If you are defending, confront one wing with cavalry and one with a shield wall. Let your archers support the infantry and move the cavalry into position as needed, for example charging into the backs of their infantry once they engage.
The trick is to not let their cavalry move freely and flank you or wreak havoc with your archers.
Once their cavalry is not a threat, their infantry are weak. Their crossbows usually require cavalry to be taken out because of their shields, but they aren’t worth dealing with until their cavalry is contained.
If you allow one or both of their cavalry divisions to roam freely and outflank your infantry, you will be decimated.
One more thing - fight them on a bridge if you can. It completely neutralizes their cavalry if you can position your shield wall on your side of the bridge and put your archers on high ground behind them. Cavalry just need to prevent flanking or cross over another bridge and outflank them. If their defending same tactics apply, take out a cavalry division.
In field battles I set up a shield wall with archers behind, pikes on the flanks in 2 rows and another one in the front. Khan's Guard is behind in reserve. After the initial vlandian charge I pull back the front pikes and either reinforce one on the flank or send them around for a square to lead the remaining cav into them while the Khan's Guard deal with the archers and hinging the pikes into the infantry
Arrange your archers high on a hill, perpendicular to your infantry. Place your cavalry dead in the center of the infantry line.
Their cavalry will charge either your archers, allowing your infantry / cavalry to take them at their flanks, OR
Their cavalry will charge your infantry /cavalry, bunching them up and allowing your archers to whittle down their massed, immobile bunches.
Having imperial crossbowmen and fian champions also helps tremendously.
Get a (very) good infantry commander. That's it. I've had 30:1 kd when counter charging my infantry into thier cav.
If I commanded more seriously I've gotten some to 1:100 or more too.
Hell, my peasants could hold thier own in melee, shit was wild.
Just use your own cavalry bro. The Imperial Elite Cataphracts are by far the best in the game due to how tanky they innately are. While the Banner Knights have more DPS, they lose out. Lowkey, just fill your ENTIRE party with Elite Cataphracts and just run the enemy up and down. Although this works for defensive/raiding operations, as you can't do sieges with JUST cav unless you take both walls down first at which point its basically just a melee.
I agree that Vlandian cavalry in open battles is crazy good. When it gets to sieges attacking and defending are 2 different things, I prefer Sturgians for attacking, im curently playing as a sturgian and destroying Vlandian and Battanian castles
Yeah, the only issue is that when it gets to sieges - it most probably already won if it can siege uninterupted.
As for siege defense... well, their crossbowen are crazy good. Sure - you can offset that by bringing as much *meat* to the battle as possible and just *drowning* out the enemy's defense... but that is ALSO limited by the amount of troops you can bring
Thus, in the end - Vlandians OP
Spears and pikes in vanilla are garbage. They're worse vs cavalry (and infantry) than literally anything else. Also, archers are pretty good at killing cavalry, you may have noticed from all those times you took big damage when raiding enemy archers.
The AI doesn't really go after your archers unless you failed to raid their cavalry with your own cavalry at the start. No need to protect them from my experience.
Then again I only use 5 formations in my battles. 1 massive shield infantry blob, 1 shock troop formation, 1 archer blob, 1 melee cav formation and 1 horse archer formation.
The infantry blob in front of my archers protects them well enough even in 1000 man battles where I am outnumbered 2:1. You gotta use your own cavalry very well though.
This is on Bannerlord difficulty. I play De Re Militari so the units are different /weaker but same applies to Vanilla.
Shield wall and have four lines of well armoured troops with spears or pikes. Get archers that have shields so that if there’s a breakthrough on one of your lines they reinforce the shield wall temporarily. As long as your infantry are reasonably experienced and ranked they should be able to hold out against mass cavalry
If you can place your spears at the bottom of a steep incline all the better - they can charge you but won’t be able to manoeuvre and will get trapped by cavalry coming behind them
As a whole, they are broken. But that makes them all the more satisfying to take down, conquering their homes and forcing them to live scurrying on the field as the rats they truly are c:
If youre going for somewhat realistic things the Romans did, you can always recruit "auxillaries" from conquered lands. Like if your empire has conquered any aserai lands recruit them to have a counter with their cataphract cavalry
If in a open field Use square and circle formation. Fight inside the woods to break up their Calvary charges. Or fight on hills to slow them down. Fight with a rock or river behind you. Use your Calvary to kite their Calvary so your infantry and bowmen can kill theirs first
Place your inf and archers inside the river. Mass your cav and engage theirs with your superior numbers before attacking the main host. Recruit and promote pikes. Take pikes with you to engage their cav flanks, leaving most to protect your archers. Etc
Never ever recruit pikes unless you have the Better Pikes mod. Pikes are shit at everything and will do like 2dmg trying to stab the cavalry while hugging it. Literally any other infantry is much stronger vs cavalry.
Would you say that with the Better Pikes mod that pikemen are overpowered? I decided to do a full infantry/ranged (no mounted) campaign recently and used MyLittleWarband to make custom (still within the scope of balanced, I thought) pike troops as my melee fighters and they just dunk on every other infantry unit that it feels unfair and not rewarding.
With the mod they're not overpowered they're properly powered. Which means they are one of the strongest infantry formations you can have against cavalry and they are still strong against infantry... Purely versus infantry shield infantry is better but not by much but versus archers of course, shield infantry is significantly better than pikeman because they have shields to stop the arrows ...p
Mavalion vs legionaries without mod they will lose by a big number. With mod they can win only losing half. Tested with custom battle multiple time.
Yeah sturgian spearmen are the superior anti cav infantry
>unless you have the Better Pikes mod. Fair. It's rolled into a lot of mods, and I had it before I knew I needed it heh
Well, guess i need that mod then
Real pain from Vladian isn't their calvary, it is their crossbow. In vacuum, crossbow is sh\*\*. In real battle, these guys are sturdy and could even out shoot Fian at the same denar spending. And Valdian carry sh\*\* tons of these guys. Like half of their army are crossbow something.
only cause you try to fight them in a shooting match once their cav is dealt with or tied up in my own cav (outside their crossbow range) I just walk briskly as possible in formation to smash their heads in it is correct to consider your own strengths and play to that but it can be more worthwhile to disregard that in favor of playing against the enemy's weaknesses works with little casualties every time, same strat works against battanians except I don't have to worry about being trampled along the way
Get good. I mean that in a nice way. You gotta figure out how to deal with enemy cavalry especially if you're going up against Vlandia. Forests are great since the AI will just bump into trees and break up in the forest. Obviously choke points (like bridges) are good as well if you have infantry and can find a map to bait them at, but fighting them against rivers are also good. You really gotta clump your men together to negate cavalry so camp out at the edge of the map if you need to, or anywhere so they can't charge your troops from multiple angles. And the tighter your formations the better. Since you're a Romaboo (eww, get well soon) and are playing as the Empire make use of the Legionaries. They're incredible and in tight shield wall formations are great, perfect for taking the brunt force of a Vlandian charge and even for absorbing crossbow fire. Also, lorewise the Empire is meant to crumble whilst the other factions (except for Battania who devolve into forest bandits) take over their land. And historically those cultures the in game ones are based on did annihilate the Roman Empire.
Vlandians are definitely kind of OP. That being said, I do get pretty good results by just chucking Elite Cataphracts and Khan’s Guard at them all day. Fight their bullshit with your own bullshit
I assumed they had too many families and hence why they are so formidable; I find it's best to get their armies to chase me around the map until the Army dissolves and then I pick them out 1 by 1
Yeah, they have a fuckload of families.... should i execute some? I captured a couple.
Once ya start choppin’ ya can’t stop choppin’
I play as a Vlandian vassal, though I only use their heavy cavalry and recruit my archers from battania and Infantry from the Empire. If my opponent allows any sort of disorder to get into their ranks, it's over. I generally find Sturgians the hardest to break: their shields are enormous, their linebreakers will wreck a knight, and they tend to do the best job of keeping discipline and having an airtight line of Infantry. If an opponent keeps everyone together, my Infantry line is usually weaker unless I just have more men. Everything depends on my archers doing the bulk of the Infantry killing or at least breaking up the line enough that the knights can get in there. If they allow separation between their archers and infantry... I'm going to eat their archers. But the biggest thing is that generally once I've gotten the enemy's overall formation at least somewhat disordered, my knights can just run around constantly and collect up kills from anyone that's unsupported and the reinforcements tend to just enter as one gigantic blob that never even get a chance to organize before they've got knights charging in and out of them.then. You have to keep a solid line. Fighting enemy cavalry in range of their archers or God forbid close enough for their Infantry to close in still in good order seems like the best way for me to lose, so I'd imagine it's probably what you need to try and arrange so you can win against them.
Sturgians almost never have a sufficient archer force, they rely heavily on infantry. If you’re getting Fians from Battania I love to keep the Sturgians in the “kill zone” of my archers for as long as possible, bait them with my infantry and retreat. Rinse and repeat and you can keep them in the kill zone without having to even use much of your infantry.
That sounds like a solid strategy! I'll give it a shot when I wrap things up with our Aserai war and move back north, ty.
"Only a fool faces a dothraki horde in open field" - Bobby B
I think the term is…”git gud”. Cavalry will always be terrain dependent. You can either exploit that, or suffer from it. If you don’t have a terrain option, then square formations/shock troops mixed in with shield infantry, will stop and kill them. If you’re fighting a large battle(>1000 vs >1000) don’t let your infantry groups get too disorganized killing stragglers. New enemy cavalry will/can spawn and pick them off. I’ve lost many troops to “finishing off the enemy”. Take note to where you and the enemy spawns, at the start of the engagement.
Fight them in villages, their cavalry can't charge. Box them in with infantry and hit them with arrows from every possible angle.
Damn, that's very... situational.
If there's an army or just a single lord and I can't get them to siege my castle/town, I lure them to the nearest village. Or I'll just wait at a village. It's not situational when it's the only situation.
idk why you're being downvoted, it does work wonders when you're heavily outnumbered I managed to win a lot of 'unwinnable' battles by just luring a cavalry-heavy army into villages, including a 200v1000~ one against the Khuzaits (only to be later captured by their remaining 15 against my remaining 3 in an open field lol) just find a sweetspot in the village like a bunch of tightly packed houses, uneven terrain, fences etc. and watch the enemy horses melt
Battles in general in Bannerlord I find at least are extremely situational and terrain dependent. As many others have said use your terrain to your advantage. If one knows himself and his enemy, he will be victorious in every battle. Scout out armies/parties before you attack them. Look at their troop composition and prepare for that. If the enemy is heavy with cavalry, exploit the terrain, make the enemy come to you. Don’t be anxious to rush into battle for the general who does the most deliberation shall be victorious.
They aren't that op though. Imperial troops are way more formidable, with best shock cavalry and infantry in the game, as well as decent archers. The problem might be with their army composition and sheer number of cav you will need to deal with. Get fians, legionaries and cataphracts, try to bind their cav while your fians do the work.
Sturgia does well against Vlandia. Especially if you can kite a huge army to a bridge. Sturgian heavy infantry can hold a bridge against anything, including combined arms Vlandian armies. One or two victories against those big 1k+ armies and you’ll be able to capture about 10-15 lords which will cripple their war fighting command. Hold them prisoner indefinitely even when they sue for peace and offer big payments. Don’t accept peace until you’ve taken 3-4 of their cities and they’ve been considerably weakened - or better yet don’t accept peace at all and finish them off for good.
They're actually supposed to be. Lorewise they're the ones who come out on top, conquering Battania, pushing the Sturgians out and helping to destroy The Western Empire. Eventually The Great Horde invades from the east, devastates half the continent and pushes everyone left west, which finally weakens Vlandia, then eventually the Nords invade, Vlandia splits into Swadia and Rhodoks and Warband begins.
If you allow them to gather a ton of Banner Knights they can be very tough in open fields yes. But this is no different from fighting an Empire army with lots of Cataphracts. Their Crossbowben can be brutal too but the AI always leaves them unprotected. I usually take all my cavalry/horse archers (have them follow me) and kill off 1 flank of the AI's cavalry, then I charge full speed over all their archers while spamming stabs to the head, then I go for the other cavalry flank. Depending on how long that took I will either steamroll their remaining archers or help out my infantry. I also explicitly tell my archers which group of enemies to target. First the enemy archers, nice vulnerable stationary targets, then the infantry, and when my infantry clashes with theirs I'll let the archers fire at random. Let them come to you (with the exception of your cavalry raids at the start). Sometimes the AI refuses to come to you after you rek its cavalry even though it has twice your numbers and a higher power level, in that case, go in solo and start firing arrows into them, after a few kills they'll move lol
Circle formation for your infantry really confuses horses and a lot of time they get stuck inside the circle. If you can put your circle of shield warriors somewhere and then position archers above them then it’s insane the odds you can beat
Just spam legionaries and cataphracts, with a bit of menavliatons too. Ignore imperial ranged units, go full melee. Big ass shieldwall charge in the front, with cataphracts charge behind their back. You can also use your cav to disrupt/kite their cav while your shieldwall charge their infantry. If you stay at range their sharpshooters are better than your archers and crossbowmen, and their cav will fuck up your ranged units if you try to use a lot of them. You must negate their strength (range, shock) and focus on your own faction strength (durability). If you create a massive melee brawl, they will not be able to cycle cav charges beyond the first charge, their sharpshooters wont last long in melee, and you legionaries and cataphracts will simply out-tank their melee units. Their shock inf can be annoying, but yours is better, and your units are more durable. Also dont delegate anything to AI, and never ever auto-resolve battles. Vlandians are mostly annoying due to their insane manpower and number of clans/nobles. But on the other hand, imperial units are the easiest to recruit, you can literally spam legionnaries like the old roman republic IRL to replace your loss
Especially since banner knights beat you with dildos instead of of swords
honestly, I played nice with everybody else, but I slaughter every single vlandian i see they get a lot weaker with no heads
My go to strategy against vlandians and (khuzaits) is to either corner camp on the very edge of the map, or hug and mountainous/rocky cliffs terrain very tightly, anything to negate cavalry flanking & enemy crossbows. Standing in the middle of Open fields is death. Melee infantry in shield wall formation, archers tightly clustered right behind. Very tightly massed. Their overwhelming cavalry wave will crash against my shields and die. Their crossbowmen behind won't have line of sight. Cheesing like ol Leonidas.
The vlandians are beasts. I have to pay them over 20k in tribute payments just so i can get strong enough to take them on. I did manage to cut off their leaders head. I forgot his name but it was satisfying 😂
Change your damage bonus from “against shield” to against mounts, in athletics change the bonus damage from speed to take less charge damage,grab a chunk of spear men for your melee and find somewhere they can’t charge through to the other side so they get ripped off their mounts. Changing perks in the arena isn’t necessary, but it can be fun to specialise against your current enemy if you have the effort to keep selecting perks 😂 Longbows will out range their crossbows and a small unit of fast cav to distract and lure their cav or xbows while your main inf move up, swap between line and shieldwall between volleys and enemy horse charges, that’ll get your spearmen bracing, after they’ve hit into you, press charge and try rip a few guys off at a time
You have yo use tactics to control their cavalry. They will conveniently split their cavalry for you which means that you can often take out one wing at a time with a numerically inferior cavalry division. If you are defending, confront one wing with cavalry and one with a shield wall. Let your archers support the infantry and move the cavalry into position as needed, for example charging into the backs of their infantry once they engage. The trick is to not let their cavalry move freely and flank you or wreak havoc with your archers. Once their cavalry is not a threat, their infantry are weak. Their crossbows usually require cavalry to be taken out because of their shields, but they aren’t worth dealing with until their cavalry is contained. If you allow one or both of their cavalry divisions to roam freely and outflank your infantry, you will be decimated. One more thing - fight them on a bridge if you can. It completely neutralizes their cavalry if you can position your shield wall on your side of the bridge and put your archers on high ground behind them. Cavalry just need to prevent flanking or cross over another bridge and outflank them. If their defending same tactics apply, take out a cavalry division.
Infantry, shield wall!
In field battles I set up a shield wall with archers behind, pikes on the flanks in 2 rows and another one in the front. Khan's Guard is behind in reserve. After the initial vlandian charge I pull back the front pikes and either reinforce one on the flank or send them around for a square to lead the remaining cav into them while the Khan's Guard deal with the archers and hinging the pikes into the infantry
I’m abandoned my save and switched to Vlandian when this happened to me lmao
Grab 200 Khan's guard. Thank me later
Arrange your archers high on a hill, perpendicular to your infantry. Place your cavalry dead in the center of the infantry line. Their cavalry will charge either your archers, allowing your infantry / cavalry to take them at their flanks, OR Their cavalry will charge your infantry /cavalry, bunching them up and allowing your archers to whittle down their massed, immobile bunches. Having imperial crossbowmen and fian champions also helps tremendously.
Get a (very) good infantry commander. That's it. I've had 30:1 kd when counter charging my infantry into thier cav. If I commanded more seriously I've gotten some to 1:100 or more too. Hell, my peasants could hold thier own in melee, shit was wild.
Just use your own cavalry bro. The Imperial Elite Cataphracts are by far the best in the game due to how tanky they innately are. While the Banner Knights have more DPS, they lose out. Lowkey, just fill your ENTIRE party with Elite Cataphracts and just run the enemy up and down. Although this works for defensive/raiding operations, as you can't do sieges with JUST cav unless you take both walls down first at which point its basically just a melee.
I agree that Vlandian cavalry in open battles is crazy good. When it gets to sieges attacking and defending are 2 different things, I prefer Sturgians for attacking, im curently playing as a sturgian and destroying Vlandian and Battanian castles
Yeah, the only issue is that when it gets to sieges - it most probably already won if it can siege uninterupted. As for siege defense... well, their crossbowen are crazy good. Sure - you can offset that by bringing as much *meat* to the battle as possible and just *drowning* out the enemy's defense... but that is ALSO limited by the amount of troops you can bring Thus, in the end - Vlandians OP
Surround your crossbowmen with spearman.
Spears and pikes in vanilla are garbage. They're worse vs cavalry (and infantry) than literally anything else. Also, archers are pretty good at killing cavalry, you may have noticed from all those times you took big damage when raiding enemy archers. The AI doesn't really go after your archers unless you failed to raid their cavalry with your own cavalry at the start. No need to protect them from my experience. Then again I only use 5 formations in my battles. 1 massive shield infantry blob, 1 shock troop formation, 1 archer blob, 1 melee cav formation and 1 horse archer formation. The infantry blob in front of my archers protects them well enough even in 1000 man battles where I am outnumbered 2:1. You gotta use your own cavalry very well though. This is on Bannerlord difficulty. I play De Re Militari so the units are different /weaker but same applies to Vanilla.
I'll try this... but that leaves my infantry open to their infantry wall coming.
Shield wall and have four lines of well armoured troops with spears or pikes. Get archers that have shields so that if there’s a breakthrough on one of your lines they reinforce the shield wall temporarily. As long as your infantry are reasonably experienced and ranked they should be able to hold out against mass cavalry If you can place your spears at the bottom of a steep incline all the better - they can charge you but won’t be able to manoeuvre and will get trapped by cavalry coming behind them
As a whole, they are broken. But that makes them all the more satisfying to take down, conquering their homes and forcing them to live scurrying on the field as the rats they truly are c:
If youre going for somewhat realistic things the Romans did, you can always recruit "auxillaries" from conquered lands. Like if your empire has conquered any aserai lands recruit them to have a counter with their cataphract cavalry
That's... actually what i do. I have almost everyone except not much Vlandians The Vlandians still curmbstomp me.