10 heavy cavalry vs some troops & mages

[SlipperyJim]

Ezco said:
2 provinces on an island. You and your enemy both have one. Unrest over 100 on both and you & enemy have zero money, zero pd and no means of influencing those provinces with spells. Also you both have no means of reinforcing your troops. You have 1 ordinary commander + 10 heavy cavalry. Your opponent has 3 sages + 1 ordinary commander and 10 crossbowmen + 30 heavy infrantry. It's early game/magic research is difficult so your opponent propably has no fancy spells or items that could affect the outcome. You think your opponent is going to attack you and you're propably going to lose that province. How would you script your troops? Oh yes he's propably a new player and is going to keep his troops in 2 squads.

Okay, still need a little more info, like: What kind of heavy cavalry? Personally, I loves me my missle-weapon horsies, like the Sauromatian Raiders and/or the LA T'ien Ch'i Heavy Barbarian Cavalry.

The same question goes for the crossbows and infantry. For example, 30 Jotuns are going to be a much bigger obstacle than 30 standard guys-in-chainmail heavy infantry. But you probably would have said something if the troops were special in any way, so I'll just assume standard off-the-rack troops that can be recruited from independent provinces. No special powers, no funky weapons ... just average guys, right?

Firstly, those sages won't have any real impact on the battle. You've already specified that there isn't any real magic to worry about, but even if there was, sages can't cast any spells that would turn the battle. Body Ethereal is about the best they can do, and even that probably won't help much because the n00b opponent won't think to etherealize the infantry. So ignore the sages.

It seems to me that the real issue here is how to kill the crossbows before they kill the cavalry. Crossbows are dangerous because they're armour-piercing, but they also have a slow rate of fire.

There's two tactical choices that I see:

• Run up the middle: Literally, place all ten horsies in one group at the forward edge of the formation and script them for "Attack Closest". The crossbows will get off one volley, and then you'll be in the middle of the infantry. Continued crossbow volleys will probably do as much (or more) damage to the grunts on the ground as they do to your precious horsemen. If the troops really are standard, then I think this tactic actually has a decent chance of success. Heavy Cavalry are very tough.
• Flank the buggers: Put one cavalry front-and-center with orders to "Attack Closest". Split the others into two groups -- one on each side -- and place them a little bit behind the Decoy with orders to "Hold & Attack Archers".

Frankly, if it were me, I'd run up the middle. Then again, I'm not as much of an expert tactician as some of the other guys here.