PROOF That Fians Are OP In 1.1.3 - Bannerlord Archer Tactics 

Definitely would like to see the battle against the cav heavy army. Doing a battania playthrough right now and fighting Vlandia has been tough.

Make more of these elite units only armies, it would be interesting to see their strengths and weaknesses.

My favorite campaign so far has been a fian champion style king. His personal escort is ~350 Battanian nobles, over 300 of which are fian champions; no infantry, no cavalry. It's wildly overpowered, especially when combined in armies with the more diverse parties of the faction's lords.

I love the editing and I’m glad you’re being so consistent and posting more :)

Thanks for all this content man i recently picked this game up and im in LOVE WITH IT!!! love to see your battlefield prowess and giving me the confidence to take on enemy forces with overwhelming numbers!! What a feeling!!!

Bro your very first decision (command) gave me goosebumps, it really shows what you know of battle tactics🙏 I've been very interested in battle and ear tactics from medieval upwards to the 21st your channel has been on my to watch list mate proper solid content!

Another great vids, i started to get more confident when have to fight with enemy that have 2-3 times than mine , but with your guide on tactic , the result is awesome

Whelp looks like I'll be running a fian campaign again. This was the last nail in the coffin. Thanks Strat!

Thanks for sharing! Sure, I'd love to see the other battle as well.

Great video as always. I'd love to see a "Blooper Reel" video where youve compiled all the horse and soldiers rocketing into the sky. The guy getting shot in the foot gave me the idea.

Great videos man. Really helps my own strategies.

Thx for the vids. Helps a ton transitioning a Shogun player into BL. The biggest thing is losing units as I can win 1v2s in Shogun easily without losing a battalion, which just means I technically lost nothing in a battle. Here, however, each unit’s death felt like my army was getting crippled until you get used to it and start pulling off more daring maneuvers and stop focusing on soloing the entire enemy army to avoid big losses.

Really demonstrates how the AI decisioning is so heavily tied to the position of player infantry and ignores other conditions to it's detriment. It's a 'good enough' logic when put against vanilla tactics but it interesting to think of ways it could be improved.

This is a interesting comparison between this and my archer only campaign Force was, i think 3/4 fians, a small % were crossbows for the extra range ajd the shields and the rest was horse archers, primarily khans guard. The resulting battles required a very interesting tactical placement Against a army with a LOT of cav. Id have the khans guard dismount in front of our line and shield wall, and id have a small unit of fians also in square , and the stationary horses plus the tightly packed khans guard would foul up and SHRED the cavalry, Id order almost all the archers to turtle up in square or shield wall and hold fire to shred any cavalry, and then immediately by put back into loose to begin shooting once again

And I’m now convinced to do a battania campaign, great video

IMPOSSIBRU!! Great stuff Strat 👌🏻👌🏻

What if I told you that Fians have that dawg in them.

incredible battles, may noble longbow be with you at all times.

Love the battle playthroughs

Hey thank you for the great video as always! Just wondering do you use RBM? Also if you use it what setting of ranged weapon speed do you use?

I wish there was a more indepth army composition system, that way I could effectively split up pike troops and 2h shock troops to make cav less of a headache

great video, would it be possible to also have like an overhead view like in the rts camera mode, so we can see more of the overall battle?

you know its a strat gaming video when the first thing he does is throw jav at his troops 3 times in a row

nice and informative video can u pls do one about khan guards. that would make my day

Always have been. Even a sturgian shield wall quakes before a well placed arrow.

I've been using this strategy for a while. I strongly recommend the "Face that way!" command. You don't need to draw lines. Just f7 the enemy shield wall every time you issue a move order and they will remain perpendicular. 3 lines of archers feels optimal too. 2 on the left (non shield side) and 1 on the right. Make sure 2 groups are shooting and a 3rd is repositioning pretymuch the whole time. Get your second left side archer group to work their way onto the rear. Edit: If your archers are about to get hit by cavalry, tell them to hold fire, they will do a lot more damage and save a lot of ammo.

I think lower level difficulty is actually harder in these situations. If AI have massive number advantage they just charge with all their army, and if you fail to deal with this huge blob - you're dead. Archers have time only for few shots before enemy crash into your line with overwhelming numbers

LOVE SEEING THE RETURN OF 2010 IMPOSSIBRU MEME, my high school humor will never die

I once had a siege defense of my 250 against 1000 peepz, i had about 60 fian champions in my army, i eventually ended up with 21 soldiers left, they even breached the gate at some point. But the fians did all the heavy work, shooting wise and melee wise, fighting off on the walls and at the gate. Best troop in the game fr.

another banger keep up the great work

I want to see the battle that you lost against the cav heavy army but I would then also like to see you winning against a cav heavy force as well. Very cool to see.

Reminds me a bit of a campaign I did a while back in a modded version of Warband that made the AI actually use some tactics and expanded the options, Possibly Diplomacy 4.litdum just quickly looking at game files matches the dates pretty well. Really satisfying to move around archers and Infantry, albiet even with the better options the mod gave the command system is fairly scuffed in that game. Main weakness was kinda like how you mentioned Cav heavy armies - although tbf I got distracted from the campaign before I really started to put together an army to try experimenting more with the army, and the terrain variation in the game is much less interesting. Knowing the strategy is strengthened by nice elite archers seems like it could be a lot of fun to try and and play out a game with it. Bannerlord seems to be getting quite well polished now may actually pick it up soonish.

It’s not just the units. The tactics are brilliant. Kill cavalry, close gap and retreat/reposition when they get too close.

I use fians and cataphracts predominantly, rarely infantry. What infantry would you recommend besides a modgepodge of units that I can use for archer protection or baiting/kiting that you used. I tend to be specific with same type units. Costly but I smith for millions when I start a campaign so money isn't an issue.

F3 F1 Face to the enemy, and You no need to rotate the flanking archers 😉

you should try fire and maneuver. It's a new strategy game set in the victorian period, I have been playing it a lot recently and I would love to see a video on it.

The first part is good but if you had more cav you should place the bowmen behind the enemy line as they are pinned by infantry. Then use your cav to attack his arches or drive off his Calvary.

Would very much like to see that cavalry battle.

I use the same tactic when I use infantry. This current playthrough, I'm doing it with all cavalry. I have 3 groups of khans guards and and 2 groups of Cataphracts and Banner Knights. I bait them in and slowly box them in which us super easy with horse archers. Send my heavy cavalry around the back to deal with the archers and then back through their main line from behind. Works like a charm.

"they have 20 people left so we don't have to be too scared" - sun tsu

Bro's playing with Khalid ibn al-Walid is a perfect, historically accurate experience. I would love it if you could do a complete playthrough with him or Amr ibn al-As.

Love it! I have to say though, while you can annihilate with this tactic i find that more often than not the ai in these later patches like to spam cavalry. Especially the empire factions with the super annoying cataphracts. The cavalry heavy armies usually thwart me as while i can mitigate losses, the ai usually throws in the cavalry right before the infantry to severly disprupt my formations and archers. Have you seen similar outcomes?

I would like to see a video on combating a cavalry heavy army with a lesser manned force. I can take on some pretty staggering odds unless they have hundreds of cavalry on the field. We just kinda get picked apart.

strat be like: "wait, fians are op in this patch?" me, an intellectual: "always has been, and you know it" *proceeds to order my railgun fians to blast him to space*

can someone link me the rts camera mod? I cant find one with a recent update

Nice video! I really wish there was a player voice volume option. Its like 40 dB louder than any other sound in the game.

I am curious, there is no question about the best archer unit. What i am curious about. In your opinion which unit is the best for a shield wall and which one is the best shock troop? I am currently thinking about a Infantry/archer only campain as i have learned to hate microing cav. I will probably just completely stop using cav as long as they are as stupid as they are.

Pincer maneuvers are very effective against the Ai. Even on bannerlord difficulty. I have my archers bait them in with ‘engage’ once the get close and magnetize to my shield wall I have both archers elements flank the sides and eventually the entire rear becomes exposed to my archers. I’ve won many battles this way. If they have Cav units I keep them tucked into dense tree lines to get the Cav stuck, they become sitting ducks. I stick to mainly infantry based. Very small contingent of elite Cav and at least 10-15 shock troops that flank with the archers once the enemy is softened up I send in the shock troops from the rear.

I prefer using horse archers because they can move around a lot faster. Additionally, I can tell them to hold fire and do a cav charge when the need arises.

dude ur like a wizard with those javelins. personally i prefer to grab the longest spear and charge at riders full speed. it just feels amazingly satisfying for me to skewer them one after another, but infantry always pose a huge threat to me even when they have tiny short spears... smh

Cool strat it does break down vs valadian and other cav heavy armies as the archers just get pressured too hard, in my experience anyway. That said I usually F2:F2 my Fian doom stack and wait at the back of the deployment zone (preferably on a hill) for the inevitable Valandian special (them throwing their cav at you with no support). Fians do work v cav in cc.

Hey strat. I have trouble telling my troops to use siege equipment in battle. Like if they run to use the ladders how do I direct them to use the ram? I try go to location and hover over the ram and that doesn’t work. Same issue telling troops in siege defense to target certain things. Thank you

I think the only unit that’s more broken are the khan’s guard. Basically mounted fianns

Any word of you doing another play through series?

@1:10 If that's not a "SIT DOWN BOY" moment I don't what is.

The thumbnail is hilarious 🤣

Is this video a part of a playthrough? Bcz I would love to see it all but I'm unable to find it

Protip for anti-cav with an army like this: Toss in a few raiders or billmen for middle-tier support on flanks. That infantry line is dense enough to stop most cav as it stands and archers will chew through slow-moving cav!

How do you get the green battle feed to just show the simole text and not the whole names of troops?

Can you make a post listing the top tier of units of each type (archer, cav, infantry) for each culture, and ranks between culture?

The crazy thing about the fians is they have 2 handed swords so they do a ton of damage per hit compared to other archers if a group of actual two handed shock infantry got to them they would lose that fight, but fians put out so much range damge that infantry barely touch them. You would think the answer would be cav, but if you have even a small wall to blunt the charge it feels like cav even the noble cav are useless.

Just like the famous battle of Cannicourt, where King Hannibal V employed the archer-pincer movement to defeat the Fromanch.

you need to do a Fian only army tactic video.

Can confirm, they are as OP as heck itself

Would it be too hard to do a permadeath run on this game, meaning if you go down a single time (outside of tournaments) your run is over?

I’ve been watching your Viking series recently and I’ve tried using the same mod pack you do and the game instantly crashes when I try to load it. Any clue?

I personally love your siege videos

Pretty sure the fians has been OP since the first patch.

Oh god, hearing Strat laugh for once is awesome! By the way, what is your real name Strat? If you wanna share it with me of course. 🤗

Ok, now show how to build an entire army of them. I went looking for villages to recruit Battanian archer units from, and haven't found any yet. On a quick search, I have found discussions which have suggested they are only available from a couple of locations. I'll hopefully find some soon.

Whenever I feel like having the top right corner of my screen green, I load up my Battanian archer save.

This is what I do. My infantry have a movement speed banner though.

I would like to see hot to deal with cavalry and horse archers.

Fians are a funny case. When I Gave Sturgia a fitting archer, they seemed to go head to head with them pretty well. if you played your cards right you can stop them with full T5 archers or crossbows. it boils down to strategy over mass at that point. hell half of bannerlord is like that (I have used bridge cheese to fight off armies of 2k with a bridge and only had 300 units.). if we are talking Sun Tzu levels of F1 + F3 or F2 + Loose + High ground. then yea fians are mindless in spam levels. there effectiveness though...I think it has to do with AI range finding with skill levels. something doesn't feel right. Fians start shooting at ranges that normal archers don't. heck any unit with 200+ Bow or crossbow does. I don't have time to run the numbers on this to confirm. most of this is from general observation of the AI when you fighting a defensive battle. (I tend to Hold fire and then release a volly in the 100 - 120 range now) and (50-60 for throwing). that might be something to look into, that may also be where the advantage of fians lie. the AI is programmed to stay defensive if you start shooting arrows or if the balance of power is close. (Shield wall to draw arrows.) or if you have terrain advantage in some cases. I'll end the rant here. good analysis over all, but I feel like we are missing something about ranged combat on the AI side(Individual unit) that may explain the effectiveness of Fians.

same flanking and sliding retreats with mid tier horse archers would change how you view them forever, this is how the horse archer tests should have gone, is like this but without the "it's too late, need to charge" moment in this video, can take armies of 1000+ with 200-300 horse archers and take virtually zero losses

10/10 Thumbnail!

Do like your friendly fire videos. This is vanilla i think? How do you rate the fians with RBM and true army mods. im not so sure the are so op. And the cavalry are also tougher with the mods. Good fun video and yes i would also like to see you get stomped by cav.

Could you show the difficulties before the battle?

"When it doesn't go to plan" would be a cool video series as that seems to be 50% of the game haha

Fians are the most imba in this whole game. I did managed to do almost same, it was around 360, against 1100. But I did it with around 220 Fians + 100 high tear cav with no infantry. Then I did tryed the same against 1500+ and that is pretty nuts. But depends on map layout where you actually can have multiply bottle necks it seemed to me pretty manageable. But I ended up my Fians run out of arrows always in fight like that. And that is where I struggle always even when trying to control their fire, managing teams even having few good lvled heroes with high archery set as leaders.

This is why I play Battania, but they tend to suffer against cav armies. I'm working on a setup to counter it and would like to see what you come up with.

I’m not one to make Noble Elite units only armies, but it is very tempting to use Battanian Fian Champs as my army (until I realize I have to pay 17 Denars/day to upkeep them) because I only have like 12 in my current army of 200, and yet whenever a battle is over and I look at stats, Battanian Fian Champs almost always have more kills than any other unit in my army while maintaining a low death rate

I want to see the cav loss if it is an interesting battle.

Good I’m glad I’ve already been using them hahaha

I love fians, but my current army is like 90% sharpshooters with whatever else i can lay my hands on, as long as its not cavalry or horse archers. With a tactics skill of 200 i took about 250 sharpshooters into a city and me and the garison of like 60 dudes took out 1500 in auto resolve. tactics is op.

can you bring back historical tactics i really miss those

I usually run a fian heavy roster but like you said at the end cavalry heavy armies will hurt you

Pls make a video how to counter enemy mounted archers

I knew it was worth having 80 Fians and only 50 infantry. One thing I love about Fians is their arrow capacity. It is super annoying in long battles for my archers ammo to run out because it means I'm going to have to fight head on.

Just relinquished my Sturgian holdings I got expanding Battanias borders to go independent last night. So I didnt need any more convincing to play Bannerlord Strat, thanks. 😆😂

Would love to see the cavalry loss.

YES YES YES

Pls new infantry tier list and workshop guide

Bro can you test new sturgian huscarl champion. Also fians got a falx knife 😂 so they're terrible in melee😭😭.

Man i'm in my first playthrough and i'm going battanian, after 50 hours i heard the community talking about how op the fian champions were, i tested and they seemed pretty good, but today i saw how really powerful they are, went to help two armies against the sturgians, 500x500, max difficulty and 1000 troops. we got DESTROYED, i only saw the ally infantry going down while my 50 fian champions were staying in a hill trying to get some kills, after all my allies were dead it was only me and my troops agains 400+ pissed off sturgians, 50 more champions joined in and i grouped them up on another hill, they started demolishing their troops, i swear i was getting like at least 7 kills per second, i kept circling around the enemy making them turn their backs to the archers and they turned into swiss cheese, their cavalry tried to stop them but also got destroyed with ease, they got 430 kills by the end of the battle and i only lost 2 champions, i saved captured lords, two armies, and even helped conquering the castle that was being besieged by another ally, after that the sturgians wanted peace, it was amazing

I knew they were overpowered when I didn't see a birds eye view in this video.

I love that your character name is Khalid ibn al-Walid (RA)

Deadliest enemy of your cavalry turned out to be yourself! Fians OP. It's always tough for me to start a new game and not be Battanian, purely for this OP archers.

2:01 yeah, that's a labor lawsuit.

Pure Fian Champions has been broken since I can remember. The missile fire alone is super strong when spammed. What makes them completely OP is that they have decent survivability and high damage output in melee too. Since the AI usually has a balance of troop levels in their army (the AI rarely 'doomstacks'), the Fian Champions literally tear everyone up. I found you don't even really need infantry, you can just use the Fian Champions, one small group of 'skirmishers'. Ultimate lazy smith's solution to combat.