Antirainbow tactics(special for cavalry and cataphract)

[Cataphract]

First of all, for everyone who has been and hasn't been or the one that knew and didn't knew about the rainbow tactics, i'll get to this first.

Rainbow: is the tactics that mostly used by everyone(as far as i know, it seems like everyone ), this is which you send in about 95-99% pure archers and only 1-5% other kind of units, like swordmen, pikemen, cavalry, bla bla bla. And this is actually effective to block the defender units's attacks by putting up meatshield then let the archers free to shoot them.If we have 1 of 1 kind of meatshield, the archers will have 1 round of free shot, the more rounds calls for more troops or more kind of units..., defenders had a had time with this tactics.Some build up cavalry to defend but not enough and still failed, some play the same tactics and the winner is decided by the larger amount of army, too costly i suppose.Well, not anymore, i've developed 1 more tactic, theory it should be effective against the rainbow tactics(80-95%).Personally i call it Perigrine rainbow.

It's quite simple, we've all known that cataphract is the strongest mele unit, the fastest and toughest, we'll use that quality in this tactic, we've also known that archer is effective to almost every kind of army, long ranged and fast moving makes them perfect for this tactic,too. Now, cataphract can outrun the archer in 2 rounds, the range of archer is 1200 and the speed of cataphract(Ca) is 750, so it's easy to closed in. So, combined all that quality, i'll do an example:

99000 archers(Ar)
100 warriors(Wa)
500 pikemen(Pi)
400 swordsmen(Sw)

vs

70000 Ca
30000 Ar

at first, if we removed the archers in the defender force,i'm sure the defender will loose, but if we added them in, 10k-30k archers, they'll wipe out the meatshield before they even get closed to the cataphract, Ca will continued moving forward the Ar eventually, in 2-3 rounds they will have reached the Ar, in 10-12 rounds they would have destroyed the Ar. Ar has long range which means defender and attacker will both take casualties, but since Ca is strong, takes about 4 shots of Ar to kill one, but the defending Ar won't be so lucky, they'll take large lost, but before they all die, they had taken care of all meat shield.When the battle is over, according to the following numbers above, i say about 10-18 Ca died, 20-27k Ar died

[Kadagan]

Good theory but you're missing one critical part. Both forces have forward momentum.. Cavalry ranges forth from the defenders position at top speed.. while meetsheilds range forth from the attackers postion at top speed.

Notes: Forces start at a distance of 5000 if their are traps or abatis present... 3000 if they are not present (excluding a recent bug). If there is even one abatis in the example you gave the pikemen and cavalry would engage eachother first... and unfortunately for our mounted friends, pikemen get a bonus vs horses.

[Cataphract]

well, thanks for adding it in,

[Ulfhere]

I was attacked with 5 waves of 100k archer rainbow. I moved my 95k cataphracts in and that ended that conversation. The large flaw is you have to medic betwen hits or you suffer more losses later on.

[txlady21]

Thanks for the topic, it's quite an interesting thought. I've only seen the rainbow tactic so far in the game. I've often wondered why mounted units cannot be used better. Thanks for giving me some information to chew on ...

[Cataphract]

if anyone can prove my theory is possible to use, and effective.i'll be very greatful

[ThugLife]

what if the defender has mass pikeman?they are cheaper than horsemen

[Cataphract]

then the attacker is not a good player, pikemen is nothing like they said to cataphract, they may have avantages on cavalry, but to cataphracts they are useless, and plus, mass pike men means archers will be low, cataphracts can take them out with out archers

[ThugLife]

well after reading countless posts it seems that mass cataphracts pwns.Although i seen a report with 98k rams owned 300k+ troops and 12k ATs.

[Cataphract]

rams are pretty strong, cataphract is no match for them, i agreed with that