King of the Steppes (Online Battle #119)

Hey, what's up guys? It's Oakley, and we're gonna be doing a one versus one battle, a mirror matchup. Actually, Hun versus Hun. So, this is gonna be interesting. We're gonna see two different play styles and two different builds. For instance, you can see the two builds right here. My opponent has way more troops than me, mostly because he invested in a pretty large infantry core, and he doesn't actually have any horse archers. Whereas I have gone mostly light on the infantry, except for a couple sort of higher tier infantry, and then four of these bow cav. And we'll see just how I'm able to, you know, play this out. Let's go ahead and get into the initial engagement, so I can see, as I said, he has this large infantry core of boss friend warriors, who I know are pretty strong, and I can't really attack those guys head-on. The main thing that I have to think about is, okay, how am I gonna tackle this enemy build? He can move up pretty strongly. He just has to get this infantry in contact with my main line, and I'll lose. I can't charge this up front, straight up, because either he'll, you know, shoot me with the archers, or he'll counter charge with the Hunnic Lancers, or even he could just stand there and hit me with all his precursor missiles, so I can't attack this main blob. So what I'm gonna have to do is find a way to, you know, deal death to these guys, and that's gonna be what you're seeing me do with these cav archers. So I noticed that my opponent didn't have the, any, Hunnic cavalry archers, which I thought was a little interesting choice. And so I'm gonna be doing as much as possible with my own Hunnic archers, pushing them around the flanks. That's gonna be basically the only way I see myself getting an advantage. And so he can start sort of trying to trade a little bit with this Hunnic Mounted Warband. Interesting thing about the Huns is they do have, you know, some of their melee cav do still have bows, but they're not gonna be quite as good. So I'm gonna be doing more damage to him, and then he's gonna be repositioning his archers to counter me. That's when I'm gonna move up the rest of my bow cav to try and land a quick strike on these archers. If I can get rid of his archer advantage, then I'll be able to toy and kite my opponent away. Now he is gonna get pretty close to me, and there he gets a Precursor Volley against my guys. I pulled out, and he missed most of those shots. I did, you know, five kills on his step archers, and in response he killed some of my guys. So probably not the best exchange, but what it did do is it wasted some of the volleys here, and I'd rather him waste his volleys on these step horse archer cavalry, as opposed to some of my Lancer cavalry. So, you know, I'm softening up this side, not only with casualties, but also wasting their ammo. And that's something you have to do, is you have to kind of get ready one side for an assault. So he's doing a good thing. He's staying in a combat formation. Cavalry on the sides, spearmen on the flanks to keep me back, and I was gonna push pretty hard up the center. So you have to go into crisis mode at this point and think, okay, how do I react to this? So the first move is to pull back and attack on the sides. The only way you can really stop forces from charging up through the center like this is to attack on the flanks. By moving into the flanks like this, I can just continue to pepper his guys. You can see I'm doing actually a lot of damage to his cavalry on this flank. He knows that if I get rid of those cavalry, that I can come in here and swamp his guys with, for instance, yeah, look at this, my Hunnic Devil cavalry, who can get into this fight. So his main line is on the warpath. They're looking to crush my main force. Because I was able to drive off his cavalry with my horse archers, I now have the ability to come in and charge and get a free shot on some of his boss front infantry here. I really get some nice free kills. His cavalry is out of position, and he's gonna come back and counter charge me. But I'm gonna pull out of this fight, or at least attempt to. But then I realize, okay, you know, he has so much stuff drawn in here, I'm gonna lose too many men pulling out. You can already see me starting to lose a lot of men. And so what I decide to do is hold them here, I have to sacrifice a devil cav, and I'm just gonna be pouring in the fire with my steppe horse archers. I could have pulled these guys out, as I said, probably not the best idea to throw them in. But they're able to pull in a bunch of his infantry to this formation, clump them up. You see how it slowed down the entire advance of his army? I kind of had to sacrifice one unit in order to get free kills with my horse archers, and in order to stop his force. So you're gonna have to do these trades with your units. And I think it was pretty effective. Another thing I wanted to point out is if you look at the unit selection that I showed earlier, my opponent has a lot of these Hunnic spears, which are pretty cheap and crap. I brought Skiri warriors, which are some of the top tier units you can get, for at least spears. The reason I brought these guys is because I wanted to be able to beat his infantry, and they have javelins, as opposed to my opponent does not have javelins on his spears. That would allow me to be that much more effective against his cavalry. Meanwhile, you could say I've pulled my archers back, I just left a couple little blobs of Skiri warriors here, and those guys are gonna be able to take on his cav if they get too close, so that'll scare back his cav. My archers can do damage to his cav, so my idea is, okay, I'll scare off his cav, and then that means, well, his infantry is gonna charge forward. And that's gonna allow me to counter charge with some of my other units. So over here I came in with some of my step forces, landed a nice strike on his boss with infantry, so I'm really wrecking this side. And any of his cavalry that's gonna try and pull out here, look, I have these Skiri warriors positioned to intercept those guys, and they're gonna go ahead and break. Meanwhile, my archers are focusing fire. I'm just trying to demolish his mobility on this flank, and it seems it's successful. And so now, the entire momentum of his front has been blown up, essentially. I have units in his rear, units on this flank, I've broken his cavalry side. So what he tries to do is, like, okay, I'm gonna get an advantage on the other side. So he's pushing up with his units, and all you have to do is pull back. Pull back slowly. His main line wants to engage, that's fine. I'm just gonna continue to cannibalize this side of his force, and I'm gonna, you know, deny him a charge on this flank. I'm gonna counter-charge with my spears, who have precursor volleys, and look at that. That's why I brought these units. They took out a third of his men, and then I counter-charge with my Hunnic Devil Cap, trying to bring those guys into a fight. And they're scared to death, so they're gonna be running away. Back to the support of their troops, so I'm gonna have to disengage from that fight. I'm microing over on this side, to land some strikes on his boss front infantry. And my Devil Cap actually get pulled out too far, so this was a pretty big lapse on my part. I should have retreated those guys much sooner, fallen back to my spears, had the support of my horse archers, but I didn't. And so, my Hunnic Devil Cap are gonna be, you know, getting destroyed, but at least it's tying down, again, his force. And by tying down his force, it's gonna allow me to get, you know, steppe cavalry charges, steppe lancer charges into that mix, continue to do damage with my bows. I'm kinda having to trade units on other flanks to tie down his mobility, and then, like I said, destroy the rest of his force. Having a lot of these mobile cavalry archers is awesome. It allows me to then clean up some of his forces here. His Hunnic Spears are gonna start breaking. And over in the center, I have my general deployed, and I'm gonna be moving in, you know, some spears to cover me, and then I'm gonna be moving in my own Uar warriors, who are better than his infantry, who I can commit to this fight and hopefully clean that up. Over in the distance, I kinda lost that Devil Cavalry unit to all his men, and so now they're gonna be freed up to come and help out the rest of his force, but it's a little too late. You can see his spears are broken, his infantry are unsupported, and now, you know, he's kinda trying to commit into this front, because he has no spear or cavalry support, so they kind of have to charge in the only sensible direction, and that's just gonna open him up to more charges. So I'm gonna get a double strike, one with my general, and then back that up with Uar warriors. And because he has no cavalry on this flank, he can't countercharge me here. So now, finally, the cavalry is gonna be moving into position at the last minute, but I'm focusing fire with all of my Bo-Kav, and so those guys are just dropping so, so quickly. By the time they get to my general, I can countercharge that unit and win. Over on this flank, I'm continuing to keep my spears in these formations, just to keep his units at bay. All of his infantry have been committed sort of to this main position. And look at this, I'm just continuing to pull away, meanwhile he's losing more and more men, and now I can seal the trap on that side. He's gonna decide to land a strike on my Uar warriors, which is a good move. He's trying to relieve the pressure on these infantry. Now here comes his main assault on my Skiri warriors. I can put these guys in shield wall, and so I just wanna hold out on this flank, and then the rest of my cavalry here can keep holding this position. And I think we should be able to get a javelin volley. Yeah, archers plus... Oh, it looks like they're targeting the wrong men with their javelins. So that's unfortunate. Anyways, I try and attack these guys to have them throw their spears. It was too late, but he's still gonna be held up pretty well. And I have one horse archer unit here to help me keep up the fire, and I just destroyed that warband. The rest of his units are in the back of my men. At this point, I've kind of seeded this side of the battlefield. I know he's gonna do hammer and anvils, but that's okay. I'm gonna continue to win on that side. And so here come my Skiri warriors trying to intercept these cavalry. They're going after my archers. These archers are super cheap. I'm fine with him taking them out if it's gonna mean he's gonna waste his general against Skiri warriors. And then I'm gonna continue to keep the fire up with my units in the back, my horse archers. Gonna land some strikes over here. So here we go. Horse archers are not only good for picking at your opponent, but also landing these opportunistic strikes at the rear. So now I can start cleaning up his boss for infantry and other units. On the back, I have more guys distracting a whole boss for a warrior unit, keeping these Hunnic spears from the fight over here, which is gonna allow me to send some Ura warriors to continue to clean up the fight, just distracting with those guys. And I'm gonna focus in on his general. I'm pulling everything back on this flank just to kill his general. I was able to route these Hunnic lancers with my just Step Cav, getting a lot of fire. And now we're gonna be circling around for the kill. So here's his Step Warlord, I believe. So he's gonna be pulling out of the action, trying to get away from my spearmen. But now you can see my horse archers continuing to chase him down, landing more and more strikes. And I know sniping a general is very important in Attila, so that's what I'm going for. And his men are going down quickly. Here comes another volley. So he decides he's gonna turn on commit. Counter-charge my men over here. But again, I think the choice to bring these Skiri warriors was really good. They can hold up amazingly against cavalry, and especially the javelins that I had just allowed me to wreak damage on him. More cavalry in the back. Again, distracting spears that he would like to position in this side of the battlefield. I have Ura warriors in this fight, and so I should be able to break his infantry pretty easily. It's a little hard to differentiate who is who in this type of fight. But there you go. Seems like I've broken him. And now I can chase the rest of his men. His general has, you know, he's fleeing. And my horse archers have so much ammo, they're continuing to just rain fire down on my opponent. 96 kills, 26 over there. 89, and 112. So horse archers definitely paying for themselves in this battle. So yeah, I think it was interesting to do a Hun versus Hun battle. Kind of recreates the tribal warfare that they would have had out in the steppes. The different, you know, sub-tribes before Attila was able to unite them that they would have had on the steppes all the time. So perhaps my tribe was more known for bo-cab, and we'll see how that fights against, you know, a more infantry-focused step out on the tribes. And it looks like, you know, the Hun's cavalry tactics have prevailed in this instance. So go ahead and look at some of the stats. Yep, my opponent with his cheap Hunnic spears, I was able to counter those pretty effectively. Look at those Uar warriors getting a tremendous amount of kills. And yeah, these horse archers doing work for me. Hunnic double-cab should have gotten more kills. You expect them to, but like you saw in the video, I kind of threw them away. Now, the reason I had to throw them away was justified because it slowed down the advance of all of his infantry. These guys would have had a lot more kills. If they'd gotten to my main line, he would have crushed me. So I had to throw away these double-cab. They didn't really pay off in kills. You can see 35 and 5. They paid off in time, which is crucial when it comes to picking apart your opponent. So anyways, hope you guys enjoyed this mirror matchup. I hope to bring more of these in the future, which showcase, you know, tactics you can use against your own faction and sort of what play styles might be best. Hope you enjoyed. See you in the next one.