Guide to Nomadic Combat

Horse archers, they have conquerer most of the known world, twice. The hunnic empire led by Attila and his brother Bleda conquered nearly all of europe. The Mongolians established the largest continuous land empire in the world, stretching from western Russia, to the eastern shores of China. There has to be a reason for these two cases of such a peculiar fighting style seeming to overcome all of the opposition. So why then does Rome II not do the Nomadic Tribes any justice with their units?

If your thinking of playing as a Nomadic Tribe than throw everything you learned about tatics from the Greeks and the Romans out the window. Roman cavalry fuctions differently than Scythian, Saka or Sarmatian cavalry, even if the stats are on par.

The first thing you'll want to do is go into custom games and check out the units they have. see their stats, see the units they have in common, for the most part, the tribes share similar units.

The most common types of units in a Nomadic army:
- Horse Archers
- Lancers (both lightly armored and heavyily armored)
- Shock Cavalry

Although the list is small the fact that they can initially recruit 5 units in their home province means you are the quickest to rebuild and build armies in the game.

This isn't as much about hiting and running as it is about always running, as cavalry your agility and speed play a part of how you fight. No massed charges here, it would become a slaughterhouse. Also don't bother setting up your army in highly organized formations under one locked group select, I tend to situated up to 4 or mabye 5 groups of units. each group with only one kind of unit in them, one of armored horse archers too hang back, two of lighter horse archers to pull individual units away or suffer the consequences, one of heavy shock cavalry too break the enemy lines and ruin tuestudos and make units vunderable from my core of archers, one group of lighter shock cavalry or young axes too hold the enemy in place so they can't form tuestudos or phalanxes.

Each group should have its units placed into a line, that way shock cavalry can spread over more units, Horse archers can hit more units, ect. The lines can be placed near each other or as I normally do, spread a part a bit.

(An example of what I am talking about with lines)

Horse archers, unlike foot archers, can pull away from enemies and still be firing, this is supurb against slowly moving cavalry like cataphracts chasing down your light cavalry. however if there is faster cavaley chasing you down then just pray horse archers are down right awful in melee, however I have been able to use armored horse archers as improvised shock cavalry a couple of times.

Heavy shock cavalry is strangley enough your supporting troops, your archers should do most of the killing, however an attacking tuestudo from some legionaries renders them nearly useless. like a zit the Roman position must be popped. your shock cavalry is just the thing to distrupt these lines.

The Light Cavalry in your army is most effective for pulling individual units away from the battle line, attacking skirmishers, guarding horse archers and countering cavalry. they serve as the legionaries do for the romans, the go-to man for any job. However their aparent lack of armor and lightness means that they should NEVER EVER charge spearmen, either a flank shot or not.

The Heavy Cavalry in your army is most effective for distrupting enemy lines, charging skirmishers, guarding horse archers and flanking enemy forces. unlike their lighter counterparts, these men cannot for the life of them out run other cavalry, they can get tangeled up by equites and be then surrounded by nearby infantry, they can however dish out massed charges against infantry (not pikes though) so make use of this thouroughly

Young Axes (only available in campaign stupidly enough) cannot win a battle, but I always make sure to carry around a unit or two of them. They can keep enemy troops in place, thus allowing for my shock cavalry to flank them or destroy their skirmishers, they then also prevent arrow blocking formations to be formed, like the teustudo that I wont shut up about. or phalanxes. they also are cheap and take most of the damage meaning that they are easily replaced.

You can supplement your army with mercenaries to cover the weak spots of infantry aswell, Greek Hoplites hold up well and are a welcome addition in my Nomadic War band.

In the end the Nomads can do much if a proper Generel leads them, they can accomplish what other armies can't and can achieve desicive victory against even the strongest defender, they are iterestingly enough the only faction that Ive seen to counter Artillary spam effectively, get up close and fire away at the artillary whilist in a cantraberian circle, run away if the enemies infantry gets too close.

I hope this guide helped you and taught you how to conquer the rich lands beyond the steppes with thundering hooves and fiery bow