Using REAL Military Tactics To Win An Impossible Battle! 

The door swinging technique is something that was done at the battle of Gettysburg under the command of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain on Little Round Top. Half of his forces held their ground while the other half swept down the hill, like a door closing with the enemy sandwiched between the two lines!

This guy: Smart, tactical, uses the terrain to his advantage. Me: If I send everyone at this one enemy unit, our numbers will overwhelm them.

i really love seeing actual real strategies used in a game like bannerlord. I'm sure making a custom battle that mimics historical events would be pretty fun

I feel like this is how the game was meant to be played; however, it’s hard to give every battle this level of attention and foresight with how frequently they come on top of how fruitless it feels sometimes to squeak out a huge victory, at least that’s how it is in the vanilla game. This is why TW ought to focus more on diplomacy, NPC and campaign intelligence, and making resources far more scarce. I want to feel rewarded for challenging myself to crush way bigger armies that’s going to take like 30 mins to fight and not just have the AI immediately recover like nothing happened.

That reverse slope was brutal, as soon as the enemy cav crested the ridge they immediately saw the shit they were in and then got slammed in the back by your cav

This is exactly why I love the game, using strategy and terrain to win fights you're outnumbered in is great, and history shows how efficient it is as well, there are many wars where one side has much less resources and numbers, yet still pull through.

This was honestly right up my alley. Hoping for more but here’s another idea. What if people send you their battle clips to be critiqued, put into a compilation, tactics explained, etc. I would devour that too and it would probably bring a lot more people into this, gain some interactive traction if you will. Great job on the battle and coverage as well. Reminded me of taking a rebel castle outnumbered about 2.5 to 1 last week. Had more than 100 kills personally because I ended up chewing through all their archers and back line, completely negating the death passage of my troops from the high wall to the courtyard. Got a bit too close to going down before my companions ended up meeting up with me and taking over. I pulled back, found high ground with wall cover, and took off heavies with headshots at an angle as well as the people starting to run from the morale loss. Felt like an awesome and impossible victory.

We need more videos like this. Theory and number crunching for the "best troops" and "best formations" only goes so far outside of actual field tactics. This will save a million campaigns.

Hey pro tip, get your archers as far on your left flank as possible. Flanking the enemy on thier right = fewer shots on shiels. Edit: oh wow, never gotten this many likes before, thanks!

Would be very cool if you made a little battle map with clear troop types, numbers, and where they are. Also love the content ☺️

Just imagine in the enemy side who notice your calvary already at your rear as your calvary charging in their main force... Only to be smashed against two forces and you are literally struck in the middle, having no way to escape as that enemy calvary pouring downhill like a river against a mountain. Well played strategm.

I was on the other side of a bridge against a force of 700 to my group of less then 300. I lined up my archers along the bank and made my infantry a shield wall on the bridge itself, before sending cavalry charging across and making the infantry go to loose formation to minimize damage done to them. Lost 50 men but I DESTROYED the larger army.

It certainly isn't an impossible battle unless you don't use any tactics, which I'm sure a lot of people do, but for anyone who played Total War, you know that tactics is 60% of a battle, army composition is the other 40%. In Bannerlord, I consider 2 to 1 to be an acceptable ratio in most battles not knowing the terrain, it's up to 5 to 1 if you have huge hills. There is nothing cooler than defending a big hill in Bannerlord, I once defended against an elite Aserai army, almost all cataphracts outnumbering me around 3 to 1 with mostly militia troops and archers. The ennemy was mowed down by arrow fire, then once they reached the hill, it was was way too steep for the horse to charge, they were destroyed on the spear shield wall. Their horses died, they were unable to climb even on foot. It felt so realistic, I'm very happy higher ground is well represented in this game.

I always feel guilty not studying up on actual tactics. I usually like to lone wolf it in someone else's army and I almost always end up dying near the end of it after being incredibly reckless. This makes me want to take my time with the next playthrough and be strategic. Nice vid!

REAL military tactics like ur general sprinting into their backline of cav

Door swinging technique, really interesting seeing certain strategies used in game, I think it would be interesting if you explored the French/norman defense. chevauchée would be interesting baiting enemy forces into alternative areas, picking them off comes to mind but it would only be useful as a vassal realistically

That was a pretty well run battle. I don't have any mods so I feel like I'm always struggling to control my troops a bit, but usually just let my sarges take charge lol.

I love when it's not just charge and die or run away and it's actual strategy

This is the stuff that makes these games so good. I loved Warband, and I love Bannerlord even more. No other game scratches the epic battle and action game mix like this. Good video as always! Thanks Strat!

Terrain advantage, bottlenecks, etc are super important especially if you're outnumbered. Bridges are fantastic for that. Making the enemy cross a river or a pond as you pelt them with arrows mmm.

I often try to use real battle tactics and split my infantry on left, center and right, it works amazingly well to be honest! your execution is amazing. nice and fluent control of units. only thing i would suggest in future is trying to position archers more on the left flank, so they have better chances to not hit into shields.

I remember winning a battle of with an army of 700 hundred men against several armies of up to 2500 men by having archers on the highground and dealing with the cavalry head-on with 2 segmented lines of foot-soldiers. Lost a lot of good units, but after we were done with all the cavalry, dealt with the rest of the armies by simply circling around with cavalry, NOT ATTACKING, just keeping them in a big circle, retreat, and let the archers fire a volley for massive kills. Hence and repeat.

Great video, you should bring more of these techniques and general strategy in the open map, like best city/castel to capture!

Not a whole lotta red???

Man that is one of the best looking and organized armies I have seen on this game, also your weapon selection is insanely smart as you were able to maul thru the enemies

This was absolutely great to watch ! I hope I get to see more of this !

Amazing battle and execution of a great number of tactics. May your empire grow and and prosper

Something similar to the door swing you did I tend to do is get a group of shock infantry (example valandian Billmen) and set them just behind one flank of my main line to come out when the lines meet (shock units usually have less armour and a two handed weapon so there faster and hit harder than the line infinity with shields but can chew through an occupied flank)

Just a thought, for the maybe remaining 3min, your archers weren’t doing much. Probably could’ve saved some of your infantry if you had a group of archers cover them as you had the left formation move up to pinch. Then again you had only one big group of archers. I find it helpful to form two groups so itll allow for more mobility and coverage of your infantry

Looked to be mostly light to medium cav. I had a similar battle, on similar terrain the other day. With the troop make up I had, I ended up using a ridgeline to give my archers (mostly Fians) the elevated position, supported by heavy infantry. Disrupted their cav charge with mounted skirmishers and then heavy cav runs once they closed close enough into archer range. Took some heavy micromanaging, as I had to recall and do several sorties, while keeping out of enemy archer range as much i could. Literally just cycling charges with the skirmishers and heavy cav. Making sure the enemy cav was always engaged or chasing, pulling them in, wearing them down. Used the tactic a couple times before, and it definitely works to blunt the charge and disrupt large cavalry armies. By the time you pull your cav back, they hit your infantry on a uphill slope in a disorganized slow mess. Easy pickings until the enemy infantry catches up with the overextended cav. After that, I used my mounted skirmishers to delay their reinforcements, and used the heavy cav to hit their archer line before turning to flank their battle line. The downside is, that you tend to take heavy loses in your mounted archers/ skirmishers as they stay engaged the longest while delaying reinforcements, and you may end up having to do a balancing act if the enemy also has a lot of mounted archers. Luckily, in this case, they didnt, and they walked right into the meat grinder. Closest historical comparison would probably be the Mongols i guess, since half my army is typically mounted archers/ skirmishers and heavy cav. Don't know of any real battles that used a similar tactic though, just know its worked well for me in the game. Then again, history is chalk full of commanders over extending their troops to early, so at least the enemy response is probably historical XD

Very endearing and inspiring battle. Your cavalry maneuvers were well executed and your infantry and archer positioning led to an impressive victory

I love these. They’re very entertaining and they show me new tactics

I've been playing Eagle Rising with the My Little Warband mod lately. My clan army is modeled after the Iberians from Rome Total War 2. So mostly light to medium armor, with oval and palaic shields and falcatas. The special quality to them though, is every unit is equipped with javelins except the archers. I've perfected my tactics against Roman and Carthaginian units easily enough. Their Phalanx and shield walls always manage to tank the hits from the front, but makes then susceptible to a cavalry charge from behind with my Cantabrian Cavalry. (And my cavalry is medium cav at best) But the Dryatians have been the harder culture to fight with their spears and falxes. They also have a lot of javelin armed units (ironically in RTW2 Iberians were the Iberians biggest weakness because of their low armor and shield strength making them weak to range) but many of their units use 2h weapons and no shields. Instead opting for a loose formation. So I figured it would be easy to beat them. Cavalry charges all day and let my archers pick them off. That first battle _did not go well_ I learned almost immediately never to do a frontal cavalry charge on them again. My men and I slipped through their units to stab at them, but the falxmen hewed at our cavalry and I lost 3/4 of my 80 cavalry within a minute. My dominant strategy I've developed for them now, is to split my infantry into 2 groups. Place my archers behind group 1, and then have group 2 on the side or to the side and back a bit. Then take my cavalry to skirmish with the enemy and wait for them to collide with the front line if group 1. Which is when I order group 2 to wheel around to their flank and start tossing javelins at them, while the cavalry and I take out their archers. Their falx men can still do some damage to me, and I need to be careful because these tactics don't scale down to small army sizes though. But damn does it feel good to think during these battles again lol

Love this! Huge total war fan but always wished you could fight the battles as a general. Just discovered this game. Obsessed. Have not figured out the battle command mechanics yet. You did things here I didn’t realize were possible. So cool

That was awesome, just subbed for that. I love seeing fights like these, really shows that tactics really work in this game

I love hold fire, once the enemy archers move past there shield wall you order fire at will... Feel like an Elf commander slaying orcs everytime I do

just like waterloo’s reverse slope defence with the use of the ridge and all

I remember a while back when I was testing ways to make throwing weapons work I tried something similar to this. I played sturgia and had my axmen at the bottom of a hill with javelins behind them. The Idea was that the angle of the hill would increase the chance of my throwing weapons to hit the enemy as they either had their shields pointing forwards (to block the spears) or pointing down (to block the axes). Its also a legit strategy to equalize archery disadvantage if your enemy has superior ranged units (which is the case against all enemies when playing sturgia lol). I cant remember how well it worked against cavalry but I'd assume not great unless you could have pikes just at the crest of the hill to poke the horses as they go over

Oh man, wonderful video. It really was a treat to watch this one. Good tactics, skillful fighting, calm commentary. I just love your vids man.

Awesome video, very good job. that's the first time I'm actually seeing someone that uses a good (and complicated) battle strategy! Would love to see more stuff like this, and if you can an explanation of some basic tactics.

this reminds me of the time when a friend and I would call each other to talk about which awesome castle defense or battle we had and what our stats were in Total War Medieval 2 and Shogun 2 and stuff :D

Interesting strategy employed, I liked you slowing down the Calvary, but the real thing with this game is not the quantity of your troops, but the quality. If you looked at the beginning you were almost 50-50 in actual strength, yes you were outnumbered, but the strength/quality number was something like 60 vs 40.Also with morale in this game you can easily turn an outnumbered enemy if you hit them in the right places. Still excellent strategy, putting your archers on a hill is usually the best move, some people like to place them in front, but I think the high ground is always better. Shield wall really helped too. The fact that you were the defender makes it easier. In this game you would rather be defending, unless your army is mostly cav. You may have reserved some of your cavalry to use them later and hit them from behind, but overall excellent strategy to winning.

In MB1, using nords only made you embrace hills and forests just like that due lack of own cavalry. Then later on, when I started bolstering my army with cavalry, instead of the "door slam", I tended to have my cavalry either sweep back and forth infront of my meat wall or just charge their archers.

We love this content brother keep up the good work!

The closest I had to a tactical battle was one time where I parked my army inside a forest because the enemy had an endless amount of cav. It helped a bit but I ended up having to kill like 70 guys by myself and it took forever lmao

My tactics begin and end with pressing F1 followed by F3.

I remember watching this on during the play through, easily one of the most epic battle you had

thats why i like this game so much its so complex and immersive, very nice battle

I'm just getting back into bannerlord and started to wonder if real tactics would actually work. Guess I know now! Thanks for another great video man! Can't wait for more bannerlord!

I think it will be interesting to see no kill bannerlord challenge. You cannot kill any enemy but your troop can. And then some rule like maximun amout of friendly casualty you lose the battle

I’ve pulled off a few impossible battles but this is downright impressive. Also is that a custom mace, I’ve never seen it before and it swings so damn fast it makes me so much more motivated to master this game.

I really enjoyed this video. It's so satisfying to watch some smart plays. Well done!

Then there is me, playing on every easiest difficulty setting, using my tested and true "Melee Front Archers Back and We Have No Cavalry Because I Don't Know How to Micromanage Them" approach. This was far more satisfying to watch.

The funny thing is that the enemy army had no tactical advantage in attacking you so should have just waited for a better position instead of going at you like a zombie horde, but a lot of history has been made by that kind of poor decision-making: thinking superior numbers can make up for bad tactics.

Really engaging throughout the whole video. Even stoned I understood everything you did and why you did it, well done, great video!

i cant belive you actually made a revolving door tactic work with a inversed slope, good tactics but even better foresight

Can you do the Turan tactic with khuzaits please? It is also known as Crescent tactc. It's a real tactic used by Turks for hundreds and thousands of years and most of the time win the battles outnumbered against Crusaders. It would be really cool.

I remember using real tactics in total war. Heck, I used the same plan that Hannibal used at the battle of canne against the vandal kingdom in Attila: total war

There’s been so many times were I usually just wait back at my lying for the enemy to come. I enter shield walls and then advance from there and I find it works really well. Another thing I’ve gotten really good at is attacking an enemy position. There’s been so many times now where I’ve gotten into a battle and the enemy isn’t attacking me. They are just looking for a better position. High ground type stuff. I’m really really good at assaulting enemies at high ground. For now, at least, until the game throws another learning curve my way.

This was absolutely amazing! Great job

Real Military Tactic: General kills hundreds all by himself so numbers match in the end.

Great fight, Strat! Quick question: were you using the "Follow Me" command for your cavalry a lot? Or was it more "Go to Position X"? A combo of the two based on the situation? Also, great kick at 6:50! I often forget to use kicks outside of tournaments. I tend to go into Berserker mode and just hew away with the Dane Axe, lol.

Thanks for sharing the 'm gonna try it out later.

Really nice tactical setup. I normally setup to go for high ground archers and a shield wall of infantry just below on an uphill but this was a really nice spot to keep your guys safe from archers and really block them in a death bowl. Quite impressive (except for forgetting to tell your archers to start shooting! 😉). 👍

You managed to make them focus a large part of their men to a small part of your line nullifying their number advantage. That was cool. What mod were you using?

Man that is an incredible spot. Never seen that ridge/hill area. Incredible defensive positioning.

bro this was such a good video!

That was truly impressive, earned a sub for that display of skill and tactics !

"that's some good shit agl" -Sun Tzu

Just had a similar battle, 2000 vs 2200, I took position behind a river and baited them to come down a narrow path down a hill in front of the river. They came down there and my troops could just spam them with arrows and javelins. They came in 5 waves, battle took 40 minutes xD Glad I was using the RTS camera mod. Which mods were you using for your game? I think I recognized Realistic Battle Module (with the armor Module as well?). How were you able to actually use the spear efficiently? Especially the faster thrust speed. Is that part of RBM or a spear rework mod?

more of these please, very entertaining. thank you.

I love this kind of stuff. One of my greatest memory in this type of game was Medieval Total War. In one playthru I had conquered about half the map. I was seeing the other side gathering a ton of armies and deployed mine to counter but I caught it a bit too late so when the fight happened I had around 40 to 50k size army but they were fully upgraded and trained vs 120k + NPC army who wasn't much in the way of upgrades. Used normal military tactics since I was the defender. I forget some details but both sides were in the field, I wasn't defending a castle. Had my first wave with infantry in middle of a hill, archer higher up and cavalry was hidden in a forest nearby at the bottom of the hill and I just waited. They had to walk across the entire field so when they reached me they were already tired so didn't take much to rout them. Archers would decimate most of them and when their morale was wavering I'd send the cavalry in to rout them. When archers out of ammo, I'd make them leave and bring fresh archers. Battle lasted for hours and I'm sure I'm remembering things with rose tinted glasses and it might not have been as epic as I recall it being since it was 20 years ago after all. But still it's when I realized that it's not the size of an army that matters but mostly strategy and also the quality of the army. While I had trained soldiers, 1/3 of the enemy was peasants and militias.

Reasons why using the tactics you'd use in real battles won't always work in the game: 1. Even looters fight to the death, moral shock is virtually a non-issue since every unit fights to the death. 2. There's no exhaustion mechanic; every unit can fight til Ragnarok without breaking a sweat which means there's no point in tiring the units out. 3. The AI is braindead. 4. Almost always if the archers/horse archers have a clear line of sight, there's not much else left to do. 5. By the time you do complex maneuver, either your frontline has already disintegrated or theirs. The battles end too quickly.

Love the content !! Bannerlord is really the best game out there.

It feels so good when making a tactic and your archers just raining fire and you get so many kills

This is the best thing I've seen all year.

I'm not a bow person at all and I thought it was unwise to put the infantry on the downhill but then again the bowman got the best targets doing that Just shows different ways different people think

F1+F3 -Sun Tzu

Really good setup execution and commentary. You def got a new sub hope to see you grow

You are a true master . I love tactics and strategies I have been 'studying ' it as part of warfare for many years . Throughout history . It is good to see another nerd who knows their stuff . We weren't born in these times but it is cool to see it implemented in a game like this or a strategy game

What is that weapon you're using? Looks nifty

It looks like the DLSS bug that causes item highlights to appear in the wrong place is still there. They introduced it in final release and haven't fixed it yet.

I really enjoyed watching this and I like your commentary. You have a good voice for it. :)

Brilliant tactics. I've been setting up two infantry squares, similar to Roman cohorts, on either side of my archer ranks. This protects my archers from cavalry flanking, and given NPC AI's tendency to go for "center mass" of my formation, their infantry crashes into the center archer line after taking significant ranged damage; Then my infantry cohorts close in from both sides. Cavalry then fulfils a utility role; Usually for mopping up their archer line with big continuous sweeps, but also for engaging enemy cavalry or horse archers. If none apply, cavalry box enemy infantry in on the rear. It's a combination of Roman (checkerboard) and Macedonian (hammer and anvil) tactics, downscaled to Bannerlord's scope and inability to delegate complex tactics to AI. I'm still trying to optimize ways to deal with cavalry and horse archers (lacking my own horse archers), but I'm usually able to wipe out armies even three times my size, even if terrain is non-ideal.

If you actually think about it, it's not even a hard-to-win battle. An army of heavy infantry annihilates cavalry even on Auto because they get stuck. And, if you'd put them into a square formation + shield wall, the casualties would have been negligible. The infantry is that strong. Still, fun to watch it)

Guys I have bad news I started a campaign today it was going decent I had good riding bow and smithing skills I was not clan tier 1 I was fighting with the sea raiders for money and levels in the battle... I died literally death option was on and it's was iron man mode... I lost my campaign I loaded the last save game auto saved after the battle I died I haven't played that much but still it's sad

This was really cool to watch. I love this game so much xD

Ive always played it like this, the total war game series also taught and made me fight like this. Using terrain, using flanking techniques, fainting ( faking movements ). If i know im going to lose the battle, i still try to eliminate as much of them as i can for my next attack.

Awesome. You really are the Bannerlord. 🤣

This is a great example of getting yourself superior troops and playing on the easiest setting

I got so happy when that reverse slope play was pulled off, well done

As someone who started Bannerlord recently and subscribed to your channel, iam so happy that heavy cavalry isn't the answer to everything in open field battles (sieges too) like it was in Warband, (loved that game despite the flaws) Swadian knights already had the strongest armor and after the first charge they stay there harvesting like normal infantry except much faster on a heavier and equally armoured horse. 30 swadian knights would destroy bigger parties which left a sour taste and i also hated fighting swadians for that reason, i usually left them to be torn apart eventually by every other faction while King Haurlus kept throwing feasts and attack them when they are severely vulnerable to extinction. The only counter to them was mountainous terrain which wasn't always available, Rhodok sharpshooters plus sergeants or nord huscarls. Now fast forward to my first 40 hours in Bannerlord, i have found that the game rewards skillful play and no single tactic works better against all which makes role playing and leading cultural armies more rewarding. But ofcourse i will not talk about the infamous Fian champions and khan's guard here as i have yet to see a single one yet in my first playthrough. Hopefully there are mutiple proper counters to them too and i highly doubt that AI could muster big amounts of the said high tier troops to make it annoying. Thanks for a great video man, i learned a lot here, keep up the good work, it is highly appreciated!

For the algorithm

How was this an impossible battle? All i see is AI charging blindly into shieldwall. every outnumbered match can be won with that tactic.

Fascinating Tactics my Friend The Bonk seems to be Bonking

For anyone that wants to have large armies but don’t want to make its every move just hit F3 & F4. The ai is pretty smart to do it’s own thing

This was very enjoyable to watch, good on you

6:26 loved the slapping the enemies butt with a two handed mace strategy XD

I enjoy listening to his narrations... Well done

Just got bannerlord after playing the hell out of warband and I am very glad to see cavalry actually is useful in this game and they worked on the commands of your army