Why Battle Tactic Matters - Mount & Blade 2 Bannerlord 

Thats basically what the English did at Agincourt though it had less to do with shields and more to do with funneling the enemy and maximizing firepower into a concentrated area.

not really, if it was a player he would have lost the battle easly, he only won because they were always on shield formation even when the enemy was running away

@@LogitechXibanga The battles of George Washington and Sun Tzu obviously prove that much 🙄

@@isonnol theres no sun tzu on the game ;)

​@@LogitechXibanga mate, have you heard something called humour?

@@notsyth yes, but theres no humor here

that is a extremely cheesy way to win outnumbered battles. I dont cheese

Yes. Ai is preprogrammed once the hero is knocked out. Thats why i always ride around the battlefield doing cheap hits here and there. I dont remember if rts camera mod allows one to take control over another in campaign. I know in custom battle it does. Maybe you can use that mod to still control your army if you get knocked down.

Sad thing is that ai use to do that themselves.

Use the engage command on archers and they will stay at range against infantry

@@brycekiller1 it’s better to do “charge/fallback” as engage makes them run away from all nearby opponent units without retaliating (Calvary for example). If you hit fall back, then they will fall back while still pelting opponents with arrows.

push pause? can you explain?

@@Sir_Hammock push a hotkey to pause the game. much like in some games with RTS combat, like total war series, rimworld, going medieval, noble fates, etc..

@@nowherefool5869 aaaaahh so like photo mode correct?

@@Sir_Hammock if you can give troop commands during photo mode. with push pause or tactical pause (different games call it differently), you can pause the game and give commands to multiple units, then they will follow your commands when you unpause.

@@nowherefool5869 aaahh like that. that does seem very useful however for me the slo-mo is enough for me but that would be a welcome change nevertheless.

I agree. It's such an awesome sight when they all release at the same time.

Mods like De Re Militari or True Armies of Calradia can help make army qualities more realistic.

Infantry are slow, and heavy cav are expensive to maintain. The AI might be too dumb to properly exploit the weaknesses of heavy infantry, but any good human player would rip them apart.

True. I think its good when one needs to preserve troops. Using the tactic in the video and cavalry harassment tactics saves the infantry for cleanup only. This minimizes causalities. Tactics would be more valuable if battles were a make it or break it for war.

@@BestMods168 exactly, the battles are unimportant, even with 1000 or 3000 troops, barely matters overall. And on top of that, most battles tend to be very one sided, because if you go fight without an overpowered army, you cant siege a fief and fight off 2-3 of enemies armies which almost certainly will come. Thats why I prefer the early game, but it goes too quick to progress I think. Or I just play too much at a time.

truely the best part of bannerlord

If you ever decide to make a video about this as a tutorial I’d be very grateful

​@@ahhhhhhhh8228When in doubt, remember you are still the main character.

Happy new year too.

i mean no ones stopping you, heck the enemy lords would want you to charge carelessly

Yes. Thats a good strategy. I always keep my units close to spawn point so that things dont get out of control. Its a bug when the units mix. Usually the first time you fight a battle the units are mix. Then the next battle the game remembers which unit belongs to which group and fixes it. I will put in a suggestion online to help fix this issue. Hopefully the devs will work on it.

@@BestMods168 true and hard manage, but good to know it is a bug, its a pain in the... lol. Best regards from Brazil and thanks for the videos and reply.

the groups are clearly separated in the code. i'm not sure if taleworlds jealously locked access to it. but it does seem that taleworlds only call out the basic groups we have here and left out the others like heavy cavalry, skirmisher, etc.

@@BestMods168 that sucks because I desperately want to do striking withdrawal tactics with battanian wildlings but it keeps putting people without javelins and shields in the gruop or with much lower athletics and it slows them down when they're doing a fighting withdrawal. I even got a sick ass banner that gives like +% infantry troop movement which has them easily out running pursuit even while still attacking

the best you can do is playing with the group's unit preferences, i have shield walls as "shield+lower tier" and my 2H shock infantry as "heavy armor" theres filters for pikes, throwing weapons, etc

@@PsychoJuggaloForever for some reason it's disregarding those preferences and putting units without thrown weapons in with my wildling skirmisher stack. Fingers crossed the next patch resolves this

Maybe because you allocate too many troops? It's a preference. So if you put 20 troops in that formation and you only have 15 troops with throwing weapons the remaining five ore going to be random troops.@@Runsofourlives

Yep. Exactly the best way to do it. I'll have a video up within the next few days showing what i feel taleworlds want cavalry to be doing in the game. Many people also share the same view as well.

My number one priority is to charge the archers first before turning around to attack the rear

Let them advance in a shield wall and once they’re close enough to a point where the archers draw their melee weapons, get them in a line and tell them to charge. That should do it

Indeed. That's another tactic I use which is an exploit. I wish ai would use a unit to protect their flanks.

Alt+F4 - Can not loose a battle that did not happen / Lao Tzu or something

Pikes in real life don't really work like Rome Total War, they're meant to deny the momentum of a cav charge but in a close up melee shorter weapons will always dominate. Look up Roman tactics against pikes, there are accounts that the Romans merely slide in between the pike gaps and try to bring the fight closer. The issue I see with bannerlord are the unit collisions, they ain't as solid like in warband hence why pike formations gets thrown away by the physics of the game engine. Lastly, pikes work best in a combined arms but alone, they're vulnerable.

@@K.D.A_24 the main issue are imo ai. worst is cav ai, both their logic&individual tactics and melee ai. + cant hit with spears 50% of time, or 80% on close up charge.

@@K.D.A_24 Don't work like in real life? Well let's see what did the historical authors thought about the pike phalanx, now that you also mentioned "accounts", I hope you mean the historical ones not the modern ones. "¹The Romans, when they attacked the Macedonian phalanx, were *unable to force a passage* , and Salvius, the commander of the Pelignians, snatched the standard of his company and hurled it in among the enemy. Then the Pelignians, since among the Italians it is an unnatural and flagrant thing to abandon a standard, rushed on towards the place where it was, and dreadful losses were inflicted and suffered on both sides. ²For the Romans tried to thrust aside the long spears of their enemies with their swords, or to crowd them back with their shields, or to seize and put them by with their very hands; while the Macedonians, holding them firmly advanced with both hands, and piercing those who fell upon them, armour and all, since neither shield nor breastplate could resist the force of the Macedonian long spear, hurled headlong back the Pelignians and Marrucinians, who, with no consideration but with animal fury rushed upon the strokes that met them, and a certain death. ³When the first line had thus been cut to pieces, those arrayed behind them were beaten back; and though there was no flight, still they retired towards the mountain called Olocrus, so that even Aemilius, as Poseidonius tells us, when he saw it, rent his garments. For this part of his army was retreating, and *the rest of the Romans were turning aside from the phalanx, which gave them no access to it, but confronted them as it were with a dense barricade of long spears, and was everywhere unassailable* . ~ Plutarch's Life of Aemilius Paullus chapter 20.1-3 "The charge was made with great violence and loud shouting on both sides: for both advancing parties raised their war cry, while those who were not actually engaged shouted encouragement to those that were; and the result was a scene of the wildest excitement, terrible in the last degree. Philip's right wing came off brilliantly in the encounter, for they were charging down hill and were superior in weight, and their arms were far more suited for the actual conditions of the struggle... Seeing that his [Flaminius'] men were unable to stand the charge of the phalanx, and that his left wing was losing ground, some having already fallen and the rest slowly retiring" ~ Polybius Histories, the Battle of Cynoscephalae, book 18.25 "Many considerations may easily convince us that, if only the phalanx has its proper formation and strength, *nothing can resist it face to face or withstand its charge* .... The result of this will be that each Roman soldier will face two of the front rank of a phalanx, so that he has to encounter and fight against ten spears, which one man cannot find time even to cut away, when once the two lines are engaged, nor force his way through easily-seeing that the Roman front ranks are not supported by the rear ranks, either by way of adding weight to their charge, or vigour to the use of their swords. Therefore it may readily be understood that, as *I said before, it is impossible to confront a charge of the phalanx, so long as it retains its proper formation and strength.* " ~ Polybius Histories, book 18. 29-30 So I ask you again, which historical accounts are you talking about? Because all mentioned so far seem to contradict what you just said. Second, you mentioned pikes work best with combined arms? Every army in Antiquity has to rely on combined arms. And the battles here in bannerlord are good examples of that. Cavalry, infantry and skirmishers have to work together. It doesn't only fall on pikes alone.

@@thegermaniccoenus2525 thanks for the good read. I really enjoy reading these accounts.

@@user-wq9mw2xz3j theyve actually patch ai cavalry to not directly charge infantry during normal conditions. Theyll charge up close then turn back. Really cool. Ai cavalry just need to stay in formation during charges and stay closer to the player.

RTS Camera mod. Its on nexus mod website

@@BestMods168 ohh I see....ok thanks🙏

Or, yknow use tactics anyway so you dont have to get as many new troops?

Or you know use tactics and become godly when you get actually good troops... Seriously why handicap yourself and waste money? You make no sense

@@EntombedToast70 eh idk, im kinda in late game now and armies can be made so easily why bother, other lords can get troops for you, ofcourse if you lose half of your army it doesnt matter but choose your battles well enough and not be stupid and you can win easily with just 1 big shield wall and advance command.

Use khans guard to attack or defend against khans guard?

Defence against khan's guard is really hard at max difficulty, i have done it with fian champions but i had to cheese it with trapping them in corner and then force them to melee otherwise on an open grass map i think its nearly impossible to defeat them

Bannerlord did too but they disabled it. Not as good as warband though

what do you mean?

Using a shield i made. Theyre called the pelte shield used by peltasts.

Half of the stuff are custom items. You can make similar units using the empire short dress, roman tunic b, targe round shield, wrapped shoes, and a recurve bow.

Sounds good. This video strangely put me in the mood to play with a light troops army like this

Yes. I do that most of the time too. Keep everyone back amd the player just go and attack the enemy alone. Best way to stay alive is to only do one or two hits per charge and run away all the time. If i dont use bow and arrow then i just couch lance one enemy at a time.

@@BestMods168 my brother found tactic, he make cavalry and archer cavalry, set infantry infornt of archers. send cavalry and when part of enemy attacks cavalry , they run and archer cavalry attacks from behind. if they go for archer cavalry they run and normal cavalry lures again to themselves. usually he uses strong cavalry. this "lure" actions will be happening around archers/infantry. they walk in circle , then archers can hit more. he set archers to high place. if enemy has archers coming, he hides them until close comings.

@@BestMods168 i saw tactics from history channel like kings and generals... strengthining two sides and central infantry stands with shields , and dont fight. when engaging, two sides start to attack enemy.

@@BestMods168 unfortunately, i deleted games to use pc for another things. now i saw hannibal formation/tactic. when i install game again, i will try Hannibal's tactic nasib....

@@BestMods168 have a good time

Theres a plus sign under the infantry, archers etc

That would be your bunk ass PC. Never had any problems running it on my RTX 3080 with a ryzen 9 5950x at 4k 120hz

there are basic tactics it's up to us to refine it

It's realistic. Also I don't see how crushing defeat and getting taken as prisoner is less boring than heroic victory.

It's just an example. A better tactic would have been to split up their forces with a smaller detachment to flank the shield wall.

@@TheVerendusYea usually I got the archers taking shots going up with the shield wall or post on a hill spread out while the Shield wall pushes and I already send in my Horse archers in at the beginning to distract them and than Lead a Flank with the Cavalry Almost always quickly wraps them up enless they have A lot of mounted troops

@@felisasininus1784 Its really not realistic, it only works against bandits who are all infantry and mindlessly follow you.

@@DHAGSFU It's not realistic? Tell that to the mongols with their kiting horse archers. Tell that to every military skirmisher in the thousands of years of human history who took advantage of their mobility and ranged weapons to harrass their enemies or even eliminate them. Of course foot archers can't kite horsemen, but if you have fians and favorable terrain, you can still win against riders.

cap cap cap cap cap you bad nigga

one of my many proudest moments was when i had about 170 men against 412 men on the plains battle and they had like lot of cavalry a bunch of archers. just one problem low tier cavalry is pretty useless when your facing an elite force of cavalry and when they are stuck between 2-3 heavy infantry. after that their own infantry charged my shield wall they stood no chance with cavalry running them down archers raining hell on them and a my character swinging a 2 hand axe behind their backs. it was a glorious day that day.

archers are useless, use heavy infantry and heavy cavlary, and you will screw them up from behind and they get hit with the inft when their turn around, also they will start changing the horses because they are closer so you can give time for the foot soldiers to arrive and smash them, and do charges after charges it will stun the enemy